Seneca – Letter 1 – On Saving Time

Greetings from Seneca to his friend Lucilius.

Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words, – that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.

Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing,life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity, – time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.
You may desire to know how I, who preach to you so freely, am practising. I confess frankly: my expense account balances, as you would expect from one who is free-handed but careful. I cannot boast that I waste nothing, but I can at least tell you what I am wasting, and the cause and manner of the loss; I can give you the reasons why I am a poor man. My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: every one forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.
What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early.  For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.

Farewell

No Enemies by Charles Mackay

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor,
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes.
If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never set the wrong to right.
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

——————–

“You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something, sometime in your life” – Winston Churchill

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Known, Knowable and Unknowable

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” Richard Feynman

Its is impossible to obtain absolute knowledge about anything because of infinite ways to approach anything. Human knowledge is fallible and is never complete. Keeping this in mind, we can divide knowledge in to 3 broad categories

Known Knowledge: This is knowledge that we are absolutely certain about. It has been time tested and has been proven innumerable times. It can be scientific knowledge that can be proved by experiments or non scientific knowledge in the words of wise people. Conventional education system is based on imparting the known knowledge. Imparting the known knowledge to the masses is just a matter of organization and discipline. Industrialization is a known knowledge. Imparting it to poor countries to improve their standard of living is just copying the existing system. One can trust this knowledge

Knowable Knowledge: This is what people try to find when they do research. Development of any new technology is converting the knowable into known. Be very skeptical of any new knowledge. Most of the time it is just old packaged as new

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again – Andre Gide

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun

Unknowable Knowledge:  There are some questions that are unanswerable. For example, what is the meaning of life? I don’t know the answer to this question but the important thing to remember is that neither does anyone else. This is the shadiest area of knowledge where most charlatans, witch doctors and quacks reside. They exploit the fundamental human desire to have answers and they act if they have answers and people fell in to their trap. Never trust a person who gives you answers for unanswerable questions.

On Prioritizing Tasks

We can divide tasks in to 3 broad categories

1) Basic Tasks – These are absolute essentials. You need to do them to cover the basic needs of life  like security, shelter, food, health etc etc. They are primary. Everything else is secondary.

2) Trivial Tasks – These should be covered next. These are small tasks that don’t take much time but if you don’t cover them they will prevent you from doing Major Tasks . Examples include clutter (desk clutter, computer clutter, mental clutter), noise etc etc

3) Major Tasks – These are Big Tasks such as tasks one need to do to achieve one’s life goals (Preparing for an exam etc)  They require a lot of mental concentration. Although Major Tasks are harder than Basic Tasks they are still less important than Basic Tasks.

Never Multitask a Major Task.

Mediocrity Vs Excellence

“Take the high road. It’s far less crowded” – Charlie Munger

 

There are two major barriers we have to face when we are trying to achieve some specific goal

1) The intrinsic complexity of the task – Some tasks are just harder to do.

2) The competition – How many other people we are competing against.

Although, these two barriers appear different but they are very intimately related to each other. The easier is the task, the more people will think that they can achieve it. As more people participate, the competition will heat up   and it will paradoxically make the easier task harder to achieve.

Thats what Henry Kissinger meant when he said

“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”

Or putting it another way, the smaller is the reward the more fierce is the fight to achieve it. And the real tragedy is that even if you beat all the competitors and win the reward, its still a small reward.

Mediocrity may be harder to achieve than excellence due to sheer competition as everyone wants to be average and at the end of the day, even if you succeed you are still a mediocre person.

Exploitation

A man who doesn’t need anything is invincible

When a dire need meets with limited options exploitation happens and one ends up doing something that given a choice he will never do. Most people in this world feel exploited one way or the other ; by their country, their employer, spouse, children, friends etc etc.

There are two pre requisites for exploitation 

1- Dire need for something.

2- Having very few options.

There are two ways to avoid being exploited

1- Having few needs – Thats why simple living  is so important. It makes one immune to exploitation. If your needs are few, nobody can take advantage of you.

2- Having many options – options are always a hedge against exploitation. Money gives one more options. Thats why rich people never put up with people they don’t like. Warren Buffett once said that one of the benefits of being rich is that he only deals with people he likes.

 

Predicting The Future

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future – Warren Buffett

Exact future is impossible to predict . All prophets ( political and financial pundits) are false prophets. However, some general rules can be drawn about any future event.

1) Failure is more likely to happen than success because there are far more ways one can fail than be successful (Entropy)

Lesson- Beware of over optimistic people especially if they benefit from you believing in them.

2) The more complex a task is (the more steps it has) greater are the chances of failure ( Probability of failure at each step add up)

Lesson – “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify” – Henry David Thoreau 

3) As the world has an inertia and due to this there is a lag period between actions and results, sometimes it is fairly easy to tell what will happen but hard to predict when will it happen.

Lesson – Bad actions always produce bad results sooner or later.

The True Value of Money

What is the true value of money?

For most people, the answer is obvious. Money lets you buy stuff. The purchase power of money is the true value of money.

But there is another elusive value of money which is more important than the purchase power. The true value of money doesn’t lies in  what you can do with it  but what you don’t have to do.

Think about this question. If you have enough money to live off of for the rest of your life, would you still be doing what you do or will you change your job? For most people, the answer to this question will highlight this fine point about money .

And the funny thing is that to get that benefit , you don’t even have to spend your money!