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Disruption occurs. It is a fact of life. It is going to happen.  It can be small blip or big issue but it is going to happen and all we can do is be prepared, deal with it and move forward.

I have seen many disrupptions in life, some may seem very small now but they were big when they happened. The problem with these disruptions is that they just throw off your normal scheduled and cause stress enthough they might not be of much impact on your life in long term.

Once such disruption occurred yeaterday when I visited a seemingly safe site via a link on twitter.  That site put a virus on my computer which crashed my computer and along with it went my pictures, files and everything I had.

I thought I was protected with McAfee virus protection service but turns of McAfee did not catch it on time.  I did not have a backup which was up to date. So here I am, dealing with this stuff. It might not seem a big deal to you but it is to me at this time.

I wish I was better prepared.

I am taking it is a warning that I have to be better prepared. Are you prepared for disruptions in life?

One of the biggest things that stands between a person and success is time. We all get 24 hours in a day and how we use those 24 hours determine our life. You can spend all those hours sleeping (if that’s what being successful means to you and makes you happy), we can spend watching football, playing with our kids, arguing with significant other etc.

After talking to few people I found out that, in monetary terms, people view their time based on what they make currently. Somebody who makes $25 and hours views the value of their time as $25 while someone who makes $200K a year values their time as over $100 per year. What I found is that the more people make the more their perception of the value of their time increases. In my opinion this difference keeps them on a path to make more and more money.

A person who perceives that the value of their hours is $25 is very happy to mow the lawn while somebody who values his/her time as $100 is more likely to hire someone at $25 to mow the lawn while they spend their time either making over $100/hr or spending time in activities that they perceive are more valuable than $100/hr e.g. playing with kids etc. (Of course in some cases a person making a lot of money might consider mowing the lawn as an opportunity to relax, in which case the perceived value of that activity is more than $100/hr).

The more you value your time and chose things wisely the more likely you will make more money.

What do you think?

I have heard many financial and well respected guys tell you how to save money by turning off your heater or never powering on A/C and all that crap.

I will tell you my story and all the advice I am giving on this blog based on my life experience and how I want to live. Maybe you agree with those other experts and that is totally fine but that is just not my style. I want to live a fulfilling life that allows me to make use of inventions human kind has given and the rich experiences of life.

I grew up as an average kid back in India. My dad was business man who had a small clothing store in a small town. Business was good and everything looked good. He did not save any money or never worried about tomorrow. We had good life and everything that was saved from the day to days expenses went straight into the business to keep an ever growing inventory. His mission was to live a nice life (he lost his dad when he was 3 and he had been working since then), enjoy it and provide the same for his family of six members. He sent us to the best school in 100 km radius. Since the town we lived in was owned by government, no one could buy a house there, everybody lived in rental houses. Though we had money, we lived in a 2 room house (total 2 rooms + kitchen, bathroom and a tiny open area) because that was the only option. Houses were small but we never even felt it, because that was the way of life.

Well things do go bad every now and then. Right? That’s what happened. He lost everything to theft in his store and overnight he lost everything. We were POOR. Due to local corruption among police and govt. officials he did not get a dime from the insurance, even though he had connections but corruption in India is deeper than you can ever imagine.

I admire my dad and mom for staying strong even we went from living a rich life to poor life. My dad borrowed, against his goodwill, because that’s all he had left. Tried to revive the business but that did not happen. Despite having lost of the money he made sure we 4 kids went to the same school that we were going earlier, and trust me that school was very expensive but he valued education a lot and did not want to take that opportunity away from us. For him, money comes and goes but education remains with us (I will write more about education later, keep in mind education is not just going to school and doing homework and getting As).

To make long story short (I will write more on this later), I became engineer and came to US to pursue my America Dream. When I came here I did not even have 15 cents in my pocket to pay for a bus, so walked 2 miles to get to my house and eat Top Ramen noodles. I passed Taco Bell and Burger King along the way but did not have few cents to buy a burrito or a burger. That was in 1993. Today, 18 yrs later, I am glad I don’t have much to worry about. Though in last 18 yrs I never thought about saving money by cutting on electricity (though you should conserve energy but not by depriving yourself of one of the greatest invention in human kind).

I will write more about my story, my philosophy about life and how to enrich it. It is different from many others but so far it has served me well.

A man once found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest
of a barnyard hen. The eagle hatched and grew up with the rest
of a brood of chicks and though he didn’t look at all the same.
He scratched the earth for worms and bugs and played the chicken’s games.

The eagle clucked and cackled, he made a chicken’s sound;
He thrashed his wings, but only flew some two feet off the ground.
That’s high as chickens fly, the eagle had been told.
The years passed and one day when the eagle was quite old.

He saw something magnificent flying very high
And making great majestic circles up there in the sky.
He’d never seen the likes of it. “What’s that?” he asked in awe,
While he watched in wonder at the grace and power he saw.

“Why that’s an eagle,” someone said, “He belongs up there, it’s clear.
Just as we, since we are chickens, belong earthbound down here.”
The old eagle just accepted that, most everybody does.
And he lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

Moral of the story: Don’t listen to people when they say you can’t do something. Try it and find out if you really are an Eagle.

Yesterday I had a party at my house for my son’s 3rd birthday. This was Saturday of Labor Day weekend. As clock ticked to8:30 a lot of them started to get anxious about the time. When I asked them what was going on, one of them said “well our kids have to do homework and they need to get back home and go to bed so that can get up on time tomorrow and do their homework”. Another couple had similar response. When I replied “Homework is overrated, let your kids live life and chill”, everybody turned to me and said “wait till your kid gets homework, and then we will ask you”. My response “I never cared about homework when I was a kid. I did care about what I was learning though and that’s what I will expect from my son”. Overload of homework makes us think inside the box and not “outside the box”. I had several kids in my class who were all doing great in class. I was one of those who nobody expected a lot from because I did not do well in my class. One thing though I was doing was grasping everything on not cramming the subject matter. After few years it was clear to everybody how that prepared me for the real world. I am very proud that I am far better than many of my friends who took their homework so seriously but forgot about the thing called “life”. (Note: I grew up in India)

What do you think? Do you think our education system prepare us well for “life”?