Wanabi Stoic

  NEERAJ MAHAJAN As a blogger, at times I am stranded sitting in front of my laptop bereft of ideas. Francis Scott Fitzgerald , the American novelist who wrote on Jazz age said, the mark of a sharp mind is to hold two contrasting ideas in your mind and still move on. To me, to write when no idea settles inside your brain seems even more heroic. How does one break this impasse? I guess by just writing in the flow whatever crosses the mind. A few ideas to discuss here viz . PICK YOUR WORDS VERY CAREFULLY Words have power. While we know the story of a tribe in the Soloman Islands in the Pacific and how they kill trees through relentless abuses, there is more to it. Many times, we utter things we do not actually mean at a conscious level. But our potent subconscious mind is always at work and those turn out true. It works in the long term for sure. Ditto for names. In Hinduism, the VEDIC heritage is our most valuable asset and our name is the most prominent marker of identification wit

  NEERAJ MAHAJAN                                                         HOUSE SPARROW COUPLE As a kid, I grew up in Delhi watching the innocuous pretty house Sparrow chirping all day long over me, home, and the family. To save its life, many times we had to switch off the ceiling fans in grueling summers till she was chased out. Then iterate the same idea when she reappeared. It was never-ending. But it was fun. My kids aren't privy to such lovely experiences as the house sparrow has all but disappeared from urban homes in the highly polluted environs of Delhi. If environmental degradation continues unabated at this pace, I am worried our progeny will be deprived of many more such experiences that are priceless. We have to take responsibility in whatever little way to stop it. THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT I came across The Butterfly Effect  in Taleb's Incerto series. It simply states if a butterfly flaps its wings in India, it can cause a storm in the Pacific thousands of miles away.

  NEERAJ MAHAJAN SCOT ADAMS Over this weekend I drove 400 km solo in my 4X4 to a friend's resort located in the quiet and obscure village of Satbonga in Kumaon, Uttarakhand. Reflecting at 7000 ft. in the lap of the Himalayas, affords a vantage point where most of one's problems can be looked down upon. Although the great Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the choice of your place has no bearing on your emotional state, I somehow feel it works for me at least. Most of the noise one is tormented with, in the daily grind of work, is cut off here. One can see more clearly what's going on. I read about the American artist and businessman SCOTT ADAMS after Naval discussed him in his Podcast and was very inspired by his career ideas. He advises combining 2 or three subsets of skills where you are really good at and better than 75% of the people you know. Then, build your career around it. You need not be the best coz that may never happen. Reflect, productize and get traction. Don't gi

  NEERAJ MAHAJAN Hi, I am Neeraj Maha jan and this is the last piece on my learning 2020 series. I will end it today and it may be longish. You may read it in parts to stay interested. Here are the last few ideas: MEDIOCRISTAN Mediocristan is the tyranny of the collective, the average, the predictable, the routine, the obvious. It is a place that has no outlier or extreme success so as to say.  Some key properties of Extremistan are viz: 1. Non Scalability 2.Typical member is mediocre 3.Winner gets a small share of the pie. 4.Subject to gravity 5.Height and weight of most. 6.You know what's going on. Most things fall in the above category. Risk-taking, convex tinkering, thriving in uncertainty are absent in Mediocristan. There isn't any gain from positive black swans. The central idea of Mediocristan is that one focuses on averages, pennies as there are no outliers here. The randomness has been completely sucked out of the system. This is the supreme law of Mediocristan The Tur

  NEERAJ MAHAJAN  Hi I am Neeraj Mahajan and I love writing. The beauty of writing lies in its ability to coax clarity in your thoughts before penning them down. I am surprised every single time I write as to how little I understood the ideas before writing opened up whole new vistas to me. It helps me grow daily, see things around me more clearly.  It is time to share more. STOICISM This idea has captured my imagination ever since I read it in the INCERTO series of Taleb. It stuck with me so much that I have dedicated to it my Blog name WANABI STOIC. It originated in great ancient Greek philosophy. A stoic is a person indifferent to Pleasure or Pain. What's the big deal about it? Tons! My problem is that modernity has delivered a sucker narrative on us and we have fallen for and become suckers for all that is soft and sophisticated. Fancy cars, iPhones, treadmills, instant pills, fast food, Facebook, ebooks even google. These though very useful, have consumed us. Don't get me

                          NEERAJ  MAHAJAN                                                                                                                    BARBEL L We know what is a barbell and its use in weight training. Its USP is a perfect balance at two extreme ends of the bar; a wonderful technique to successfully navigate a risky world with frequent Black Swans.  And this can be achieved by removing fragilities in all walk of our lives through it. Think of our life as a Barbell with its extreme ends always in balance. Isn't that wonderful? At one extreme you are taking huge risks, sometimes losing( though small losses but winning big), and are excessively conservative on the other. To illustrate, if you are into Investments, you take the maximal risk (rational though) in one portfolio part and invest in T Bills the other part risk-free. This will keep you in balance always. Most fail if they digress from it. Second, if you aspire to good health, great physique, lift heavy w

                                                  NEERAJ MAHAJAN REDUNDANCY This is the opposite of debt, something not of use, or The Margin of Safety in Investment Parlance. In Modernity, it is counterintuitive. Lemme explain. Mother nature has built redundancies everywhere like two kidneys, appendix, two eyes, and ears, huge brains in humans to similar types in trees. A tree regenerates itself if a trace of the root is left behind, birds like Bar Headed Geese have such reserves in its system that it flies at over 30000 feet over Mount Everest in summers to reach Rajasthan. Redundancy is everywhere except in our lives, the modern man. We are optimized and, in debt. Want a house, car, holiday? Don't rent, Don't save but take a loan as it is easy. Have extra money lying in the bank account? Let's leverage it for some extra bang for our buck. But do we realize, it fragilizes us? In an increasingly random world, what if a crisis hits suddenly? It Could be economic, natural, p