life

How I got off the hedonic treadmill?

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Hedonic Treadmill - How i got off?

In pursuit of happiness

When I started working 14 years ago, all I had was a bag of clothes, many books, little money and a big will to achieve something.

God knows when my ‘will to achieve’ turned into a desire to earn more money.

As I earned more money, my desires grew too.

Before I realised, I was on this hedonic treadmill.

I bought a car, one more car, a time share, traveled places, bought expensive stuff and worked to raise my standard of living. More money needed.

I thought I was getting happier only to realise that the happiness was short lived.

More stuff and more stuff.

I became an excess user of credit card and weekend shopping became my pastime. What I didn’t realise I was betting my future income on my current desires.

What I forgot to stop and ask was  “Am I making myself any happier than I was already?”.

Anways, life went on.

And then, 6 years ago, I quit my job to be on my own. 

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Bahubali vs Khalbali – The single biggest learning

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Bahubali vs Khalbali

Bahubali – The conclusion has become the biggest movie from India grossing over Rs. 1000 crores world over. Estimates say that it is going to be the first movie raking up over Rs. 1000 crores from India itself.

It is definitely great entertainment and hit the right chord with a large populace.

It is groundbreaking since it will force several in the film making community to rethink movies.

And finally, it has got us to speak of a movie from India and not just a Bollywood, Tollywood or Kollywood production.

Now, this post is not a movie review. Neither do I wish to tell you what was in the movie or what you can learn from the movie. Enough has been said on that and more will come.

Well, for me the project Bahubali has proved a very different point. It is not what is in the movie but it comes out what it took to make the movie.

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5 ways to make your financial life easier

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5 WAYS IN WHICH YOUR FINANCIAL LIFE BECOMES EASIER

We have lived through times where tedious paperwork defines every single activity related to money and our financial life.

Not just that, access to your own information was a nightmare with several agencies holding various parts of it. Every single time, the responsibility is on you to get it all together and prove that the person in question is you. This dreaded process is also called KYC.

Over the years, the hassles have reduced but not been eliminated. We have greater access to online tools with some organisations promising us completely seamless and paperless experience. We have all had the experience in some measure, small or large.

But I was recently floored by my interaction and experience with the government departments. This includes the Income Tax Department and UIDAI (issuer of Aadhar).

I would like to share some of these super initiatives with you.

This post highlights 5 such initiatives that aim to bring a significant change in the way you will handle your financial life.

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Death and taxes

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Death and Taxes

On Death

I spent the past few days in a hospital. I was attending to a family member diagnosed with brain tumour.

For the first few hours, it was chaos. The implications were not clear and given the way the human mind works, everyone assumed the worst. It was later confirmed that the tumour is not life threatening.

The hospital is a place where you come face to face with real pain – age no bar. It is a place where you witness people make friends with suffering, pain and ultimately, death.

Such an environment sets one thinking. There were moments when I would just sit and wonder about the inevitable. It has to happen one day. That’s certain. What will be that day, is not.

Steve Jobs said something very apt about death- 

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How do we make wrong decisions?

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wrong decisions

If this piece of information from The Daily Mirror of UK is to be believed, on an average, a person makes 773,618 decisions in a lifetime.

Whoa!

“That is about 27 decisions in a day – starting from whether to turn off the alarm or hit snooze,” mentions the article.

We make decisions all the time.

Should you drive down in your car or take a cab?

Should you watch Movie A or Movie B?

Should you have ice cream or a brownie?

Should you vote for NM or RG?

Should you sign up for my blog or not? 🙂

The interesting part is most of these choices are conflicting. Take some more examples.

Should you launch one product or the other?

Should you build the feature X or feature Y into your software?

Should you invest in equity or debt?

Should you sell stocks now or buy more?

Should you take on more loans for your venture or sell equity?

Should you give the contract to vendor A or vendor B?

Now comes the interesting part. Quoting the same article, of the 773,618 decisions – you will come to regret 143, 262 decisions. It means that 25% of your decisions would turn out to be bad – wrong decisions.

I wonder how come we make so many wrong decisions. What on earth can affect our mind so much that we can’t make right decisions? Or should I say how can we prevent ourselves from making wrong decisions?

Let’s explore this subject more.

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