To serve our families, our individual health and well-being, and our recreational and creative needs optimally, many business like behaviors are required. – David Allen
I was reading David Allen's book, Making It All Work where he talks about how we can incorporate the best practices from our work life into our personal lives.
This made me pause and think about what best practices I can incorporate to handle the business of life?
I was searching for some inspiration for my next blog post. Thanks to Google, I came across this 100-day writing challenge. It does sound interesting to pursue this challenge.
The author recommends taking 10 – 20 minutes to empty your mind on paper. I do like longhand writing. However, at this point in time, I shall stick with my Obsidian workflow.
Unknowingly I was sort of doing my morning pages for about 10 – 15 minutes for about two weeks now. I have listed some topics I have written in my half-awake state:
Why Micro.blog does not have an option to schedule posts? If it was available, I could make Micro.blog my home for long-form posts.
Write.as or Blot? Apparently, this topic occupied my mind for 4 days straight. I'm still undecided!
Write, schedule and post one blog post a day.
Get more sleep.
Enjoying workout and treadmill / outdoor walks.
Revisiting the principles and best practices for GTD implementation.
Time management and overwhelm.
Building a reading list for 2022.
Build simple morning and evening rituals.
Relationship issues (no wonder)!
I enjoyed reading my previous entries. It helped me to pause and reflect. I wish to continue this practice as I strongly believe in the power of journaling & regular reflection.
You Need A Budget or YNAB is a budgeting tool I came to know about back in 2019. After plenty of trials, I decided to subscribe in 2020 for USD 84 per year. My personal finance was sort of a mess. I was scouring the Internet for budgeting tool that's easy, available on the web and cross-platform. YNAB checked every criterion that I was looking for. I fell in love with the app.
Even though the app did very little for non-US customers (like automatic bank transaction sync), I was more than happy to pay the full amount.
Honestly, YNAB taught me how to budget my income and plan my true expenses.
In 2020, I had to make an emergency trip to Tamil Nadu, India. YNAB helped me to pool in the monies from different categories without any hesitation. Thanks to YNAB, I had saved up enough cash buffer to handle the emergency situation.
Today, I woke up to a pop-up stating YNAB has increased their price to nearly USD 100 per year from December 1, 2021. I was not happy at all. I wanted to get a feel for what Reddit & YNAB Forum thought about this price increase. They were fuming. My price increase was around 18%. Legacy customers grandfathered at USD 45 per year saw their price increase around 100%. These folks went crazy!
What really frustrated me more than the price increase; is how this entire debacle is being handled by the YNAB management and its founder Jesse Mecham. There is radio silence from the YNAB founder or the app's corporate team. They are not even responding to customer grievances on their official support forum.
All I wanted to say is, I'm happy to pay for services that I really love. But, YNAB is offering very little to its non-US customers and expects us to be OK with the price increase. It is wrong and they are just taking the mickey. At the moment, I'm indifferent to YNAB. I will not be renewing my subscription. It's time to explore alternatives. Bye YNAB!
I really enjoyed reading Derek Sivers's blog posts on the Thoughts On Journal. This will be a great idea to incorporate into my daily routine. Rather than spending time on infinity pools like Instagram or Twitter, I can start jotting down my thoughts in Obsidian and use it as a base for drafting future blog posts.
I have been meaning to be consistent with my blog. But, never passed a week or so! It's the age-old problem of not knowing what to write about after a certain number of blog posts.
Last year (in 2020), I came across Michael Wade's blog when I was searching for inspiration to write more in my Write.as blog. Michael had an inspirational post on some ground rules for new bloggers. I thoroughly enjoyed the post and tend to revisit it every now and then for inspiration and motivation.
The top 3 Rules I really liked are:
Determine your theme. This is a key rule for me that will make me write more. Some of my interests revolve around reading, productivity, religion, intentional living, history, food, travel to name a few. At the moment, I want to explore my interests and maybe settle on a major theme in the new year 2022?
Try to post every day. I have always wanted to do it. I assumed it to be to write, edit and post every day. But, it doesn't have to be like that. I can batch the writing process and schedule one post a day.
Don't blog when you are tired or angry. This might be obvious but I have seen blogs that seem to be written by an angry author. If you feel the need to write then use pen and paper. Paper will listen to you better than people.
I was listening to Carl Pullein's The Working With podcast episode with NLP expert Damon Cart where the duo discussed how words affect our mindset and behaviours. Halfway through the conversation, they were talking about how much the “news” affects our mental health without us being aware of its effects on us.
I remember watching a YouTube video where Denzel Washington says, if you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read it, you are misinformed. I have to agree with Denzel. I jokingly say, the BBC starts their news bulletin with “Good Morning / Afternoon / Evening” and go on to ruin it. One cannot blame the news outlets. In the hyper-competitive market for viewer attention and the need to be first, there is no news reporting based on facts and figures (with a little room for human biases), just sensationalised opinions of the news outlet and what is good for their agenda and the bottom line.
As an observer of the news, I have found that the “triggering” words and phrases used to describe despicable acts committed by an individual or a group of individuals with higher melanin pigmentation are different from the group or individual with no melanin pigmentation. Human beings are meant to fight amongst each other. It's how we try to gain an illusion of control and survive against real and sometimes made-up dangers. But, it doesn't have to be that way. And, not all is doom and gloom.
When one realises these hyper-sensational headlines, crooked politicians and crony capitalists are just using borders and nation-states for their own benefits, we start to see ourselves as global citizens. There will always be bad people. But, we do, at times, see beyond borders. And, that is the world we all need to strive for.
My Write.as account is up for renewal in December and I was thinking about how to better use this service. I have a Micro.blog account for my daily short posts and photo uploads. I have used Micro.blog as my main blogging platform but I want to schedule my long-form posts and read them in one place. For this reason, I shall be posting anything with a title from my Write.as account.
I have a few ideas I want to explore using the Write.as platform. They are:
Sharing one learning a day.
Interesting quotes, anecdotes, passages from books I'm reading or read.
Book reviews.
Commentary, musings and thoughts.
If you have suggestions on how to better utilise this platform, I welcome them.
I was feeling hungry and decided to have a takeaway for dinner. It has just rained and I’m glad for not raining when I’m out and about in Chennai. I order Chappathis, Paneer Butter Masala and fancied chicken shawarma with it. Why not?
Whilst returning home, I saw a man holding an umbrella. It was not even raining. I appreciate that he doesn’t want to get drenched. But what made me laugh, he was wearing his mask to protect his chin. Who wants to protect the nose and mouth from infectious viruses? That’s for the weak. He’s an Iron Man! He will only protect his chin. People are weird.
Anyway, I had a good chuckle and came home to eat my takeaway. It was delicious.
My father was an avid reader. He never hesitated to spend money on books and education. I learned from a young age that books are the learning pathway. Books, pens and notebooks were some of the things he purchased quite regularly. I remember watching my father read and take notes before I knew anything about reading or note-taking.
I gifted Charlie Munger – The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin for my father’s 60th birthday. We used to talk about investing and Warren Buffett. I knew that gifting a book on Investing for his 60th would be something pertinent during his retirement years. I arranged the delivery directly to his work to surprise him. I wanted him to utilise his soon-to-be free time to become an active investor. This leads me to find books on Warren Buffett. But, what I found was the legendary Charlie Munger who I never heard of. I remember talking about my father about Charlie with such enthusiasm and excitement. I was feeling so proud that I have discovered something on my own.
Life had many twists and turns since then. I never got a chance in 6 years to have a proper chat about Investing, his love of books, reading and life at large. Now, I cannot even have the conversation even if I wanted to.
Today, I was going through his library and found Charlie Munger – The Complete Investor book. It made me realise how much I love books and reading just like my father.
Thank you, Vappa for instilling the love of reading and books by showing us the joy of it.
