Patience and the Big-Picture

Hi everyone,

For those asking where my newsletters have been… Here I am!

I don’t have any grand business advice or updates but here’s what’s been going on recently:

• I got married!

• I started a new job as a Digital Marketing Manager for an association of diverse alternative investment companies.

• I coordinated two weddings (200 and 400 person Syro-Malabar weddings) that went great. Happy to do more, but definitely going to increase my rate.

Now onto the meat of things…

I find myself thinking about things less deeply and I feel like that is tied to my lack of writing and documenting my observations so here is a quick observation on patience and long-term thinking.

On Patience

I turned 30 this year and I’m seeing many friends turn 30 this year. I had thought about sending the classic “welcome to the wrong side of 30” text, but that got me thinking…

• This side of 30 (God-willing) has more years in it

• It’s wild that we expect to have things somewhat figured out at 30 when you couldn’t even wipe your own butt for ~25 years and there were probably only 8 years that weren’t fully dictated by your parents.

It’s not normal for me to think like this. I tend to focus on the current day instead of the “big picture”.

For example…

My rental property had a toilet overflowing and enough water got through the subfloor that it damaged the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling. 🫠

I immediately started thinking about selling the property and calculated how much I would net.

(Since we share details here, the calculation showed that I would net around $20k after tax, agent fees, and the money I put in initially. Whereas if I keep renting, I get around a 20% return on investment every year [not compounding] in equity.)

The situation was stressful and annoying to deal with. But two days later, the problem was fixed and I extended the tenants for another year.

Similarly, earlier this year, my car was running rough. The road noise was unbearable and my acceleration was jumpy.

I immediately looked at the value I could get for my car and researched what car I’d want for the next 10 years.

Then I took the car to the mechanic and changed the tires. Now the car is perfectly fine and I can drive it for at least another two years.

In all these situations, my first impulse was to get rid of the source of the problem. But with patience and big-picture thinking, I can see that the problems are overwhelming in the moment yet forgettable in the end.

Till next time,
Aswin