Category: Daily Blogs

You just got tricked into buying a new iPhone

“Shivam, you wanted a hand blender for your soup recipes, right? This one from Braun is available for ₹1500 on Amazon Sale” My wife exclaimed in a louder than her usual voice, with a sparkle in her eyes.

I minimized my Instagram app after completing the reel I was in the middle of watching and turned towards her literally a few seconds later.

But by then she had realized her blunder.

“Oh wait, iska price to ₹9000 hai, ye inhone EMI upar dikhai hai yaar aur actual price chhota sa niche likha hai” she uttered.

Yes, the ₹1500 price point was actually the monthly EMI for a 6 month period!

Price of that hand blender was actually ₹9200.

Well, this is a genius trick being employed by leading ecommerce websites these days.

By showing an ₹8200 price(EMI) much larger than the actual ₹52000 price tag for an iPhone 13 they convince me within a second that I can afford the phone!

Call it neuromarketing or smart UX play or simply deploying psychology to get people to give a second thought to buying an item they don’t need.

Quite an interesting & smart play by Amazon if you ask me.

Are you overcomplicating your own life?

Imagine your phone is running quite slow all of a sudden.

You open Instagram and it takes 5 seconds for it to open, 7 seconds for Whatsapp and god forbid 8-10 seconds for Gmail app to open.

What are your first thoughts as to why this might be happening?

Virus?

Hackers?

Webcam compromised, financial details leaked? What will you do now? Will they empty all your savings that you took 5 years to accumulate?

Well, More often than not all that is required is to free up some space. Delete a few Good Morning videos from Whatsapp data and lighten up your gallery a bit, restart and your phone is good to go.

Why is it that we overcomplicate our own lives?

There is a mental model to help you overcome that, Occam’s Razor.

It says usually the simplest solution to a problem is the best one and that’s where we should start.

Doing Less Is What Helps Us Succeed

“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.” – Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius points the importance of a minimalistic lifestyle.

Excess of anything is harmful. Even excess of water can kill a human being.

In the age of social media, we are bombarded with an excess of information.

It often happens that people just collect information and in the act of doing so start believing that this is actually a productive act that they are doing.

But in reality, only a little information is needed to take actions.

Similarly, it often happens with teens that they have a huge so-called friend circle. 

They feel like they are making friends, making memories for life, while that is an important part of life; we all need friends and should have friends who we have a deep connection to.

However, we just need company of very few like-minded, ambitious, and goal-oriented friends, friends that help us grow in life.

In many situations very less is needed to make the most out of our lives.

So this week let’s try and remove 1 unnecessary thing from your life. It can be anything, it can literally be a hobby that you maybe do sometimes, don’t enjoy much too.

Eliminate things and watch yourself getting happier and progressing faster on the other things that you will have left.

Idiot Proof Your Life

We all make dumb mistakes.

Luckily we are not living in the times where being distracted can get us eaten by a lion.

With that being said, stupid mistakes can cost us a lot, even in 21st century.

The aim should always be to idiot proof our lives. We are but human beings, and no matter how hard we try we are going to make mistakes.

Small mistakes because we were distracted can cause huge side effects. The solution is to clear out your brain periodically so you can work on what needs to be worked upon with a clear mind.

Am I right?

We must strive to create an environment around us that allows us to make mistakes without deadly/living on the street kind of repercussions.

I have a ton of stuff swarming my brain throughout the day. It becomes imperative for me to put it at one place to be referenced later so that I can focus on the work at hand.

That allows me to work better and provide better results for my clients.

With me? Let’s carry on.

Here are a few ideas to idiot proof your life:

Quick 2 Minute Morning Journal

  1. Maintain a quick 2 minute morning journal: You write down everything that is eating at you right after you wake up. This helps you sort your mind and get to what needs to be worked upon that day.

Organize Information Digitally

2. Get used to putting ideas and references down into a software like Evernote, Google Keep, Notion etc. for later: This will help you focus on task at hand instead of going down the rabbit hole of content consumption.

Review Your Brain’s Library Weekly

3. Weekly Review: Setup a weekly review where you go through both of the above libraries of content and sort them like a second brain.

These things might seem simple, but are highly effective in organizing your thoughts, especially when real pen is put to paper!

Want Dosa? Start Yesterday

There is this south Indian dish called dosa, which requires fermented rice batter to cook.

It is one of my favorite dishes.

During the lockdown, we weren’t able to get fresh batter so we thought of making the batter ourselves.

My wife started the process, what came as a shock to me was that I will get to eat dosa not today, not tomorrow morning, but most probably tomorrow evening or day after tomorrow.

WHAATTTTTT?????

Well, but then most of life’s best things that I enjoy today needed me to put in the work a while ago and then be patient.

This reminded me of a line from Bhagvad Gita, “karm kiye jao, fal ki chinta mat karo”

Translated into English, this means “keep doing the work, do not worry about the results”

I always heard this line from my grandfather, my grandmother and even my parents but never really paid much attention to it.

Well, this dosa thing taught me 2 things.

  1. Want dosa? start yesterday
  2. Better to buy batter from the market, save the time and the effort(outsource the production to the experts :P)