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Rain Water Harvesting Project
When it came to self-sustainability, I was interested in doing three projects -- growing organic vegetables, setting up water harvesting and generating power from solar panels. While we cannot certainly be fully self sustaining if I completed the projects, we could at least be less dependent on outside factors. A while ago we started growing vegetables in our side yard and terrace. I need to get around to writing a post on it. Some topic or the other always comes up and I write a post on it and eventually the post on terrace garden is way overdue. I did not want to let the same thing happen to this project which we started working on setting up recently. So here is something on that topic. The work is not yet fully done, but if I wait, I may end up never getting around to it :)
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Dietary Fiber, GI and GL
I know that this health series is stretching quite a bit, but I have to write a few more posts before ending the topic. You see, I initially wanted to write just one post on how to eat healthy, but then as I started writing, the post became too long and I decided to split it into three parts. But even as I was splitting I knew I had to give more information, because the thing about eating healthy does not end with "eat these foods and you will be fine". It goes a bit more deep and I have to explain why we need to eat them and the nuances associated with them. So if you are feeling bored already, brace for more boredom in the coming weeks as I continue this health series :)
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Carbohydrates - How Much To Eat
As a continuation of my previous post, I want to touch upon the topic of how much to eat with respect to carbohydrates. Hopefully, you understood which food items have good carbohydrates, and that solves the question about quality. What about quantity? In this post, I want to cover the quantity of carbs that one should eat. Remember that when it comes to food, quantity is as important as quality. Just because you are eating healthy carbs does not mean you can eat any amount. Well, actually if you are eating quality food, you will not be able to eat a lot of it really.
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Carbohydrates - What to Eat
In my previous post, I gave a brief introduction to eating healthy food, but I did not divulge into too much details as to what constitutes a healthy diet. This post is a continuation of it. What is a healthy diet then? Actually there isn't much to say about healthy food. Almost everyone knows what is healthy and what is not. So I won't even try to enumerate them. Staying healthy has more to do with the grit and self control more than anything else. You subconsciously already know when you are about to eat unhealthy.
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Eating Healthy
Several people approach me for advice on eating healthy and staying fit. And I have helped quite a few and even trained them at the gym so they could become healthy and fit. But I never succeeded in keeping them healthy or fit. Because it is much harder to change a person's mindset than changing habits and without a mindset change the new habits won't stick and they fall back to old habits. When it comes to health and fitness, it is a like an impossible ideal. It is as difficult, if not more, to continue to stay healthy than achieving it. But since so many people are asking about some health tips, I thought I will write one with my experiences.
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Everyday Movements
No, I am not talking about stock market movements, I mean physical movements. In this day and age, people are moving less and sitting on their asses more. I don't mean being lazy, but the demands of today's work are so different from the previous generation's that we are getting much less physical activity than is required. The reason I bring up this topic is because I routinely hear people complaining of lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain or any of the numerous body pains associated with tight muscles. To fix this, they have undergone surgery or got needles inserted.
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Sold My Car!
I might have mentioned in passing on this blog that I own three vehicles. Now, having started on my minimalist journey, I have been wanting to get rid of an expensive and yet not so used car. And that finally happened yesterday! It is sort of a bitter sweet moment really. On the one hand I feel like a part of me is gone now and all I am left with are the memories. On the other hand, I am happy to have reduced "stuff" from my life. Read on to know the whole story.
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What Will People Think?
Every time you intend to do something out of the ordinary, your first instinct is usually to stop and think "what will people say or think about what I am about to do". This stigma limits us from doing anything that does not fit in the societal norms. While nobody made any rules about how things should be, as a group we are all guilty of following some unwritten rules. The good thing about these unwritten rules it that we are able to move together in one general direction and solve problems that no one person alone can solve, a bit like autonomous multi-agent systems. The problem occurs when you diverge too far from the crowd. You will be all alone. But in a social setting, that is not all you have to worry about. There is also the issue of people saying things about you behind your back and sometimes even straight to your face. But the advantage of straying away from the crowd is to build something entirely new, great and immensely useful. That is how evolution made us so superior to the rest of the living things.
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Practice Minimalism
After watching my talk on early retirement, one of my friends tells me that while the audience asked a lot of questions, no one asked me "How do I practice the art of minimalism without compromising much on what your heart wishes for?". Well in this case, I am not really sure if minimalism is a personal trait or if it is something that can be acquired. You already know how I started, which was basically after reading about Stoicism.
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My Early Investment Journey
While I am sitting comfortably today, writing about my journey to early retirement, the initial days of my investment years were not without their share of issues. Let me explain in a bit more detail. When I first started out, I had planned to do a SIP of a certain amount every month and planned on increasing it every year. The increase in SIP I planned at that time was to match up with the inflation rate. The thought process was that if I was just average at work then my salary increments will match up with the inflation for the previous year. At the time of planning my early retirement in 2011, the inflation stood at around 8%, and consequently my projections were to increase SIP by 8% every year.
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