Stacking experiences

I am a huge believer of stacking of experiences. The experiences can fall under the following categories: Adventures, Nature, Relaxation, Events & Sports, Cultural & historical, Food & drinks.

What does stacking of experiences mean?
It means just doing one experience of (2-3 hrs) a day is not enough for the day. It means doing back to back different experiences all in the day while enjoying each of them to the full extent without being tired in the same alert and excited mode all day long. It means not getting satisfied with just one experience when you can have multiple in the single day and create multiple memories on multiple days at a stretch.

Stacking of experiences comes as a result of multiple things:
1. Being an experience junky a.k.a. addiction to stacking of experiences.

2. The belief that life is short and there is so much to experience and learn.

3. The knowledge that experiencing more allows you to learn more and quench the thirst of curiosity.

4. Maximise the sunk cost (the amount of time and money spent to go a place)

For this, you should insatiable appetite for new experiences and understand the natural limitations of ones thinking of the number of experiences one can have.

One needs a curious mind to unearth experiences from people, be observant and alert of things around you, be research oriented to find out everything about anything new you hear about, be imaginative to concoct and create new experiences, persuade people to make people give you unique experiences.

You open your mind to possibilities, the chances, the pollination of different ideas.

"Die with memories and not dreams!" is the motto for a true experience junkie to live by.

Success & failure - A difference of Motivation

We all have goals in 3 categories - stated, unstated and undefined.

A stated goal could be buy a house by next year.

Unstated goal could be vague as in get healthy.

Undefined is something we have not even given a thought of it yet.

To achieve goals, there needs to be motivation.

There are different levels of motivation:

1. Determined by self motivation 

2. Determined by external motivation

3. Work for pay (clear give and take relationship)

4. Voluntary (doing partially or half heartedly)

5. Needs nudge to do

6. Doing with push from other(s)

7. Doing after a threat

All goals or activities can be classified under these different motivation levels.

A comparison of the bar chart of the motivations against goals of a successful and unsuccessful person would be a contrast even with the same goals at X axis.

The level of motivation determines the success.

Know the 4 Dimensions of Investing

Investing and analysing investment options can seem burdensome, tiring, boring, confusing, hair-splitting to know everything about it before committing your money to it. Irrespective of what the brokers, sales guys, agents try to push to you as an excellent opportunity for you and your loved ones, it is important to know that they have an inbuilt interest in selling things to you and you have to do your own due diligence. Doing your own due diligence is often spoke about, but some of you may wonder what does this mean and how do you do it.

There are essentially 4 dimensions to understand any investment:

1. Return/Potential Return

I say return/ potential return and not just return so that you are not overly swayed by the superb past returns of an investment, but realise that not all investments will repeat their super duper track record time and again. There may have been a time and environment where something really made great returns, but this time and environment may well be very different. 

A plot in a far away village may not give you a great return on your investment without nothing new happening. But, once it is known that an international airport will be coming in the area, the investment may have great returns. And once all the development is done, the return on investment may not follow the run you saw during the days when the news of the airport was coming. Similarly with stocks. There are good times and great times for companies depending upon a myriad of factors such as demand for the product/service, cost of making things, saturation of product usage, etc.

2. Risk & Return

Each investment has a certain risk to it. Even Govt. owned companies and their shares/bonds have some risk in it. Nothing is risk free. Sometimes the risk is on the return, while on some others, the risk is on the capital deployed itself. One has be aware of the risks and consider the return on the investment proportionately to the risk involved. Derivatives are more riskier than Stocks which is more riskier than fixed deposits/bonds/gold.

Do remember that sometimes even a less risky investment can cause a major loss compared to a higher risk investment.

3. Liquidity

This involves multiple things and is very important but unfortunately not given much importance by many people. Liquidity refers to how fast can you to convert the investment to cash whenever you need it. Another related aspect to liquidity is whether the investment can be used as a collateral against which you can get a loan. Certain investments cannot be given as collateral and no loan can be obtained against them. E.g. Bonds, Fixed deposits in some NBFC (Non Banking Financial Company)s. Some investments may have a lock in period which will limit the ability to sell the investment. Certain bonds have a lock in period before which you cannot trade it in the market. Sometimes, holding a stock/bond that is not widely traded also brings about liquidity problems while trying to sell it.

4.  Tenor

The length of the investment period. At the end of the day, you will need to match the investment tenures to the life's various goals. No point in investing in a 20 year investment that is locked if you don't have money for your other urgent goals.

All investment avenues would have the above mentioned 4 characteristics. You should know these 4 aspects of your investment and competing investments before you make a decision to invest in one based on your life's goals and risk apetite.

Top five regrets of the dying

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying?fb=optOut

A farewell to Victory

 knoA beautiful article on the trends of how the definition of victory in wars has changed over time. Gives pros and cons of different victory methods and specific examples from around the world and what happened where and how.

An 8 page excellent brief of almost all the wars that mattered and matter.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229869/page/1

Yearly goals

It may sound the most boring yearly resolution if I say that I have had the same resolution for the last three or four years. But actually, my yearly resolution is one of the most exciting and varied things that can possibly be. My yearly resolution is both a reflection and a want and goes like this: "What new things did I do in the last year? I should do something new in this coming new year." I think about this usually 2 times a year- once during the new year and the other during my birthday. And I keep looking out for opportunities where I can get some new experiences under my belt and enjoy doing it for the first time.

New Mission