![]() | #286 | ||
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR
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Today texting at a dinner table; or visiting someone for a social visit and sitting there texting while your hosts gapes and gasps; or texting and talking on the phone and trying to pretend you are spending quality time with your kids has become so common it is considered the new normal. Worst is texting while driving [eeks]. Think about it. The hand held has become a crutch we carry around and need to peep into every 20 minutes even while engaged in something more vital. We peep into it while talking to our loved ones, while participating in important business meetings, while eating, while attending to nature’s call for God’s sake. And we have psyched ourselves into thinking this is normal. Constantly looking at our hand held devices is the new smoking. Fifty years ago smoking was fashionable – most did it. It was the sophisticated thing to do. Our homes had ashtrays that were crafted as beautiful and expensive pieces of decoration. It was normal for visitors to come and light up. Today your visitor would usually ask your permission to smoke in your home and you would search in vain for that ash tray. I wonder if future generations, thirty years from now, would view our digital distraction as we view old movies where every second chap seems to be smoking most of the time. Our permanent digital distraction has for many of us become a way of life. It reminds me of something Mary Oliver said, “Tell me what is it that you plan to do with this one wild precious life you have got”. Mary Oliver is a poet, author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry | ||
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![]() | #287 | |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Bangalore
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I am 37, and I have about 13 years to go before I hit 50. Once I hit 50, I do know that my body's activity levels, fitness, and overall ability to embrace physical and mental challenges will drop to about 50% of what I am capable of doing now. It has already dropped to 50% of what I was capable of doing just 10 years back. This is the law of life, very few people escape it. I know that these next 13 years are the most precious part of my life now. If any changes have to be brought about, if any change in habits, likes, dislikes, wants, a new start at life - anything at all - this has to be done now in this window of 13 years. Luckily, I am single. I have already packed up, sold things and walked away for a few years this decade. Only to return to some family commitments, which are now at the end of their tether. Hence what Mary questioned came rebounding to my head. The head questions, but it's the heart that answers. | |
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![]() | #288 | |||
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Quote:
What you lose at 40+ is the recovery speed in case of injuries. Quote:
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That's not a retirement plan. Last edited by Samurai : 31st October 2018 at 16:21. | |||
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![]() | #289 | |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: Chennai
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This is wonderful and can relate to you in many ways. I quit my job in manufacturing industry 3 years back @31, wanted to do it before 30 but still got there a year later. The amount of time I get to spend with family and for things I love to do is great. Especially to see my daughter grow. Being at home when she comes back from school and play with her for sometime is something that cannot be put in words. This gave me a whole new thought process and endless possibilities. The biggest learning in this period is if you don't learn to keep yourself busy you can never really enjoy the time you have. So stay occupied. I strongly believe you already are an entrepreneur. You don't have to register a company and start working to become one. All the best and have a great life. | |
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![]() | #290 | ||
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR
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I am 58, going on 59 soon and I have 17 years to go till I turn 75. I don't intend to do less till then. ![]() Quote:
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![]() | #291 | |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: AU
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![]() Also, I don't quite get it when people make a career out of IT for decades; raise their standard of living; build a surplus and then decide to retire one fine day and then start to deride the very industry/career path that helped them to retire (early in some cases). And it's even comical when I read people talking about getting into farming or business without any hands-on experience and assuming that it won't be as stressful as an IT job. And for some reason the word "business" is replaced by "entrepreneur". As if that changes anything. | |
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![]() | #292 | ||
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Zurich
Posts: 2,959
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Add water pollution from upstream places. Quote:
I think many of us save too much for the next generation. It should be a learning experience for them to also pay for their higher education when they start working. So educational loans would be a better bet. This will also help them learn financial responsibilities. I would like to keep that money as a safety net for other expenses that could crop up as we grow older. | ||
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![]() | #293 | |
BHPian Join Date: May 2008 Location: Bengaluru
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I used to stay in farmhouse in North Karnataka during my school/college days before working in IT field. My late grandfather taught us many skills required for managing a farmhouse. We as kids (including my brother and cousins) were involved in building cowsheds, cleaning the sheds and cows, feeding them, doing all the veterinary tasks (including taking the cows on the road to the veterinary hospital ![]() We also had a lot of mango, sapota, coconut trees which we were taught to climb, spray pesticides, pick up fruits hanging on to the branches / using fruit picker tools, sell the fruits to local dealer and so on. Working in farm during monsoon rains with allergic weeds, snakes ![]() This was the time when we learnt the dignity of labour, hard work, managing people (buyers and sellers), working with people at various strata in society, skills required to manage a farmhouse which also kept us physically very fit. We had all the great skills to be a agriculturist then. Fast forward a couple of decades, when I last visited my home town this month and went to my relative's farm, I start sneezing, I cannot even walk in the farms the way I could without stopping to scratch the legs. The skills are rusty with disuse. If I were to become an agriculturist now, I can still "manage/mentor" people and teach the younger people a lot of skills I learnt, but post 40, can never get back to the fitness/energy levels we once had to be hands-on in the farms. I suppose the same applies to other businesses as well. Last edited by AltoLXI : 31st October 2018 at 17:04. | |
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![]() | #294 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Gurugram
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| ![]() @samurai; you forgot to mention that you run the firm, and are your own boss. Makes a lot of difference. You are way beyond the level of most people. |
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![]() | #295 | |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR
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Dear IT professionals about to turn 40 worried about their jobs - as Samurai writes setting up and running your own business is magnitudes tougher and riskier than any job no matter how lousy your boss is and how venal your company [most IT companies are not BTW relative to the grind of a manufacturing job]. Entrepreneurship is not a retirement plan. You need to think of another Plan B. But don't be so eager to jump off your IT ship. If you work for a medium to large IT company you have it real good. Think - air-conditioned office, great cafeteria, sylvan campus surroundings, oodles of facilities, clean toilets [important - you'll miss them when you don't have them] , a gym, ...God I could go on. Compare this with - salesman travelling in the heat & dust of India, service engineer toiling on site in the grime and grease, unruly Indian customer in Bhusaval yelling at you, petty Govt officials harassing you, Govt regulator turning up at your workshop for a surprise inspection,.....!!! In the IT industry you have client pressures like in every other industry but you miss out on the fun we brick & mortar guys live with. So count your blessings folks. Last edited by V.Narayan : 31st October 2018 at 19:08. | |
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![]() | #296 | |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Bangalore
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Why cant entrepreneurship be about setting up a cafe somewhere, or a home stay or even a school? I know someone who quit a coding job, moved back to hubli and set up a small grocery shop. That's not entrepreneurial? He was super happy. That doesn't count? Why cant the next business only be about maintaining my bare necessities in a beautiful and peaceful place? Lots of people have done it, yes its hard work but also extremely rewarding in its own way. And Narayan, if someone aches about AC offices, they aren't on this thread. They are on the new car launches thread or how to get a new car loan thread. This one isn't for them anyway. So many have buried their hobbies, passions and what not in this mad rush for money, things, and providing the best for their families. I am not surprised. Even taking a sabbatical from work to find yourself or be a home parent for a few years is frowned upon in india. i have worked in large global consulting firms, then turned IT entrepreneur at 23 and ran my own outfit for 7 years in Scandinavia + india. Then back packed 3 years across india and the himalayas. All this before 35. Also learnt swimming when i was 8. And offroading when i was 25. Haha. well, samurai we have driven together, just having some fun like the old days. In terms of age, i am not sure if i will be able to backpack many years without a proper bed or roof across the rustic mountains at the age of 50. We are all different people. Let this thread be more positive, more about finding what next, interesting things to do, passions explored, hobbies resurrected and fears demolished. May the force be with all of you ![]() | |
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![]() | #297 | |
BANNED Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: BLR
Posts: 966
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The punch line is when they call it a retirement plan. But on another note for those wanting to retire at 40 - Colonel Sanders started KFC when he was 62. | |
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![]() | #298 | |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: May 2006 Location: Bangalore
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I think the reason is because most of them got into the industry by chance and not by choice. I have seen people with as less as 5 years of experience expressing their desire to get into a managerial post just to escape from coding. And the Indian mindset of judging a person based on the number of people under him/her doesn't help. Luckily things are changing. | |
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![]() | #299 | |||
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR
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Not thinking one track, Redliner. Samurai San & I are businessmen and we have lived the dark side for years. Just offering sage advice based on our own experience. Each member here can choose what advice works for him or her and throw away the rest
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I wish people well. Just want them to know what they are in for down this path. If you have been an employee all your working life and your parents are not in business you are setting yourself up for a very steep learning curve in entrepreneurship at the very time your growing family and ageing parents are demanding more economic sustenance from you. The steep learning will be learnt, if you are lucky, at the expense of your savings kitty. Jump into the water. Just a few words of advice from someone in the water. | |||
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![]() | #300 | |||
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() | ![]() This thread is the best on the forum; for the diversity in viewpoints and the depth of arguments that we have. Quote:
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I am 36, I run half marathons - one every month, I do long distance (100km+) rides on my cycles, I do hiking and white water rafting on level 4 & 5; and what not. I hardly did any of those 10 years back. I plan to do a lot lot more in the next 10 years. I have pushed my mom (60+) to get back to cycling, and I have just egged her finally to start running last week; with an aim to do a 5k in one of the marathon events early next year. Oh btw, she was told by the doctor 5 years back that she won't be able to sustain the cycling, forget running. I know she will be able to do it easily. Our bodies are what we make of it. THAT is the law of life. All the best - looking at your previous post, I guess this will be a walk in the park ![]() Quote:
I love to experiment. Internally, I freak out; but still I aim to do differently. I am part of a highly aggressive, competitive environment where folks 10 years younger (and fresh into the professional world) are already thinking of saving enough to be able to retire at 40 and whatnot. My thoughts are what to do for the next trip, where to spend the next exciting activity, and so on... I believe everyone should jump the ship. Pick up something they feel connected to. Give it a timeline and attempt the impossible in that timeline, but be aware that there's a steep fall possible and the issues/risks that go with it. Last edited by ninjatalli : 1st November 2018 at 09:34. | |||
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