The Second Commandment: Simplify your life

Summary: Simplify your day-to-day life into a series of routines and processes which allow you to work hard, work intensely, work collaboratively and yet find time to relax, refresh and be creative.

[To find out what the Ten Commandments of Indian Entrepreneurship are, pls click here: https://marcellus.in/blogs/the-ten-commandments-of-entrepreneurship-in-india/]

“Studies of the lives of great minds tell us that there are five specific habits that simplify life: reading; intense focused work in solitude; rewarding oneself after working hard; seeking high-quality input and criticism; and a well-defined daily routine.” – The Victory Project by Saurabh Mukherjea & Anupam Gupta, pg. 93

“Habits are the invisible architecture of our lives…Habit allows us to go from ‘before’ to ‘after’, to make life easier and better. Habit is notorious – and rightly so – for its ability to direct our actions, even against our will…” ― Gretchen Rubin in ‘Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives’ (2015)

In the five hundred years prior to the British arriving in India, the Vijayanagara empire centred in Hampi and encompassing much of present-day Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra was the mightiest kingdom south of the Vindhyas. The might of this empire reached its peak during the rule of Krishna Deva Raya when Vijayanagara’s armies would routinely defeat the surrounding kingdoms in the Deccan and thus capture more territory and usurp more wealth. In his entertaining book, ‘Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji’, historian Manu S. Pillai has this to say of the great Krishna Deva Raya:

‘Every morning, reportedly, he drank a three-quarter pint of sesame oil, after which he “anoints himself all over with the same oil; he covers his loins with a small cloth, and takes in his arms great weights made of earthenware, and then, taking a sword he exercises himself till he has sweated out all the oil, and then he wrestles with one of his wrestlers”. After gymming so (and making a royal display of it), “he mounts a horse and gallops about the plain in one direction and another till dawn, for he does all this before daybreak”. When it was time to appear in court, he would throw on a tunic embroidered with “many roses in gold”, a brocade cap crowning his head “like a Galician helmet” . . . seated on the Diamond Throne, surrounded by his ministers, Brahmins and robed eunuchs, Krishna Deva was without doubt an impressive figure . . .’

While the modern-day office workers in Marcellus cannot match the routine of a legendary king, effective work in almost any profession has at its core very hard work, often done in the midst of a well-defined schedule. Over the past 20 years psychologists have not only discovered that our habits are far more influential than we understood them to be (they control 40% of the decisions that we make) but also that our habits are NOT controlled by the “thinking” part of our brain. To quote bestselling author Charles Duhigg in ‘The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life & business’ (2014) [square brackets are ours]:

“Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making but they’re not. They are habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night . . . have enormous impacts on our health . . . and happiness. One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits . . .

When you dream up a new invention . . . it’s the outside parts of your brain at work. That’s where the most complex thinking occurs. Deeper inside the brain and closer to . . . where the brain meets the spinal column, are older, more primitive structures. They control our automatic behaviours, such as breathing and swallowing . . . Towards the centre of the skull is a golf ball-sized lump of tissue that is similar to what you might find inside the head of a fish, reptile or mammal. This is the basal ganglia . . . [Scientists have found that] basal ganglia was central to recalling patterns and acting on them. The basal ganglia, in other words, stored habits even while the rest of the brain went to sleep.”

Understanding the reflex element of habit-driven decision making is central to nailing down why some people consistently achieve better results than others even though, on the face of it, they appear to be no more able or talented than others around them.

• A cue: this is a trigger (something you see, smell or hear) that transfers the brain into an automatic mode which determines which habit to use;
• A routine: this is the heart of the habit and is typically a mental, emotional or physical routine; and
• A reward: this helps the brain ascertain if this specific loop is worth remembering for the future.

Duhigg says that, “The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges”. We see many examples of this in our daily lives especially when go to meet the companies in which we invest.

When we meet companies, the meeting is in the promoter’s office itself (rather than in a meeting room). Most such offices have a TV and hence the promoter is exposed to cues emanating from the TV. Associated with these cues, are likely to be routines/habits for the promoter e.g. he might be accustomed to calling up his broker after seeing the share price of a stock he holds surge, or he might have got into the habit of calling his CEO when he hears newsflow about a competitor. At the end of these routine(s), there is a “reward” that the promoter has got accustomed to receiving e.g. his broker giving him good news regarding his stock portfolio (reward = “wealth trip”) or his CEO giving him good news regarding how the competition is being pulverised (reward = “power trip”). Such routines – either cued by TV, email or social media – form a large part of the working lives of many decision makers we meet. Much of the remainder of their time is taken up by meetings (which itself becomes another habit). As a result, very little of the corporate lives of many senior decision makers is actually used for thinking & contemplation.

A small minority of promoters have no TVs in their offices; many of these promoters also don’t seem to make active use of mobile phones. Aditya Puri, the legendary CEO of HDFC Bank, famously never had a mobile phone even as he built one of the world’s largest banks over a span of 25 years. Such people arguably have more time to think & read i.e. more time NOT spent spinning on a habit loop. Such promoters are often to able see their industry from unusual angles. To quote from Saurabh’s book ‘The Unusual Billionaires’ (2016):

“Most Indian companies tend to focus on short-term results and hence that makes them frequently do things that deviate away from their articulated strategy…these deviations take them away from the path they have to travel to achieve their long term goals…the willingness to resist the temptation of short-term ‘off strategy’ profits for long-term sustainable gain is not there in most leading companies,’ writes Rama Bijapurkar, a leading market strategy consultant…”

The typical promoter profiled in [“The Unusual Billionaires’] is patient and persevering, even bordering of the boring. He ignores short-term thrills based on flavour-of-the-month ideas. He consciously rejects aggressive forays into unrelated businesses…Such behaviour requires tremendous patience and a willingness to ignore the stock market’s proclamations regarding prevailing fads and fashions.”

As a result we have seen seemingly trivial habits – not having a TV or a mobile phone – often translate into positive non-trivial outcomes. To delve deeper into this subject, read Saurabh Mukherjea & Anupam Gupta’s book “The Victory Project: Six Steps to Peak Potential”.

Saurabh Mukherjea is the Chief Investment Officer at Marcellus Investment Managers (www.marcellus.in). This material is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered as financial, investment, or other professional advice. The inclusion of any book does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the writer or the publisher of this material.