Life is Unfair

Life is Unfair, Accept it and Get used to it. This is how Universe works.

I am not saying this in any negative way but I think this is how it works in real life. You just can’t complain that life was unfair to you because that is how it is. You can’t argue, you can’t reason, you can’t plead, you can’t blame.

I have also decided to write a book on my learnings (though it will take time, may be at the end of this year as I want to make it perfect), the book will pretty much have same thoughts and learnings which I write on this blog every week but it will be having better flow. And needless to say, the first chapter will be called “Life is Unfair”.

Always Bet on Yourself

I saw this image from pulp fiction on reddit and couldn’t resist myself replying in the thread since I strongly believes in betting on yourself and this conviction is getting stronger with each passing day. I had made a blog post 4 years back that what will you do if you have 50,000 rupees ?, you should invest on yourself since this is the best investment you can ever do with that money.

Here is what I wrote

I can not agree with this more. The amount of mediocrity that is there in the world is astonishing, not to mention people tends to give bare minimum by default (I myself have been guilty of doing this when I worked for others).

Throughout my life, whatever success I had, I only got it by betting on myself. I also strongly feels, you are your biggest asset and should invest in yourself rather then on others (I am not saying this in a negative way, right people will always be your best assets, it is just that people often think others are better than you when in realty you are not that bad and others are not that good).

Concept of Net Entropy and Life – My Thoughts

I wanted to write this blog post since a long time back and finally got time to finish it. I often think about this and strongly believes in what I am writing (and many posts in future will be linking back to this)

Entropy of your Life should always increase. Also you should always look to improve the net entropy of the universe.

What is Entropy – As per the laws of universe and thermodynamics, entropy is the randomness in the universe. And as per the fundamental laws of physics, the entropy of the universe will always increase.

What is Entropy of Life and your Universe – Everything that is happening around you, all the good things, all the bad things, your actions, others action affecting you, is entropy of your universe. Now you can either reduce it with negativity, taking selfish decisions, getting wrong priorities in life etc or you can increase the entropy of the universe by doing things which benefit everyone, having a positive outlook towards life and people around you, doing things which makes you happy, feeding the right wolf, getting things aligned in life, getting the timing of life right etc.

Do think about it and try to increase entropy of your life and universe.

I have also decided to write at least one blog post every week since I like writing and have 81 posts as draft which I should be publishing in coming months. My blog also act as a vent to release all the thoughts and energy as well as it helps to get rid of negativity and loneliness around me.

Success = Get things Aligned in Life

I was discussing this with one of my friend sometime back that how it is so important to get things aligned in life.

Those people who are able to align everything eventually gets what all they want, for the rest, it is long struggle.

Here is perfect example of some of the people whom I know (mostly from my college) -

1. Became software engineers, spent four years and learnt nothing (I am prime example of this too, I learnt nothing in my engineering years and consider it to be lost years of my life)

2. Some of them did MBA immediately after engineering, so the 4 years turn out to be total waste as eventually they get into finance, operations or analytics.

3. Those who didn’t do MBA immediately. worked as software engineers for 1-2 year, again learnt nothing, kept on trying to crack CAT, eventually did it or went to US to do MBA. So this is waste of 6 years considering they completely changed their paths.

4. After 2 years of MBA, people got jobs in different cities, in different companies and in different verticals, everyone started their life again, most of them went on to change 1-2 jobs in first 18 months for higher salaries. After 1-2 years, now the finance guy is trying to move to analytics and Operations guy into consultancy. There are few who wants to leave India to work in US for few years to have some savings.

I can go on and on but I think it is clear what is going on here. You can’t jump ships from one to another, in life, you need to align everything as only than you will achieve success, so stick to one thing. 

Of course, the problem is, most of the people don’t know what they want in life but it is OK as long as you are loving what you are doing but the problem is, people keeps on doing things which they don’t like and which makes them unsatisfied, unhappy and anxious. (watch this video what if money was no object)

So the summary of the post is, in life if you want to be successful, Align Everything which is Learning (your knowledge), Passion, Dream, Life, things in which you are good at and Things which make you happy.

Which wolf wins (story)

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Money is byproduct of your success, so Focus on Success, Not on Money

I think way too many of us try to do something to make money as in, I am doing this to make money or I am building this to make money where as the reality is, Money is byproduct of your success.

You don’t do things to make money, it automatically comes when you do things right as a by product.

So if you are building a product or doing some service or working for someone else, don’t look to make money but look for success.

Here are some examples –
1. As an employee, don’t work hard to get the year end bonus but think how you can do things to get the best outcome for everyone including the peers, team manager and the client.
2. If you are offering a service, don’t just give the bare minimum to get the money, put your best effort and get it done in best possible way, the money will anyway come and so do recurring work from that customer.
3. If you owns a product company or a marketplace, don’t focus on number of clients and the average ARPU (average revenue per user) but focus on building a better platform and product.

Excessively focusing on money never makes you money where as focusing on success is more addictive and rewarding in life.

Build your startup as the way you want it to be, not how others are building it

This was a draft post lying around for months so I decided to finish and publish it. I have decided to write smaller to the point posts (unless it is about life or philosophy).

This is one of the most important lesson I learnt last year, Build your startup as the way you want it and not how others are building it. I personally feels there is no glamour in startups with extreme burnout with very low chances of making it big so the last thing you want is to start living someone else’s dream.

Startups are about freedom of mind, thoughts and action, which only comes from inside of you. Let others chase their dreams, you chase yours.

2012 Year review for me and Plans for 2013

For this past 3 years, on every 31st of Dec at 11:30 pm, I write one post reviewing the year. Here are my posts of 2009, 2010 and 2011.

So 2012 will be over in 25 minutes, let me quickly put down everything what happened in 2012 and what I am planning to do in 2013.

The year has been mixed bag for me, I screwed up few things badly and made some really bad decisions. In terms of learning, growth and productivity, the year wasn’t good. But I think that is alright, you can’t get things in life at same pace, sometime you get it fast, sometimes slow.

After hitting some real lows and losing considerable amount of money, I think I am back on track and by feb-march 2013, things should again start moving pretty well.

WorkMonk has been a mixed experience with some good learning about people and business but I don’t want to run an operations business. I want to have fun and learn things along with freedom which operations based business don’t provide. so I am working on something new right now.

I am hoping that 2013 should be the final year of this “exploration” and I can start shaping and building things and life.

ICICI Prudential Scam – My Experience

I don’t want to convert this blog into a rant blog (I don’t like this, I hate that) but I feels this is important and I should write about it. I am also hoping that this blog post will rank for ICICI Prudential scam and get some visibility through search engines as well as in social media as more people need to get aware about the modus operandi of the insurance agencies affiliates to banks and how they are sucking innocent people for their commission.

Background – Back in 2009, I was looking to invest some money in mutual funds, I have savings account in ICICI so I went to the branch and talked to them as I have limited knowledge about investing. After some discussion, the ICICI representative sold me ICICI prudential policy saying this is like mutual fund with tax saving. I was very clear to the bank agent that I am not looking for ULIPs and do not want any locking period and hence want to go for mutual funds. Since I needed the tax saving too so I went ahead and purchased it. Just after this, I had to leave the city and I came back after 1.5 month and saw the papers sent to me by ICICI.

What ICICI prudential didn’t disclosed at the time of purchase was the 3 year locking period, the policy NOT being anything remotely close to mutual funds and after 3 year, you still have to keep on continue the policy for next 22 years! if I terminate the policy after 3 years, I will get 92% of the total amount. When I checked the value of my investment in november 2012, the “fund” has performed very badly and it is giving negative return (in 3 years, the value has become less than the original value). I am least concerned about the negative return, what angers me is the way ICICI prudential sold the ULIP policy by conveniently hiding some of the most important terms and selling it in the name of Mutual funds.

What Actions I took so Jan 2010, when I saw the exact terms, I immediately talked to ICICI, after so many emails and phone calls of explaining, I was told that they allow you to cancel the policy in first 30 days (I wasn’t there and didn’t got the papers). I told them that my concern is how ICICI prudential hide the facts and sold me the policy and not what is mentioned in the policy “booklet”. I was told that they won’t do anything.

Since ICICI prudential had pretty much told me to shove if off, I wrote my complaint to RBI through their site about how ICICI prudential agents are selling life insurance policies by hiding the major terms and conditions and sucking people in. Again, this started barrage of emails and phone calls, though this did started a formal inquiry. I got a call from ICICI regional manager, they apologized and said the agent will lose his job if I don’t take my complaint back. I do all my banking through ICICI and is satisfied with the bank and certainly don’t want anyone to lose their job so I took my complaint back in the hope that I will be done with this in 2012.

November 2012 so here comes November 2012, I thought finally I am done with this after 3 years and when I tried to cancel my policy, it turns out that I will be getting 92% of the total fund (which is already less then the original value because of poor performance of the “market”). This is something which was never told to me so I again called ICICI prudential support and send them emails, again had to spend hours explaining the matter to clueless agents and eventually nothing happened. I think they just closed the matter without even informing me. I am still getting calls from ICICI prudential to pay the premium and the moment I tell them that what is going on, they hangs the phone!

I think it is a dead issue, I have already spent lot of time on this and I feels my time is way too valuable to keep on sending mails to ICICI and to talk to them, I have learnt my lesson to never trust Indian banks as far as investment decisions are concerned. I am just wondering, if an educated guy like me got sucked into this, what is happening with the 40 something uncle/aunties who have very limited knowledge about how ULIP policies and mutual funds work.

I hope more people in India understand that, you can not trust your banks (nationalized or private once like ICICI, HDFC, Axis) as far as investing money in mutual funds, ULIP or any such policies are concerned as there is serious conflict of interest here. The bank agents get commission on every sale they make and have sales target which also push them to sell the policies at any cost. DO NOT get sucked into this, ask your friends or people who know a thing or two about investment and follow their advice.

There is NO money in startups, so you better enjoy what you are doing

I had covered this earlier as well, don’t built a startup but build a business so thought to extend on to that. One thing which I have seen in the last 12 months is that people think that startups are about money (I myself was guilty of this). Well, this probably comes from people associating glamour with the startups (when there is none) but the reality is, startups are very risky and poor way to make money. Let me tell you how (this is oversimplified but still it should give a good idea)

X and Y are two 26 year old guys who have put 5 lakh from their own pocket to start a logistic business in India as a backend provider for the booming(?) ecommerce, in next 3 years, they raised 25 lakh from some angel investors and then 5 crore in series A round from a VC firm. Now this is actually a very positive use case, imo 95% startups probably don’t even get 10 lakh in funding (logistics is very capital intensive work so most likely you can’t run it by yourself)

Now the founders are on payroll as an employee of the company (though they can use the fancy CXO on the visiting cards), running a business with wafer thin margins with more people coming in already crowded market and the founders are making no money!

This is very simplified version of a very complicated and layered picture but the point that I am trying to make is, There is NO money in startups, so you better enjoy what you are doing as startups are about FREEDOM, freedom of mind and freedom of thoughts, the rest is all supplementary.