MONTHLY MULLING💡

New Year's Resolutions, Mr. Buffett's Prioritization Strategy, and Chat with Yudi J!

Hi👋,

Monthly Mulling is a newsletter sending the best ideas from the web to your inbox for free. High signal. Low noise.

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Happy Monday y’all!

In the previous newsletter, I talked about meditation and it has been discussed a lot with me since the post. It looks like a lot of you are planning to start meditating next year. So today’s newsletter will be relevant to you - I am talking about building habits and systems.

Last week, I also updated my book recommendations for 2020 - check out the list! Let me know if you have recommendations for 2021.

🎆New Year’s Resolutions

I am not a fan of New Year's resolutions.

Why do you ask?

Because I have never accomplished any New Year’s resolution🤷🏼‍♂️
I don’t want a calendar designed by a Pope so that Christian holidays could line up to tell me when to get my life in order😶

But New Year’s motivation works the best, doesn’t it? You are going to accomplish everything after new year’s eve. This is going to be your year.😂

So, let’s ask this - why do the resolutions fail? Because resolutions are nothing but goals.

I want to learn a language.
I want to learn a musical instrument.
I want to get fit!
I want to start a side-hustle.

The only issue is that goals, don’t work. You are not defining anything.

I want to get fit? Get in line. So do a billion others. No one is actively trying to be unhealthy.🙄

So that’s the first issue - winners and losers have the same goals. So what sets the winners apart? We will get to it.

Then you also have the Drucker-y (not sure if that’s a word) version of this - set measurable goals. Aaah yes, quantitative goals!📏

I want to learn Spanish in 6 months.
I want to learn how to play Wonderwall on my guitar this year (doesn’t everyone start from Wonderwall?)
I want to lose 10 kgs this year
I want to earn 1000$ from my blog.

This is better. You have at least set some direction to your goals. You know which song you want to play or what side-hustle do you want to start.

But such measurable goals come with their own sets of problems.

They limit your happiness. Achieving a goal creates a desire. And as Naval Ravikant says, “desire is the contract you sign with yourself to be unhappy”💯
They also don’t last. Once you have learned Wonderwall, do you stop? Is the goal complete? Can you now put your guitar on the shelf and go back to doing whatever fuck you were doing before?🤷🏼‍♂️

I am not saying, measurable goals are bad. As I said before, they give you a direction to steer your ship. A compass.🧭

So how do you achieve those resolutions and make them a habit to improve your life? You know, the genuine reason as to why you set any goal in the first place. How do you set winners apart from losers?

Build systems✅

As James Clear puts it in Atomic Habits, “Goals tell you what results you want to achieve. Systems let you build processes that can help you achieve those results.”

Side note: Also, there’s a reason why James Clear’s Atomic Habits is one of the most recommended books. Give it a read before the year ends.

Goals let you plan your progress. Systems allow you to make progress.

So what is a system? A system is a set of habits that are interconnected and consistently repeatable. I am not sure if that’s the definition but that’s how I would define it.😏

There are two key aspects of systems that make them successful.

🧩They are interconnected habits - you are connecting one habit to another that gives you some sense of continuity and momentum. Habit-stacking always works.

🔂They are consistent and repeatable - this is important. When you build a system, you build a habit that is consistent for a long period of time. The repeatability makes it stick.

Systems are amazing.

I will learn Spanish in the next 6 months by dedicating 30 minutes on weekends to learning new words right after breakfast. I will try to listen to more Spanish-language podcasts and watch shows with Spanish audio.

I will practice guitar every day for 30-minutes after work so that it will help me relax. As soon as I shut my laptop every day, I will pick up the guitar which will be right next to my desk.
I will go to the gym every day, in the morning after I wake up. I will ready my clothes and shoes the night before. I will stop buying snacks and bringing them home while grocery shopping. I will cook my own meals for a minimum of 5 days a week.
I will post 1 article per week on my blog. I will find time to write on the topic every morning before I start work. I will get up early and try to at least write something/research/design for 60 minutes every morning.

Systems are not only helping you work towards your goals but the most important part, they guide you on how to achieve your goals. Additionally, you are setting a where, how, and when which means you are giving your goals some thought even before pursuing them. Bonus points if you add the current habit that you have against which you are stacking the new habit.

Once you have your system in-place and repeat them consistently, you will achieve your goal. You will achieve more than your goal. And your system will stay with you forever.😊

So this new year’s when making resolutions, don’t just set up a goal. Build a system because when you fall, you fall to the level of your systems.

What is your new year's resolution this year? How are you building a system to achieve your resolution? Let me know? Plis. Reach out to me on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or just reply to this email!

💭MULLING

🤩Warren Buffett’s 3-step Prioritization Strategy - 5/25 Rule (Article - 6 mins)

The article references a story about a chat on an airplane with Mr. Buffett which I am not sure how true it is but the advice is important.

How do you prioritize goals in your life? We all want to achieve 100 things. So what do you?

Create a list of 25 things that you want to achieve
Eliminate 20 things from the list
Focus on only 5 things that are a top priority for you at a time

We have a limited amount of time and energy to achieve our goals each day. Yet, more times than not, we spread ourselves thin by chasing too many goals at the same time.

So what are the goals you are saying no to next year? What are the 5 things you are chasing?

🧠5 Witty Mental Models (Article - 5 mins)

I realized I haven’t talked about mental models (my article on mental models) in a while. So here are 5 witty mental models shared by Vizi Andrei (I have covered some of them on my Insta page!).

It’s a good practice to revise mental models from time-to-time.

Survivorship Bias: talked about this above. By focusing on those that are successful, we overlook the losers that took the same actions, typically because of their lack of visibility. Remember, winners and losers have the same goals?
Cobra Effect: Sometimes, a “rational” solution to a problem may make the very problem even worse. This happens because we fail to consider second-order and third-order effects.
Psycho-logical Filter: A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a rational reason and the real reason. The logical purpose of toothpaste is to maintain our dental hygiene. The psycho-logical purpose of it is to maintain fresh breath, the reason why the vast majority of the toothpaste sold in the world is mint-flavored.
The Paradox of Abundance: Nassim Taleb wrote: “The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”
Dunning-Kruger Effect: Mother Nature didn’t only make sure that you’re stupid; but also that you are too stupid to realize how stupid you are. Fools possess an unlimited ability to ignore their ignorance; intellectuals are thus not those who know a lot, but those who know the limits of what they happen not to know.

🆕CONTENT UPDATE

🎙PODCAST

👨‍🎓WHAT THE HAT!?

WTH!? is a weekly podcast discussing the journey of graduates from mostly engineering colleges. Releases every Saturday.

📈 S2E7 - Yudi J on running a YouTube channel, living the American Dream, and software management: Yudi J is a software manager by the day and a YouTuber by night with a community of almost 95,000 subscribers! Yes - he built this community just by sharing his honest story and journey. Check out his channel - he posts a lot of interesting content!

🎓 S2E8 - Khushboo Vaidya talks about starting Boarding Pass for Success: Khushboo completed her engineering and started working for a technology company. She realized, while on the job, that a lot of current students still go to their parents and family members who graduated 20 years ago for career advice! She decided to change that.

Note: If you like our podcast, share it with your friends on Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else! Don’t forget to tag us! (Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn)

💰COLD BREW MONEY

Our weekly podcast discussing money because your friends and family won’t. Releases every Monday.

💲 Getting technical with PE, PB, and PS Ratios: Yes - the episode is exactly what the title says. I read about PE, PB, and PS ratios everywhere which I never understood. Atit explains what it means, why do they matter, and how to calculate?

💰 Should you passive invest?: I am a passive investor. I invest in index funds with Vanguard. We discuss why is it so good, so important, and why should all beginners start here!

Note: If you like our podcast, share it with your friends on Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else! Don’t forget to tag us! (Twitter | Instagram)

That’s it, folks. Thank you for reading.

Adios.

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