9 May 2025

Book Review: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

I had picked up this book from a small bookstore in Riverside, CA on my way to Australia and New Zealand last month. Had not expected much but turned out to be a very interesting book. By the way, two weeks back, I was in Boston and while strolling thru Beacon Hill, chanced upon a cute little bookstore with a cafe. Went in and guess what – there were four of these books right there in front of me as I entered!! Never thought I would see another copy of this book.

Well, turns out this book has nothing to do with meditations. Not one word of it. What it is though is about how to make your time in life count. If you read this book, be prepared for a lot of contrarian thoughts. Including why Todo Lists, 4 quadrants and Streaks are actually detrimental to you…

Here are some interesting lines from the book…

1. Once you realize that you will never be able to go thru all your action items – there are indeed infinite of them – and you will never ever get done – a psychological shift happens where you unclench and get relaxed. Perhaps focus on what you are doing now more.

2. The real way to optimize your finite time is not task lists and prioritization schemes. Take the thing that inspires you most and just do it for some time. That which seems like a false step is just the next step.

3. There are no solutions. Only trade offs. You are free to do whatever you want. As long as you are okay paying for the consequences.

4. “One never notices what has been done; one can see what remains to be done” – Marie Curie. One interesting idea – maintain a “done list”

5. Resist the urge to stockpile knowledge. Read like the book/magazine is a flowing river. No need to finish it. Sometimes, it is ok to read just whatever seems fun.

6. “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”. Social media / news channels do not care about the news itself. They care about your attention. Most of us have started “living inside the news”.

7. Let the future be the future. Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday.

8. Driving in the night, you cannot see further than your headlights. And you can go thousands of miles just that way.

9. Every worthwhile goal is supposed to feel hard, unglamorous, unsexy at least some of the time you’re actually putting in the work.

10. “Dailyish” is the best frequency. Do not need to do everyday to grow a habit. You can ignore those apps that advertise “don’t break the chain”

11. Develop a taste for problems. “Beyond the mountains, more mountains” – Haitian proverb. Life is not a race to a state of no problems. Life IS an unending series of complications. Live it.

12. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close

13. “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”

14. Act on a generous impulse the moment it arises. Do not wait.

15. Everything that happens in life is either a good time or a good story. “It helps if you can realize that this part of the life when you don’t know what’s coming is often the part that people look back with the greatest affection.” – Ann Patchett

16. Fire your inner quality controller. Set quantity goals. Quality will flow someday from quantity.

17. Not enjoying the present moment in an endeavor to enjoy some future ones is akin to not enjoying time with your cat so that you can enjoy time with the cat’s kittens. Or the cat’s kittens’ kittens.

18. “To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value” – W. Somerset Maugham

19. Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So, try not to compare your insides with their outsides.

20. You cannot hoard life. Enjoy the moment and let it pass.

Category: Books | LEAVE A COMMENT
10 March 2025

I am blinded by my eyes wide open

I had opened the garage door and was immediately greeted by brisk rains falling outside. My first reaction was that of an adult: “Messy weather”, I muttered to myself. The immediate next one was that of a child: “Rains!”, I cried out in joy.

During our childhood days, rains were something we would look forward to. Of course, it was not cold like this in India. So, playing soccer in the rains, making paper boats and letting them float down in small rivulets post rainfall and then of course getting berated by parents for staying out in the rain “Thanda legey jaabey” – were all integral part of growing up.

Today, I took a few minutes to stand inside the garage and take in the rains. In those mindful moments, something interesting outside my neighbor’s house caught my attention. It has been there all these years. I just did not have the eyes to see it. Heida, our neighbor, is a world traveller and collects all sorts of stuff from all over the world – especially Asia.

I bet she got this from Asia somewhere too. Note how beautifully the rain water from the roof is jumping from one bowl to the next almost making it look like a long cascade!

Small moments of beauty… only if I cried to stop and open my eyes.

Category: Musings | LEAVE A COMMENT
19 January 2025

I think I have met my kryptonite

Remember how I always talk about me trying to stay honest with minimalism and decluttering? Of course, everything is on a relative scale. Recently, I have noticed a bit of hypocrisy in that espousal that I do.

I am taking out fountain pens from this discussion since I do not collect them with an excuse to use them. I collect them so that I can collect them. But other such things like running shoes matching with colored running shirts and all that – I have been able to bring them down dramatically. In fact, when it comes to clothes, I take my minimalism bit a little too over the edge, perhaps.

Except that when it comes to island shirts made of cotton, I absolutely turn into an epitome of hypocrisy. I cannot pass up on any design and I cannot pass up on any color. Remember last year when I was in Guatemala how I took a car from Antigua to Lake Atitlan and then took a boat to one of the seven villages where they make cotton shirts? Once I liked a design, I bought seven of them! My only constraining factor was that they did not have more than seven colors! The next bigger constraining factor was getting XL size (cotton shrink and I like loose fit; Guatemalan structures are short and stout relatively). It did not help that they asked for only about $15 per shirt (that too before applying volume discount!)

Or in Valladolid in Mexico – where we drove 200kms from Cancun to find the black and white cotton shorts? I think it was $20 there.

Well, In Fiji and Samoa, I fell for the same thing. In the Caribbean islands, they do not make much cotton shirts. But in the Polynesian islands, they do. Sharmila was patient enough to let me visit the cotton shirt shops every single day of our trip! If I had a chance, I would have picked about a dozen in-your-face bright colored “Bula” shirts from Fiji.

After 7 days, I finally settled for reasonably muted designs. But could not resist picking half a dozen of them. There the problem was that they had way too many designs I loved but not many in XL sizes. The Samoan and Fijian physical structures meant I could get even 5XL easily. But for a particular XL shirt, I had to wait for them to get it delivered from another part of the country! Good news is that the country can be traversed in about three hours by car.

Taking them out of the suitcase in Atlanta, I realize this is total madness.

I have met my kryptonite.

(P.S. I did give up 6 existing shirts to charity to make space for this. Now I might have to wait for summer to go to office 🙂 )

Category: Musings, Vacations | LEAVE A COMMENT