In this episode, Divya and Kahran have a meandering conversation starting around compensation and work into compensation for your life. How can you measure compensation beyond straight up money that you get in exchange for your work? How do you value that type of compensation? And why do tornado chasers chase tornados? What is that compensation?
You have to think about compensation not just as what you earn, but as the total return on the time and energy you invest in yourself.
Hi, I'm Divya. Hi, I'm Kahran. And this is... Thinking. I'm thinking.
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Thinking on Thinking. This week, Divya asked me a lot of questions. Questions about how to think about investing in yourself, how to think about compensation, especially as you're weighing jobs or weighing decisions.
How do you just think about where to weigh what? We also have some interesting side diversions and lovely anecdotes. We hope you enjoy. Do you know the premise of Twister? No. It's just like how they can choose us.
Yeah, but like, those are not hurricanes, right? Tornadoes are just they come, they go along for a while and they dissipate. A tornado starts on top of land and hurricane starts on top of... No, cyclones start on top of ocean and tornadoes start on top of land. So in places prone to tornadoes, I'm really out of depth here.
Okay, so what I think happens is that there's a... Oh my God, really? I don't know. Should we just look at that? I'm looking at... Yeah, hurricanes are over water. Cyclones are massive rotation storm systems and tornadoes are form over land.
Yeah, so I was in two off. The cyclone is the longer one, bigger one, and hurricanes are the smaller ones. Okay, so tornadoes are much smaller, particularly a few hundred yards, whereas hurricanes will be hundreds of miles. Yeah.
And then yeah, tornadoes last a few minutes to an hour. And cyclones can be even bigger. Oh, tornadoes can be much faster than hurricanes. That's how they like lift stuff into the air, right? Like cars, houses, trees.
But it also makes sense because like tornadoes are wind instead of water, right? Yeah. Well, sand, I guess. Like, have you ever seen a sand cyclone? Like the little ones that form over like on beaches that will just lift sand up
and like these tiny little ones? Yeah. Yeah, so just like that, but way bigger. I mean, I've seen them not on beaches, but in desert. Because you know, I've grown up in a desert.
So speaking of that, in summertime, that is when you would get the storm season and like, you know, we would get up on the rooftop and we would see sand sort of like coming in the distance. And then you sort of like go and you close all the doors and like we would even put like a cloth and stuff it in all the corners so that the sand can't enter the house.
And then it would be like a sand storm for a few hours. And you can actually see it like coming towards you. See, I think a sandstorm is like a hurricane. Like when a hurricane comes, it's hours, you know, whereas a tornado like passes through. It's like, it's like the little sand cyclones.
Okay. It just imagined them much bigger and able to, you know, rip a hole in the ground as they pass through, but only in a really narrow like. It's a funnel. It's a air funnel.
Okay. So it's a funnel. Exactly. So you're going to see Twister. So you can chase the air funnel, which is the premise of what these people do.
Tornado chasers. It feels a little stupid. I mean, as a pastime. Yes. Yes.
Yes. The fact that we had a movie about it sounds kind of a music actually. But yes, apparently it's supposed to be a drama, but it comes out kind of like a comedy because of how much you get like shaken and like water sprayed in your face. Yeah.
So I'm quite entertained. So when are you seeing it? 240 on Monday. It's like one of the last seats available. Wow.
It's basically got completely sold out because everyone's been writing about this experience and it's has a really, it hasn't done that well in theaters otherwise. So it's closing on like Tuesday. Oh, so you're getting like last show types. Yeah.
Yes. Very nice. Do you have any adrenaline junkie ish hobbies? I mean, only skiing, I suppose, but do you do it for adrenaline? No, it's very fun.
Right. And fun is difficult to quantify as we know has gave designers. I think it's a mix of like all these things I really enjoy. You get to hang out with people. You get to have time by yourself.
You get to do things that are challenging in different ways. You also can do things that are less challenging but still feel like you're accomplishing things. Like I can ski trees much slower than I can ski big open runs, but skiing big open runs really fast is still really challenging because you might go like 40 miles an hour and that's crazy because you're flying down the ski slope, right?
But for me, that's a lot easier than skiing in trees where I have to make a lot of really tight turns. So that's really just physically exhausting. So there's all these different ways that it appeals to you. So it's hard to quantify and just say it's like they're adrenaline because I don't do
like the big jumps and stuff, which is like what people who are really true adrenaline junkies who you know, ski or snowboard do or they might do like tricks or and that's like that's not what I'm into. Do you do? Can you do tricks?
I used to do more when I was little. I mean, I can do some small jumps, I suppose. I can't really do any tricks. Like, you know, people can like, you know, do flips and stuff. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like I haven't seen skiing stuff, but I have seen skateboarding and skates stuff and they're like very similar. Close enough. Exactly.
Could you ice skate ever? I can kind of ice skate. I can kind of rollerblade. Like I can get by. I can't really do any major tricks.
What is getting by in like a weird scale like ice skating? Not weird maybe, but like whatever. Not falling down repeatedly. I'm 100% sure I'd fall down a lot. It takes a while because just even, I mean, I had roller skates, I think when I was a child
and roller skate birthdays were still a thing where there was like a roller skating rink and you would go and like the roller skates have four wheels and then the roller blades only have three wheels in the middle. So then there was some point where you graduate to the big kid thing, which is the roller blades because that's how we all looked at it for some reason.
So I think I did a little bit of rollerblading when I was a child and then that helped because ice skating is effectively the same thing. I mean, sometimes ice skates might have two blades as well, right? Or do they always only have one blade? I think it would be too dangerous to have two blades, right?
Oh, why? I don't know. Even the one blade feels really dangerous. Wait, is it like an actual blade that can cut you? Yeah, I mean, well, it has to cut into the ice.
It's so sharp. Oh my God, I'm never doing that. Yeah, it's kind of terrifying. I tried to learn how to skateboard and I was like a lot older. Maybe I was 28 or so.
And I realized I am no longer the young age where I could fall down and get up and like it not hurt me the next day. Like the first day I tried to skateboard and then like I came back and like next morning everything was hurting. Like I had gotten in an accident and I was like, well, I guess I kind of did. I fell down like some four or five times. So I guess it is true.
And the opposite experience yesterday, I went to yoga with this teacher that my teacher in Bangalore studied with. And I was like very sore last night and I'm still very sore this morning, but it's like a very different kind of sore. It's like I feel like my back can turn in ways that it just I didn't know it couldn't before. Whereas now I'm like, oh, wow, I guess I can just twist like that. That just didn't know that was a movement I didn't know how to do before.
It's interesting, right? Like how you have these different skills, especially for me, what I can do with my body has like really evolved over the last five years. Because I have been doing more things and because I've been experimenting, I would say like I'm probably more in a certain definition active than I have ever been in my life. I think that I'm on a similar path. Like there was a time I was pretty active, but then I moved to India and in India it's very easy to not be very active just because like, you know, the amount of things I would walk to in New York were not things I would walk to in Bangalore.
Like in New York, I will walk a mile all the time. And the notion of walking a mile in Bangalore is just like, I just seem to have some ludicrous. I also feel like in like Bangalore and like walking in India. I think firstly, like Bangalore is probably one of the only cities that temperature wise you can actually walk in most of the year. Like you cannot expect yourself to walk in Delhi or in like, you know, by rains.
Like it's just impossible. It's unreasonable for a human being to like, you know, walk. I don't know, like you can still walk in cold if you are bundled up, but you can't walk in direct sun. Like in Delhi for at least four months, the sun is unreasonably hot. You're going to be, you're going to get a sunstroke within five to 10 minutes of walking in the sun.
Like I just feel like that is probably not what happens in like a lot of European countries. But I also feel like, and this is coming from like, there has been a lot of Twitter discourse about the unwalkability of Indian cities and like specifically Bangalore, especially because the budget just came out. And so everybody's like complaining about the lack of like, you know, public goods, which is true. Like there is a lack of public goods in India.
And like people talk about this reason or that reason, but I feel like in case of Bangalore, I also think that they're just like infrastructurally, they're hostile to pedestrians. There have been so many places where they have recently, for example, installed these metal grills along the footpath. So you can't get on the road. And yeah, I get it that like, you know, jaywalking is a problem and a bigger problem is like two wheeler drivers getting on the footpath just to drive along that during traffic. But at the same time, like let's not stop people who are pedestrians from being able to cross roads.
And like that has happened on so many different streets, they would put dividers also between the like, you know, lanes so big that a pedestrian cannot cross it. And I'm just like, why are we so bad at this? Like why? Why are we so bad at this? So yeah, it's easy to be unfit in India. Yeah.
Because like here I will regularly cycle the distance from like, I would say all the way from north Bangalore, like where I used to live near ISE, the Indian Institute of Science, down to Kormangal and South Bangalore. And they'll just be like regularly I would cycle. I will cycle that distance here because it's just so easy, you know, it's like, it's there's not very many turns. There's no blockades. I can get on and off wherever I need to in between.
Whereas it's so yeah, exactly what you're saying, like even though the roads may be there, your ability to kind of traverse them is just kind of arduous. Yeah, I mean, like, so I was initially very excited moving to HSR. And like, I thought that, oh, I'd be able to like cycle around to different places and I even stole my sister's cycle. But I've just not cycled a lot because it's just really hard to use a two wheeler for transportation in Bangalore in general. And like to use a cycle where actually people can bump into you.
And it's just like, I don't want to put myself into that kind of risk. I know it's the same reason why I'm trying to stop myself from doing very much late night cycling. It's like we don't need to take on this kind of risk, especially if you may have had a drink or two. Like really, we can afford to take a taxi, even if it's a two wheeler bicycle. Yeah, we shouldn't drive while having had alcohol.
Yes, even if it was cycle. Yes. Actually, do you call bike in like, what do you call a bike in America, a bicycle or motorbike? So yeah, I've adjusted myself to say cycle because cycle is clear to everyone, whereas a bike to Indians is a bike with an engine, whereas a bike to Americans is a bicycle. Ah, interesting.
Have you driven a motorbike? Do you know how to? Yeah, well, I've driven a scooter in Goa a couple of times. Before we went into all of our detours on our bikes. Back to what we were actually trying to talk about, which was how you think about your complete self when you're thinking about your negotiations or what to do with your life or what decisions made the right decision for you.
You just totally changed it too much. Like we were talking very lightly and you went into like, let me now be serious. Yes. That's why I was trying to not make it go in that direction. Kahran has been thinking a lot about just this idea of like we have all different parts of our personality and how do we think about leveraging our unique strengths in all aspects of our lives.
And sometimes we don't even think about what are our strengths. We've had some conversations offline and I've had like a lot of different questions about it. So maybe like, you know, we'll just start from there. What about this topic got you interested in thinking about it? Like it's a fairly abstract topic and not a lot of people think about like, you know, how to think of your whole self, whether you're trying to think about your own future, think about negotiating your position in a place, anything right.
Like oftentimes people try to map or rather human mind tries to map one to one. So how did you go into? Okay, like what would be a way to think about it from different lenses? I think there's been a lot of factors that kind of like led to being able to start thinking in that way. Right. But I think a big part was what you and I talked about a few months ago, right, when we were like thinking about what are we doing with Joyce and how do we help ourselves feel satisfied by what we're creating and how we're operating the world, right.
Like what is this thing that we're bringing into an existence. And I think when we started to say, okay, what would feel satisfying and creating things that we felt like were of value would feel satisfying, right. So that was what took us to saying, okay, let's create some comics, let's create these interactive works of poetry. Now we're creating an interactive game. Right. All of these things are things that we feel like we're creating a value.
And it's a really different thing than looking and saying, oh, you know, how are we creating the perfect sales pitch to land the perfect client. And I think there's a lot of chasing of that that happens. Right. And that's not a satisfying. And I think in realizing that this could be so satisfying, it's just something that you can start to apply in other places and say, okay, you know, especially as our goalposts start to change later in life, right.
Maybe we're working for reasons that are outside of just the straight compensation. Well, it helps to just start to think about, well, what are those other things that are going to help you feel compensated? What feels satisfying? Was that only a partial answer? You look unsatisfied.
Yeah, it feels like that's too recent. And I think that like you are thinking more is probably much older than that. Yeah. So that's what I started to think about, but I felt like that would be too long of a story. You know, I think it starts with smaller things that you do that demonstrate to yourself that these things that may look frivolous are worth spending your time and effort on. Right. So for me, one of the first things that I did like that was right before I turned 30.
I took a sabbatical from the technology industry and I went to culinary school, right. And that was a large investment of money. Right. It was one of the biggest expenditures I had ever made. They could have bought a car, you know, several used cars for the price of what culinary school costs. And I think it was a demonstration to myself that these kind of things, these hobbies are things that are worth what investing in for me.
Right. And then as you start to do that over and over again, you start to just think about, okay, what are these things that make me feel like I'm feeling satisfied? Right. Or I'm feeling return or I'm feeling what maybe feels like even an outsized return based on what culture or past experience or whatever told me I should expect. And then if you start to lean into those, then you can start to feel like, okay, well, these are things that make me feel really satisfied. You know, so these are things where, you know, when I cook something really exciting or I can cook things that I can always cook something.
Right. Almost always. Right. It doesn't really matter what I have. I find that incredibly satisfying. So like it makes me think about like how over time you have picked up these pieces. I want to say where like you have looked at your life from a zoom out lens at the right moments and thought about, okay, how are all of the pieces contributing to it? Because like when we are trying to make any sort of quote unquote calculations in our mind, we generally think about only the neighboring regions. So like, let's say for example, when people are looking for, let's say a job, they are maybe thinking a lot about like, you know, oh, what would be the company like maybe what are the people going to be like, oh, is the work something that is meaningful to me? Like even if you are doing a quote unquote larger thinking, you are just thinking in scope of whatever falls under that job category.
But maybe you're not thinking about the fact that, oh, if I take a job in like, you know, this place which is closer to this set of friends who I haven't hung out in a while with, like, you know, I might be spending more time with them. Or like, you know, I would be spending less time with the friends who used to live closer to my other workplace. And what does that kind of thing impact my life, right? Like because here is personal relationships and how are they going to end up shaping something. It's more a feeling of that there's certain goals I'd like to optimize for in this moment. And those goals haven't always been straight compensation goals. But I don't know whether I'm doing a multi level optimization, I mean, to some degree, but I think a lot of the times I kind of trusting what I think is the right thing, even though I'll have a lot of doubt sometimes, right?
I think I had this moment in 2015, when I left the technology industry, where I was like, okay, I'd really like to spend some time with my family and I really thought about my aunt, particularly my dad's sister. And so when these opportunities came up over the next few months, first there was a consulting opportunity in Delhi, and then there was an opportunity to move to Bangalore. It felt to me very serendipitous in some way, whereas like, oh, you know, this was something I wanted to happen. And now these opportunities have come that I'm looking at as just good opportunities, right? They're good for my career, they'd be interesting, I'm excited about the work. And it just so happens that they're going to align with these goals that I really wanted to achieve that weren't necessarily maybe the most optimal. It was obvious of goals. To give you maybe a later example, I knew I wanted to go to culinary school and I was, I don't know, felt like it was the right school for me when I learned about the school, the one school I applied to, right?
And when I did decide to go at that point in my life, one of the things I was feeling like is I was finally single and comfortable with being gay, and I'd been living in India for two years, three years at that point, right? And it just so happened that this culinary school I wanted to go to was in New York City, which is like the heart of gayness in America, maybe after San Francisco, right? So it just kind of worked out, right? And then similarly, I'm excited about starting an MFA program in the fall, and I have realized kind of been working with my therapist that one of the goals that I have over the next kind of few years is to like just understand what spirituality means to me, that it is this kind of trait that I'm interested in kind of deepening my understanding. And the MFA I'm really excited about going to is this place that really is steeped in a Buddhist tradition and has a lot of those elements. And I don't know, it's, I spent kind of two summers writing there, it just kind of worked out that it would be the right place for me to apply to when it came to an MFA program.
So I'm very cognizant that the reason why I pay more attention to these opportunities and why it feels like they're the right ones is because they're meeting all these goals that maybe I'm subconsciously acknowledged to myself. And I'm probably ignoring other opportunities that are coming by me because they're not meeting those goals and I'm not as excited about them, but these ones stand out to me because I'm like, right? Like were there other summer writing programs I looked at before I found the one in Boulder? Absolutely. But none of them really stood out to me, but this one did. And now when I'm looking for MFA is it just feels like the right one, right? So it's like, it is serendipitous, but also there was a series of decisions that led to it being serendipitous and led to you being aware and open to something in this moment at the right moment. I think maybe I should say.
Like I don't think that one can actually plan for these kind of things, right? At the larger scale, you can't really dictate your life and the path it's going to take. I don't know how else to put it, but like you can't dictate what kind of people you're going to meet in your MFA, let's say. You kind of can, right? Because you know what kind of people be attracted. I hope for a little bit, but you can't control who's going to be there and who's not going to be there. But like at the same time, you will have to be in a certain mind space and then you can make the best of whatever is in front of you. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. Like I'm sure my life would have been very different if I went to a different college or like, you know, if I did a different, like I say this many times to my friends that like the fact that I got the degree that I did and I did so poorly in it.
Is probably one of the reasons why I was forced to look for something else. And so like I found design. If I was, you know, like if I was getting like a seven out of 10, instead of getting like a less than six out of 10 on a lot of courses, then I would probably be like, oh, but if only I put in a little bit more effort. Because like I feel like it's very easy to sort of try and push yourself into, oh, I should have worked just a little bit harder when the thing is just out of reach. Like when your quote unquote outcome is just out of reach, or maybe like at least since college I've always felt this that just good enough outcomes are waivers than bad outcomes because in the long run just good enough outcomes actually make you detune with yourself because then you're so focused on the outcome. Could you say a little bit more in this context? In the sense that like when does one ask oneself what do I truly want? And this could be a cultural context thing as well. But like at least in India it's not very common to ask yourself what do I truly want to do.
In most cases people are doing things because they are the right things to do. And I think that like being forced into a position where even though I was quote unquote doing the right thing, it really was clearly not right for me. Then I had to ask myself what is the right thing for me. Again, like there is definitely cultural context here. Like, you know, if you're dating someone and they are horrible, it's easy to leave them. But if you're dating someone and it's just lukewarm, it's so hard to leave that situation because half of the world will also tell you why are you leaving this situation? It's fine. Like you can't get everything. And so you also tell yourself you can't get everything. And that's where like, you know, also what you were talking about in terms of compensation feels interesting to me because for a lot of people they don't even think that like these extra things are things that can be optimized for. So they try and optimize for the money, which seems easy and doable and nobody can complain that you're optimizing for money. So you just keep optimizing for more and more money.
I was having this conversation with a friend who works in UK. He works in a nice job and he's getting paid like a decent amount of money. And he's like, I work four hours a day. My work is all remote. I volunteer at the library. I'm learning how to download salsa. I have music classes. I have so many other friends. I go to the beach every day. I like read a lot. And he's like, do I want to compromise this for maybe 20% more money, which is like, which would mean that like, you know, I am now working 12 hours days instead of four hours days. And it's just like, you know, it's such an interesting way to look at life. Yeah, my dad was actually having a conversation he was telling me about with a CEO of a company that he's on the board of that they're thinking about kind of pursuing a more aggressive growth. And that would mean taking on more debt, which means we'd be adding more people to the board. And he was like, right now they just they have a really cushy thing, right? Every six months they have these board meetings, like every other one is like in a very exotic place. The senior management also comes and if they hit the really big target, they'll go somewhere crazy.
Like they've gone to Mexico, they went to Italy. And it's just like, if you're a really professional board, that's not going to happen, right? You're not going to have these kind of expenditures. And it was just interesting, right? Because he was talking about it's like, you know, what are you going to achieve with the faster growth rate? Is that worth it? Right? Is it worth kind of changing the lifestyle that you have? And in the end, you know, eventually went along with the kind of what my father was suggesting, because it's true. It's like valuing those non tangible just valuing your life. Sometimes it's really useful. You know, you can't just value the money and compensation. There is this funny story I heard on a podcast. It was with an NBA player and he was talking about how one of the reasons why NBA players are infamous for going broke. I don't know if you know this, right? So basketball players, right, that they will make a huge amount of money. They have very short playing careers, right? Oftentimes they're over by the time they're 30, they will become multimillionaires and then lose all that money, right? And what he was talking about is that money is not just your money, right? That money when you grow up in the way that a lot of these kids grow up, right? The neighborhood all feels like they raised you and the neighborhood also all feels like they have a claim, right?
So they're like, oh, you know, like I needed a new refrigerator or this thing is gone. Well, who are you going to call? You're going to call the rich boy from the neighborhood. And so that's where the money goes. And so it's like it's financial planning. But like what people also really need is not just financial planning. It's also like how to handle these situations and people don't learn that. This makes me think about like how one needs to think about their own unique context. Also, when it comes to these things, like some of my friends say that until they got married, they were seen a particular way by their family. And the moment they got married, suddenly they were like treated as more adult or more mature. Like I'm specifically talking about women. Like suddenly the family is like no longer sort of trying to nose into all your decisions and like socially seen as more quote unquote valid or whatever. My parents had a pet name for me that they've used my entire life until sometime around when I got married. I don't know what happened, but now they just they never call me anything. They only call me my name.