My first full day leave for the year

Sometime in Dec 2024, I noticed that I am spending much of my time on the work on a weekoff and that was causing some anger in me at times as it was mostly not planned. Despite being at home, I sometimes used to have over 120+ calls (a bad day) with no breaks. I used to get restless of being on my table and working full day with no outing and the day ending. Not even an hr to spend with my family over anything without multiple phone calls interrupting in that duration.

I also knew that there is a massive amount of working on the business that was needed to automate the business as much as possible.

So, I decided to work all days without a leave and take breaks as and when required (a half day rest after working for 20-36 hrs shift) or an early logout for a planned family outing once in a few months.

Thanks to this one decision, I am now happy while working on all days with no cribs. This daily working has removed the high backlogs of the days not working and caused a more continuous flow of work without much disruption.

I have started enjoying work more and get more output than before. I have started pursuing more books, posts, ideas and have started implementing them in the business.

9 Aug 2025 is the first full day break in this calendar year thanks to Rakshabandhan and the chance to meet my 2 sisters.

The day was planned full of new experiences for the people involved.

The new experiences are what I actually look forward to. This day made me realise that all the hard work we put in throughout the time is worth it for having these memories / days of new experiences.

These days are the ones worth living and working for.

The future of work

About 8 years or so, I have listened on the "Future of work" from Vivek Wadhwa.

At that age and time, his view was "interesting" at most, and his predictions seemed coming true, but his predicted times looked optimistic to me.

Mainly because we all think linearly, the predictions looked optimistic.

He has mentioned the exact last statement in his 2013 interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LS4PithoM) where he also goes on to also say that when 2 different technologies converge, entire businesses are wiped out.

Technology has changed rapidly and exponentially from 2023 with the advent of Chat GPT.

In today's news, "Researchers just unveiled an AI model called ECgMLP that identifies endometrial cancer with 99.26% accuracy from microscopic tissue images—drastically outperforming human specialists and current automated methods."

With this, the medical "Radiologist" role is almost wiped out.

The same is happening to Lawyers and other professions.

The future looks like this: Govt. paying everyone to live comfortably with no work and few would work on new technologies and earn like crazy. 

My prediction: The middle class is going to diverge into the rich class or the poor class.

I had a very fruitful discussion last week with a close friend of time who is good in technology and we were sharing our views on the future of work. He shared that if the next generation is only going to use the existing generative AI to learn and produce works, thereby being lazy and reducing their thinking, nothing new is going to be made in the next 5-10 years. With nothing noteworthy of contribution, this means that we have already reached about 98% or so of all that AI can ever learn from in the current AI.

The only people who would have work are the creative people who are deep generalists who can inject their creativity into a new converged field and show value. This is something Dan Koe predicts.

The rest would be forced to sit at home with no work. 

FYI, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is a book I plan to read where he attempts to paint an image of the future. I am currently listening to his book Sapiens. I would add to this post, on completion of both these books.

Common sense and/or application of mind

What differentiates smart people and dumb people or idiots?

It is the power of common sense, a keen eye to observe things, validate what they hear or read, not take things for granted. It is about application of mind on simple things and not doing things blindly or mechanically. A lot of graduates know or taught only doing tasks and not application of mind. Over a period of time and a lot of skulduggery of their bosses and by learning from mistakes they become wise and start using common sense. They start perceiving information and how to relate it to what they already know. But some people are unwilling to learn or disinterested to learn and are sometimes pre-occupied with other than office work to continue being ignorant and committing a lot of errors and blunders at which point in time they are either given lesser responsibilities or are forced to leave the organisation.

A major part of the ability to think on things and apply their minds and be conscious of the environment and data while performing a task or taking a decision is dependent on the way the people are brought up during their schooling or college days. The environment, the people and the projects that encourages them or forces them to think through things is the key to understand how things work and what things affect and how they affect a certain object/objective. This enables them to do a self check with readily available knowledge/information in their head to understand the trade offs and take a decision or perform the task right in the first instance.

Curiousity is another factor that enables people to learn and apply their minds. Curiousity also leads to creative thinking and adds value to things and brings about new solutions. Curiosity too is a factor that has to be encouraged in the childhood and cannot come suddenly at an old age. This factor in turn can be identified and leads to a talent.

Determination helps people focus. Another key factor that avoids innumerable distractions and stops others needs taking over your identified goal. This also allows people to bring more of their resources (time, money, connections, etc.) to the goal instead of using their resources to do other things.

So, to be smart and use common sense, encourage people to increase their curiosity and help them achieve their goals for them to see the value of their goals achieved through determination.

How stress changes the look

The astonishing pictures show how a tour of Afghanistan transforms the features of these relaxed-looking men and women into careworn, hard-bitten masks. 

Even more amazingly, their faces dramatically soften again on their return from their three-month trips.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086319/Faces-war-The-soldiers-courage-suffering-etched-line.html 

Impossible trinities

wrt Job: Profile, Location & Compensation

wrt Financial economics: Fixed exchange rate, Free capital movement & Independent Monetary policy

wrt Life: Health, Money & Time

Let me explain the last part:

As a kid, you have the time and health to travel the world and enjoy life while no money. When you are working, you have the money and the health, but no time. When you are old, you have the money and the time, but no health.

The relationship between beauty and employment

Are good-looking people more likely to get jobs? That depends whether you’re talking about men or women, according to a new working paper. From the abstract:

"Job applicants in Europe and in Israel increasingly imbed a headshot of themselves in the top corner of their CVs. We sent 5,312 CVs in pairs to 2,656 advertised job openings. In each pair, one CV was without a picture while the second, otherwise almost identical CV contained a picture of either an attractive male/female or a plain-looking male/female.Employer callbacks to attractive men are significantly higher than to men with no picture and to plain-looking men, nearly doubling the latter group. Strikingly, attractive women do not enjoy the same beauty premium. In fact, women with no picture have a significantly higher rate of callbacks than attractive or plain-looking women. We explore a number of explanations and provide evidence that female jealousy of attractive women in the workplace is a primary reason for the punishment of attractive women."

Previous research, however, has found that good-looking female workers receive higher raises than their plain or ugly counterparts.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/are-attractive-people-more-employable/?ref=business

Family details

The path to Success

http://www.thehindu.com/edu/2009/10/13/stories/2009101350100300.htm

:)

Dream come true

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/Want-to-up-output-Switch-to-4-day-week/articleshow/5007830.cms

Another important point not mentioned: A lot of people anyway work for 10hrs a day in an 8 hr a day schedule. So one more day leave in those terms for those people :)

Improve efficiency

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/How-to-excel-at-your-job-and-be-home-for-dinner/articleshow/4834026.cms?curpg=1