Week 43

Another week, another news. My daughter did not get admitted to the fancy school that my wife really wanted for her. And it started another round of introspection about our parenting styles and whether we are doing a reasonable job at all. Any rejection pushes us back into doubting ourselves and I don't know how to handle it. Since it is difficult to handle one aspect, it starts affecting all the other aspects too.

But the trick of survival lies in overcoming these self-doubts with a narrative that pushes you to keep working on your process to improve your decision-making. My narrative currently is that these kids need less knowledge and more tools that will help them navigate situations better, so I need to ensure that they are protected from being exposed to too much information. Only time will tell if I erred in my judgement but my only solace is that it would have been an honest mistake.

Week 42

This week was a bit of a washout as all of us were unwell for a couple of days affecting productivity. However, he managed to do some work for an art festival that he is participating in with a group of other homeschoolers. It is going to be an important theme this week also. I hope they manage to find a coherent voice while bringing different perspectives. Homeschooling is about your own way of doing things and it will be interesting to watch how different priorities and perspectives are woven together in this installation.

Week 41

This week was about trying new things. My son is working with a group of other homeschoolers to come up with a project for an arts festival. There was ideation and hopefully, there would be good execution in the coming week. Apart from this, we also went to the Children's Museum and an art gallery, so that he could understand the different types of creativity.
He also put up his list of predictions for the coming decade:

- Bendable devices

- More reusable things = less garbage

- More natural medicines 

- Bigger and fewer countries

- More people = more wars

- Autonomous cars driving by themselves

- More planets to live on

- More diseases due to chemical pollution

- Ability to design and produce own instruments

Week 40

Happy New Year!!
A new year means a new beginning. This is the beginning of a new decade, one which will have far-reaching consequences for the next few decades. At work and personally, it was marked by a series of predictions that I wanted to make as per my understanding of the world. While I completely agree with Bill Gates about our inability to predict changes in either the short or long term, this exercise forced me to think longer and a little harder and to bring together things that I have read and thought about in recent times.
I think I will also ask my son to write down his predictions for this decade. It will be an exercise for him to think in a little longer timeframe.
Anyways, the following are my predictions for the decade:

15 predictions for the decade

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1. Currency will move from a fiat currency to being benchmarked to an asset base - not necessarily gold alone, but a basket of metals/cryptocurrency/(rare earth metals?) - some benchmark that will retain the flexibility to be stretched, even though will put some constraints on freely-printing money
2. A new economy will arise as the world leader supported by Europe - its loyalty will change from the US to the new power, and that will give it a relative jump in world standing - by remaining constant also, sometimes you tend to outperform
3. China will see the rise of spiritualism over consumerism - social upheaval followed by the rise of new “preachers” who promote detachment - go back to Confucianism
4. Corporates are going to see consolidation and become more powerful - lead to larger gross profits, but in a bid to stay relevant to the new generation, they will keep their social and climate commitments
5. Organic food will become more mainstream - more efficient supply chain will ensure that the reduction in productivity of the farm will be offset by the savings of less losses
6. Drones will be useful for difficult-to-reach deliveries - will help cities become less congested, maybe reversing urbanization
7. Cost of healthcare will come down significantly
8. UPI will become a significant payment method around the world
9. Governments will take the hard decision to convert large amounts of debt into equity; reset their own sovereign debt through higher growth and lower nominal yields
10. Political prediction: Reordering of the global order through domestic/international aggressions - persecution of Asians in developed countries, large scale conflagration in the second half of the decade
11. India: 2024 - BJP, 2029 - Coalition of parties, Nifty targets - 2020 (14,500), 2023 (6,500), 2026 (21,500), 2030 (15,000)
12. Higher taxation should lead to normalization of higher gross profits of larger corporates
13. All public/long-distance transportation modes will become primarily electric; personal vehicle ownership will be at multi-decade lows
14. The number of countries winning medals in the Olympics will hit multi-decade lows
15. Consumption of leisure and experiences will grow exponentially in this decade

I hope to come back and see how right/wrong I was a decade later. Hopefully, I would have also helped my son understand the value of thinking from a long term perspective.