Random Thought

Something I made up when explaining something to my wife...."Let go of the threads of the past to weave the cloth of the future"

Back to the Whole that is Marol

Back to Marol on my second tour of duty. Move here about 8 months back after my stint in Bangkok. Readers may recall my observations about Marol from my earlier blogpost. This time around, I'm actually enjoying my stay here. Perhaps its a case of Familiarity breeds Content. But perhaps its much more.

I'm staying in a part of Marol, that is its own tiny little private space in Mumbai. Its a place called Bhavani Nagar and its literally up a hill of sorts. What endears to me to Bhawani Nagar is the fact that it almost resembles a gated community of sorts. You are virtually cut off from the bustle of traffic and noise pollution. Yet, step out of Bhavani Nagar(BN) and you are part mainstream rush and swoosh that is Mumbai. 

BN has a few things going for it that makes it a great place to stay. For one, its centrally located and within  short reach of several key destinations. One would of course argue that in Mumbai, every place is centrally located (except for Backbay reclamation). But for the East Mumbai Suburban, BN works really well. The map illustrates.

Second, I'd mentioned that BN sits almost secluded from the craziness that is Mumbai. The fact that I dont have to listen to cars honking, people yelling and lights glaring when I open my window, is a serious relief to my life in a city like Mumbai. The more-than-slight geographic elevation which BN sits on, allows for a year round breeze, that's only more than welcome

Third, BN actually has a decently sized well-maintained garden which is meant ONLY for BN residents. Its got a children's play area, benches to sit and feel the wind on your face, a small jogging track for the fitness inclined. Such open space in Mumbai, is a luxury most people would pay for.

Fourth, virtually anything you can think of buying in terms of groceries & household goods are available in plenty. Just step out of BN and you have vegetable markets, bakeries, meat shops, fancy stores, kitchen stores, electrical stores, etc..the list goes on and on. And not to mention the transportation options.There's also a BEST bus stand, plenty of rickhaws, and a taxi stand. The Marol metro station is under construction. 

Lastly, great value for money in terms of rentals. Perhaps the only thing that works against BN is the general size of flats here. I feel its a little too small for a family of four or more. I may be wrong about this - but I've been to quite a few flats here and all of them look tiny (ie abt 500-550 sq.ft of living space).

But all said, I think BN is a real gem of place in a city like Mumbai.

PS: I wasn't paid by any real-estate broker for this article :)

The Myth of Hard Work

"Work Hard and you will succeed"

"Only if you work hard can you be rich and successful like Mr. So So"

"He didn't get promoted - he clearly didn't work hard enough"

"Sachin worked hard on his batting as a child - that's why he is the number one batsman today"

Statements like these we've all heard growing up from our parents, relatives, friends and colleagues. "Hard Work" while still a virtuous trait, has however been lionized to an extent that it is considered the key and often the sole ingredient to success. Success, of course, can be defined in many ways. For the purpose of this discussion, I would limit the definition to "achievement of one's objective". 

In the Indian context, parents still continue to feed the "hard work" version of success to their children. Bollywood flicks of the 70's and 80's (the generation to which most parents of today belong to) idolized the "Hard-Working Hero" who labored hard in spite of adversity to emerge triumphant (ie. kill villain, get girl, get rich, etc etc). Bollywood one-dimensionalized success to large extent. And being THE popular medium of entertainment for the masses & classes, this imagery left an indelible impact on "success psyche" of the Indian mind.

Don't get me wrong. Hard work is correlated to success. But in my opinion, the degree of correlation varies based on the complexity involved in getting to that success. For example, consider that my objective is push a 20 kg box from point A to point B and success will be achieved in meeting this objective. The complexity to achieve this objective is low. Hence, the harder I push, the likelier I will be able to achieve my objective. However, if my objective is to be a billionaire by age 40, I'm not sure how "hard work" correlates to getting there. I can assure you that many a worthy man have tried to be a millionaire/billionaire in their lifetime and failed - and not for lack of "hard work". In fact, there are many who have become billionaire's by age 40 - without really trying. I would even go to the extent of arguing that "hard work" is often negatively correlated to success. 

Let me give an example: Person A and Person B join a firm and both are given equal responsibilities. Both intend to make it to a senior position in a year's time. A works diligently all day at executing his responsibilities and exceeds his targets. B spends about 80% of this day executing his responsibilities and meets his targets. He spends the rest of this time aimlessly browsing the internet. At this moment, most of us would put our money on A to make it to the senior position. However, during one such casual browsing session B comes across an article that gives him unique information to do this job atleast 10 times better with the same effort. He immediately informs his manager about the same and get his manager's approval to share this information among all his colleagues thereby increasing the entire company's output significantly. A worked "hard" and delivered X. B worked 0.8 times "hard" and delivered 10X. Remember that B browsing the internet was not considered work by him. However, doing so allowed him to remove the blinders and go beyond accepted norms of work. Some may think that the previous example is a little too convenient to prove my point. But most billionaires of the world today (assuming being a billionaire equates to success) have had similar such "random" situations in their life which gave them the success, but which the world erroneously equated to "hard work".

"So do I just sit there and do nothing and wait to get successful?" I was asked, when I shared my point of view with my friend. I say it depends. Nassim Nicholas Taleb was one the world's top hedge fund managers and his strategy was simple. Bet against the tide and wait. Do nothing but wait. He waited for years. But at the right opportunity (market crashes), he made millions (maybe billions). So in a way he worked hard at not working hard! But if success to you means writing best-selling novels, work hard on your writing skills. But de-focus occasionally to do whatever you like doing or maybe do nothing(in order to get those creative juices flowing). And if success to you means creating a website - then work hard at learning HTML. As the complexity of the objective (and often scale) increases, the interplay between what I call Controllables (things you can work hard on which directly influences outcome) and  Uncontrollables ( things over which you have no control over ie. pure dumb luck) increases exponentially.

The graph above tries to capture a few my empirical observations. The relation betwen the Objective complexity and the impact of the Controllable in achieving that objective, is non-linear. At some stage of the Objective complexity, the impact of Controllables on the outcome of the objective drops sharply. Also, there are objectives which are entirely impacted by uncontrollables but the converse is not true. One can think of several situations to justify these observations.

One can of course, discuss this topic to no end. And for those inclined towards closure ("so what's the solution to tackle the uncontrollable?") I offer no solution but say - recognize the role of the uncontrollable in your life's successes (and failures) and stop living in the "hard work" illusion. That to my mind is the only solution.