holdyourthoughts

This book delves with the idea that super successful people are not a result of their innate greatness but a result of two factors - opportunity and cultural background. It shares stories of extremely successful men like Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Robert Oppenheimer, The Beatles and others and digs deeper to show that all these people had had an extraordinary opportunity which was not available to others at that point in time. So, there success cannot be attributed to their greatness but to their circumstances. The book tries to debunk the "individualistic" model of success so popularized by the western media of the "self-made-man". Gladwell argues that there is no self-made-man and the success is a combination of the opportunities and culture (which includes the genes the person is born with). The idea is not to demean the achievements of the super-successful people. It is not that they did not do anything. Obviously, to be a superlative success in anything, it takes a...

After nearly ten years in the markets, I started tracking my portfolio as a fund this February. The idea was that if I was not making better returns than the index then it is better to invest in index funds and concentrate on other things in life. I started with a NAV of Rs. 10. The objective of the fund is to outperform the Sensex on a long (3 years plus) term with securities chosen primarily with a focus towards value and mid and small cap. The idea is to have a concentrated portfolio of between 5-12 stocks at any given point in time with a investment horizon of an average of 3 years. So far, as you can see from the chart, the Primal Value Fund has managed to outperform the Sensex. Sensex return has been 10.04% and the funds return has been 15.54%. So far so good. I will try and update the performance on a quarterly or half yearly basis. Also providing the current portfolio and percentage allocation.

Timothy Ferris' The Four Hour Workweek is a book devoted to people who do not want to spend the rest of their lives working in their cubicles. It makes a case for automating your cashflow so that you are no longer dependent on your job. It introduces the concept of freedom as one where you are both free from money and time pressures. Just having a great deal of money is not enough to be really rich, according to Ferris. You also need to have a lot of time to do all the things your heart desires. Ferris makes a very compelling case for setting up some business major components of which can be outsourced to generate the free cash flow. He then goes into how to setup a "outsourced" business and life. The book in this stage becomes a bit "silly" at times. Ferris, when he wrote this book was a 30-something person without a family. So, going away to foreign countries and staying extended periods may be possible for him but is practically not possible for most people. ...

This is an excellent collection of quotes from mostly contemporary American personalities. What is good about the book is that most of the selected quotes are relatively fresh and are not overly quoted everywhere else!! There were only two complaints I had were that i) the quotes are all lumped together and not grouped into categories so looking up a specific quote at a later point in time would be very very challenging and ii) the quotes are not really for the "professional" only, they are equally applicable to life in general. In fact, that is why this book makes it such a good read.

I bought a new ebook reader. It is the Infibeam PI (www.infibeam.com/PI) . I have seen and used both the Amazon Kindle and Sony ebook reader. The main reason I selected the PI is because it was available in India. I did not have to wait for weeks to get my hands on it. I will not go into detailed comparisons between the three readers I have used. The reason I bought the ebook is to read books. Although that sounds rather a stupid thing to say, I found some features on Kindle quite superfluous to book reading. Like the space consuming keyboard. I dont know of any book which comes with a keyboard, so why should an ebook come with one. If I have to surf the net, I will use my laptop to do it. The whole buying process was easy and seamless. Delivery happened within 3 working days. The only regret I had was my father was not there to see this. He was pretty excited with the concept of an ebook reader and I had entrusted him with the duty of checking the condition of the parcel when it arriv...

The sense of loss has not yet gone. Others who have had similar experience insist it takes a while before it does. In one instant the feeling of having lost the roof over your head is not easy to get over. The last few days I was thinking of the lessons that Baba tried to impart to me, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so successfully. Take care of your health Save money. You never know when you will need it. Spend as much time as possible with your family. Very little else matters. Be a good father to your son. Always be there beside him when he needs you. Take life as it comes. With all its ups and downs. Perception matters. It is important to not only be good but also to look good. Work might take to some foreign land, but that is not your home. Home is where you were born. Be particular about your work. Always maintain a checklist of things. He used to maintain a small notebook with him where he noted down things that he had to do. Don't procrastinate. Do things as they ...

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come. - Rabindranath Tagore Death is the one thing that connects us all. It reminds us that what's really important is who we've touched, how much we've given. It makes us realize that we have to be good to one another. This Friday night baba (father) passed away. We watched TV and then had dinner together that evening. He went into the toilet and when he was not coming out after 10 minutes, ma (mother) knocked on the toilet door and when after a few knocks there was no response, I got a bit alarmed. I pried open the toilet door and there he was, lying down crouched on the floor. I lay him down very very quickly on the floor and tried his pulse. There was none. Ma by that time has called my Uncle (Jethumoni-my father's eld...