Tag: personal

Portfolio with a dominant stock

Last night, I read this post I had written shortly before I turned 29. I had embarked on a “Project thirty“, a year on project I had sponsored for myself. The plan was to do everything I had wanted to do but had never been able to, and the only condition that I had put for myself had been that I wouldn’t take up a full time job until the end of the “project”.

The project, largely speaking, was successful. It laid the bed for what was a fantastic decade of “portfolio life”, as I did several things with my time (though most of my income came from one of those things I did). I built a career as a freelance analytics ad data science consultant (which is how I made most of my money), wrote a newspaper column, became an adjunct professor, involved myself in public policy research and wrote a book.

In the middle of all this, i made time for myself to go spend a semester with my wife as she completed her MBA in Barcelona, and then followed her to London when she got a job there. It was all wonderful stuff.

And then, around the time I turned 38, partly fuelled by the pandemic, I brought my portfolio life to a close. Around then, my wife asked me what my “project forty” would be. “To stay in my job”, I had told her then. And now, that has been successfully completed.  As a bonus, according per my calculations, this is the job I would’ve stayed the longest ever in!

In any case, recently, my wife asked me the usual question once again. About what my “project” for my early forties is. She probably first asked me this a month ago or something, and I don’t think I had an answer then. And then last week, after we came back from our vacation to Tanzania, I spent 2 days at home just chilling.

My new personal computer (a 14″ M1) had arrived by then, and I spent the time setting it up, reading, writing, being on twitter and exploring cool new technologies such as Stable Diffusion and Chat GPT. It was absolutely enjoyable, those 2 days. It felt great having a non-work computer of my own (my previous one had conked 6 months back, though it had hardly been operational for a year before that). Those two days were spent like my project thirty days were. They were wonderful.

And so, by the time the tens place of my age number got its increment, I had the answer ready to give to my wife. On what my plan for my early forties is. It is “portfolio with a dominant stock”.

I really enjoyed the portfolio life I lived through most of my thirties. And want to get to a portfolio again. On the other hand, I’m in a job that I’ve settled fairly well into. And during the recent holiday to Tanzania, I also realised that it feels good to be able to spend on holidays like that without really thinking a hundred times.

So what is the solution? It is basically about having a portfolio with a “dominant stock” – the dominant stock being my job. My objective for my early forties is to continue having a full time job, but also have an interesting life on the side.

For now, what the interesting sides will be – I don’t have that much of an idea, and am likely to go back to things close to my old ones.

I want to travel a lot more.
I’m restarting my newsletter soon.
I want to start teaching once again. Part time only. Need to wing this somehow, somewhere.
Meet people regularly. Breakfasts. Lunches. Dinners. Drinkses.
I want to start playing a card game competitively. Either resume bridge or (more likely) learn something new such as poker.
I have no intention of writing another book (yet). Even if I do, it is likely to be via Substack.

It’s not going to be easy of course. Last 2 years, I’ve largely focussed on my job and family, and done little else (apart from this blog and lifting). I will need to prioritise properly, and manage my time well (something I’ve never been good at). But there is no harm putting out this goal, and in public, in the hope that having put this out will help me do better at it.

Let’s see where this goes! And any ideas are welcome.

Losing My Religion

In terms of religion, I had a bit of a strange upbringing. My father was a rationalist, bordering on atheist. My mother was insanely religious, even following a godman. And no – I never once saw them fight about this.

Both of them tried to impress me with their own religions. My mother tried to inculcate in me the habit of praying every morning, and looking for strange patterns (“if this flower on this photo falls, then it will be a good day” types). My father would refute most of these things saying “how can you be a student of science and still believe this stuff?”. I suppose I consumed a lot of coffy bite when I was a kid.

In any case, with a combination of influences, both internal and external, in my early youth I was this strange concoction of “not religious but superstitious”. I had both a “lucky shirt” and a “lucky pen”. Back in class 12, I had convinced myself that “Wednesdays are a particularly bad day for me”.

I really don’t know if this has anything to do with my upbringing, but I would see patterns everywhere. I would draw correlations between random unconnected things, and assume causality. I staunchly refused to admit that I was religious, but allowed for strange patterns and correlations nevertheless.

When I had five minor car accidents during the course of 2007 (it wasn’t a great year for me, and I was quite messed up), I believed (or maybe was made to believe) that it was “my car’s way of protecting me” (I wasn’t hurt in any of those, though the car took a lot of beatings and scratchings). I had come to believe that a particular job didn’t go well because on the first day of work, I had splashed water on a kid on my way back by driving fast through a puddle.

The general discourse nowadays is that religion improves people’s mental health. That it helps people see meaning and purpose in their lives, and live through tragedies and other kinds of unhappiness. A common discourse on the right, on social media, is that it is the lack of religion that has led to the mental health epidemic that we have been going through for a while.

The way I see it, based on my own experience, this is completely backward. The basic thing about religion, at least based on my mixed upbringing, is “random correlations”. A lot of religion can be explained as “you do this, God will be happy with you and give you that”. Or that something was just “meant to be”, maybe based on actions in one’s past lives.

Religion is about “being a good person” and “karma”, and that all your mistakes will necessarily get punished, if not in this life in the next. The long period over which karma operates significantly increases the scope of random correlations that you can draw from life.

First of all I’m good at pattern recognition (something that has immensely helped me in my academics and careers). The downside of being good at pattern recognition is that there can be LOTS of false positives in patterns that you recognise. And when you recognise patterns that don’t really exist, you learn the wrong things, and after that live life the wrong way. And I think that was happening to me for a very very long time.

And so came the lucky shirts, the lucky pens, the precise order in which I would check websites at work every morning and many other things that were actually damaging to life, especially mental health. The pattern recognition was making me miserable, and the religion and superstition that I had come to believe in gave credence to these patterns, and (with the benefit of hindsight) made me more miserable.

In 2012, after having burnt out for the third time in six years, I began to see a psychiatrist and take antidepressants. It was the same time when I had started my “portfolio life”, and one of the items in that portfolio was volunteering with the Takshashila Institution, where I was asked to teach a class on logical fallacies.

That’s possibly a funny trigger, but hours of lecturing about “correlation not implying causation” meant that I started finally seeing the random correlations that I had formed in my own head. And one by one, I started dismantling them. There were no lucky days any more. There wasn’t that much karma any more. I started feeling less worried about things I wanted to say. I started realising that being “good” is good for its own merits, and not because some karma recommends that you should be good.

And I started feeling happier. Over the course of time, it seemed like a big load had been taken off my head. And so, whenever I see discourse on social media (and in books) that religion makes people happier, I fail to understand it.

In January 2014, I met an old friend for dinner. While walking back to the parking lot, he casually asked me what my views on religion were. I thought for a minute and said, “well, I firmly believe that correlation does not imply causation. And this means I can’t be religious”. That’s when I became convinced that I had lost my religion, and had become happier for it. And I continue to be happy because I’m not religious.

Getting into a new public hobby

As I had recently announced on Twitter, I’m planning a new “side gig”. It’s been a long time coming, mainly because when you are doing a portfolio life it is pretty much impossible to have a side gig – everything becomes a part of your portfolio instead.

Now that I’m in a full time job, and after a very long time, maybe for the first time I have a real “side gig”.

I’m planning to start a podcast, on all things data. I’ve started working on it, and recorded a couple of episodes already. Another 3-4 recordings are scheduled for next weekend, and if all things go well, I should start releasing in June. The podcast will be in a typical “interview” format, where I interview people about different things to do with data. So each episode needs a guest (or two).

So far so good.

The downside about picking up a new side gig at this advanced age (38) is that initially I’m not going to be good at it. And this has been something that is hard to accept.

After one of the recordings, for example, I realised that I’d not asked the guest a few questions I should have asked him. And that while these questions had been playing on my mind a while back I hadn’t thought of it in the lead to the podcast at all.

After another recording, I realised that the sound hasn’t been recorded properly for large parts (because of a failing internet connection – either at my end or my guest’s). What guts me is that it was a truly awesome episode (based on what the guest told me).

Rookie mistakes, basically. And I’ve been thinking so much about these rookie mistakes of late that there is a small downside that the side gig might “cost me” more than I had bargained for.  For example, yesterday evening I was listening to other podcasts while doing the dishes and instinctively started comparing them to my own, and about whether I’m doing mine properly.

Similarly, back in 2016, when I was writing and publishing a book, I had become conscious about how others were going about their books. I kept comparing my books to others, and worrying about what I did right or wrong. It was nerve-wracking.

Again while doing the dishes last night, though, I had another revelation – this kind of comparison or beating myself has NEVER happened in terms of my blogging. I’ve written because I’ve wanted to write, and the way I want to write, and not bothered about what others are doing or whether what I’m doing is “right”.

Maybe it helped that I started this at a young age (I was 21 when I started), and that gave me a period of fearlessness before I actually became somewhat good at it. Maybe it helped that I was writing as a way of “rebelling” (if you see some of my early posts (pre 2006), they’re really angsty), and so I didn’t care at all. And by the time I started caring, I had either become good at it, or that it had become second nature to me, and so I didn’t have to worry at all.

The positive lesson to take away from that is that you are unlikely to be good at something the first time you do it. You will have a few duds. You will inevitably make the rookie errors. And irrespective of how well you plan or prepare, these rookie errors and duds will happen. The only way to get over them is to keep doing it again and again.

So now, before every recording I tell myself that it is okay if the first season of my podcast doesn’t end up being as good as I want it to. I might be “experienced” in other ways, but that in podcasting I’m a rookie, and I must judge myself like a rookie.

And after I’ve done it for a while, one of two things would have happened:

  1. I know that I absolutely suck at podcasting, which is a good sign to bury the side gig
  2. I actually become good at podcasting, in which case I will continue.

The important thing now is to recognise that there is a non-zero chance of 2 happening. And I should keep at it until this situation “collapses” (in the quantum physics sense).

 

Once upon a time

A few months back, someone sent me this “pixar format” of storytelling.

While it makes sense, I have deep-seated insecurities regarding this format, going back to when I was in “upper kindergarten” (about 5 years old).

Until I was 14 or so, I had a pronounced stutter. It was very rare until then that I would win any prizes in speaking events even though I was comfortably the class topper in academics – basically I couldn’t speak. The mystery got unlocked when some teacher wondered if I stuttered because I “thought faster than I could speak”. That one remark made me conscious, and helped me slow down, and I remember pretty much cleaning up the speaking events prizes in school the following year.

Anyways, ten years before that I couldn’t speak. On top of that I couldn’t remember. I mean I could remember obscure things (for a five year old) such as the capital of Angola or the inventor of the telescope, but I couldn’t remember a coherent passage of text.

And one such passage of text that I first needed to mug up (and remember) and then speak it out (double nightmare) happened to be in the above (Pixar) format. There was a storytelling session in school for which we had to mug up stories and then tell it out in class.

I don’t exactly remember the text of the story (well I couldn’t remember it in 1987-88, so what chance do I have of remembering it now?), but it went something like this.

Once upon a time, there were four cows who lived in the jungle.

Every day, they grazed together. So if a tiger attacked, they could get together and chase it away.

One day, the cows quarrelled among one another.

Because of that, they started grazing separately.

Because of that, it was now possible for the tiger to take them on one-on-one.

Until finally, one day, the tiger attacked the cows one by one and ate up all of them.

Don’t ask me how a tiger could eat four cows in a day. I remember struggling like crazy to remember this story and speak it out. I remember that my father tried to make me mug it up several times during one weekend, after which I was supposed to speak it out in school.

I don’t remember how well or badly I spoke it out. However, what lasted was that this kind of stories started giving me nightmares. From then on, I developed a fear of the phrase “once upon a time”. Any story that started with “once upon a time” were scary to me.

I remember this one day in school when one classmate was asked to narrate a story. He went up to the front of the class and started with “one day … “. That was liberating – that not every story needed to start with once upon a time was a massive relief to me.

It’s funny the kind of things we remember from childhood, and the kind of seemingly innocuous things that have a long-term impact on us.

Letters to my wife

As I turned Thirty Three yesterday, my wife dug up some letters (emails to be precise) I’d written to her over the years and compiled them for me, urging me to create at “Project Thirty Four” (on the lines of my Project Thirty). What is pleasantly surprising is that I’ve actually managed to make a life plan for myself, and execute it (surprising considering I don’t consider myself to be too good a planner in general).

In February 2011, after having returned from a rather strenuous work trip to New York, this is what I had to say (emphasis added later, typos as in original):

For me steady state is when I’ll be doing lots of part-time jobs, consulting gigs, where I’m mostly owrking from home, getting out only to meet people, getting to meet a lot of people (somethign taht doesn’t happen in this job), having fun in the evenings and all that

I wrote this six months before I exited my last job, and it is interesting that it almost perfectly reflects my life nowadays (except for the “have fun in the evenings” bit, but that can be put down to being long distance).

I’ve just started a part time job. I have a couple of consulting gigs going. I write for a newspaper (and get paid for it). I mostly work from home. I’ve had one “general catch up” a day on an average (this data is from this Quantified Life sheet my wife set up for me).

A week later I had already started planning what I wanted to do next. Some excerpts from a letter I wrote in March 2011:

Ok so I plan to start a business. I don’t know when I’ll start, but I’m targeting sometime mid 2012.

I want to offer data consultancy services.

Basically companies will have shitloads of data that they can’t make sense of. They need someone who is well-versed in working with and looking at data, who can help them make sense of all that they’ve got. And I’m going to be that person.

Too many people think of data analysis as a science and just through at data all the analytical and statistical weapons that they’ve got. I believe that is the wrong approach and leads to spurious results that can be harmful for the client’s business.

However, I think it is an art. Making sense of data is like taming a pet dog. There is a way you communicate with it. There is a way you make it do tricks (give you the required information). And one needs to proceed slowly and cautiously in order to get the desired results.

I think of myself as a “semi-quant”. While I am well-versed in all the quantitative techniques in data analysis and financial modeling, I’m also deeply aware that using quantitative tools indiscriminately can lead to mismanagement of risks, which can be harmful to the client. I believe in limited and “sustainable” use of quantitative tools, so that it can lead without misleading.

 

My past experience with working with data is that data analysis can be disruptive. I don’t promise results that will be of particular liking for the client – but I promise that what I diagnose is good for the client’s business. When you dig through mountains of data, you are bound to get some bitter pills. I expect my clients to handle the bad news professionally and not shoot the messenger.

I don’t promise to find a “signal” in every data set that I’m given. There are chances that what I’m working with is pure noise, and in case I find that, I’ll make efforts to prove that to the client (I think that is also valuable information).

And these paragraphs, written a full year before I started out doing what I’m doing now, pretty much encapsulate what I’m doing now. Very little has changed over nearly five years! I feel rather proud of myself!

And a thousand thanks to my wife for picking out these emails I had sent her and showing me that I can work to a plan.

Now on to making Project Thirty Four, which I hope to publish by the end of today, and hope to execute by the end of next year.

When Kara met Pinky

Readers of this blog might have noticed that I have an above-average long-term memory, and frequently indulge in “this day that year” exercises. While I have blogged about it a couple of times in the past, I do this practically every day – wonder what happened on that day in a previous year.

There are some anniversaries that are special, though. And there is no particular number – the special anniversaries are those where both date and day of week coincide. This usually happens at a frequency of five or six years (depending on the leap cycle), though it can be longer at times. For example, I vividly remember all years when my birthday was on a Sunday (1987, 1992, 1998 and 2009), and they were all spectacular (so I’m hoping for a spectacular birthday this year, too).

Anyway, today is the 28th of September, and it is a Monday. The last time 28th September was a Monday was back in 2009, and in hindsight it turned out to be a rather special day. The previous evening my “chat friend” had called me, trying to explain why she didn’t want to meet me. I convinced her to meet me the following day. And we agreed to meet in Basavanagudi (basically I was playing on “home ground”).

We spent some three hours together that day, and for virtual strangers who had only bantered on Orkut and LiveJournal and GTalk earlier, the breadth and depth and ease of conversation was rather spectacular. I remember this rather “special” feeling as I walked back home that day.

I promptly freaked out, and wrote this blog post:

Yesterday I met a friend, an extremely awesome woman. Once I was back home, I sent a mail to my relationship advisor, detailing my meeting with this friend. And I described her (the awesome friend) as being “super CMP”. I wrote in the mail “I find her really awesome. In each and every component she clears the CMP cutoff by a long way”. That’s how I’ve become. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost my heart. And I need to find it back. And I don’t know if I should continue in the arranged scissors market.

She seemed more positive than that. This is what she wrote:

First step is to keep your eyes open to delicious and nutritious tharkaris(potential marriage material girls/boys). Then, somehow thru some network, make someone set you two up. Third, interact. with tact. Fourth, put meet. or beat. Fifth, this can go in two ways now. Or more. First, is a no. Definite no. Second, yes. Full yes. Okay, there’s a third possibility too. Third, Yes, but not yet. This is a lucrative possibility which gives super scope to put more meets, learn about each others funny faces, food tastes, sense of humour, patience, sense of dressing, chappliying, smells, etc. Finally, it’ll end up in louuvu..maybe not the gut churning romantic feeling for the other party like a unit function, out of nowhere. This is more sustainable like a step function built on affection, tolerance, enjoying each others company, comfort, care, etc and if it were to ever fall apart then it would be one step at a time and less painful.

Things moved reasonably fast after that. Exactly fourteen months after we first met, we got married. We had fun. We occasionally fought. We bought a house. And we went long distance. Yet, in the last six years, I’ve never done anything for any of our anniversaries (date or marriage). There have been some customary dinners but nothing spectacular.

So I thought I should make a video this time. I decided to retrace the path of our first date, recalling some memorable bits of the conversation, All photos and videos were shot with a hand-held Nikon D90. I got creepy looks from people around. Lots of people asked me what I was doing. But the photowalk experience helped.

Normally, it’s the wife who stitches up the NED Talks videos, and this was my first experience with iMovies. Both my inexperience and my general lack of attention to detail clearly shows. Commentary was recorded in “synch sound” (along with the video). And I hope youtube doesn’t take down this video citing copyright issues.