Every activity is expected to have a Mission, Goal, Activity and Conclusion. Great. When I was in school (or even in college perhaps) there were 3 things that I thought I must do.

1. Get a PhD in some subject
2. Publish a book
3. Win a Medal

Over the past 2 decades I lost interest in all 3 stupid claims to fame. I got offers to write a thesis – and pay Rs. 2 L and get a PhD. It could have been “why SIP works but SWP does not work”. It would have meant nothing for me. So there, the PhD went out of the window. I never wanted to teach in a college – or be the editor of a magazine – nor be in a sarkari committee. So the PhD was not attractive at all. I still get more training assignments than I want. I am happy to do far more SALES programs for the end customer than for the IFA. However, the industry does not think that way. I work with a few mutual funds, and have stopped looking for fund houses outside my competence circle of 5 fund houses. Thanks remaining 37, I am now done.

I used to do a lot of training – and that got Deepa Gopalan (aka Deepa Venkataraghavan) who nudged me to start writing a column for Moneycontrol. She would market that to Rediff, and others. Then came Money Today (Babar Zaidi, Kamiya) who gave me interesting case studies. Then came ET Wealth (Babar Zaidi)…and then it just vanished. However I had enough material to write a book. So a book on wealth creation – but named “Retire Rich: Invest Rs. 40 a day” was born. Now this book became a hit far beyond my dreams. This book has sold more than many personal finance books put together. It just sold. So a new version was launched recently – which many parents have bought. At least about 20+ parents have told me that their children are liking it.

That enthused me to write a book “Wealth Prescription for Doctors” – which obviously did not sell as much, and the publisher perhaps thought it would. How anybody could think so beats me – the number of books buying doctors is not so much. Maybe about 10,000 doctors were the target audience. Maybe hostels and medical colleges I am not sure we put in enough effort, but it did sell…well about a number which makes me happy, but not the publisher.

The third book was ‘Goal Based Investing: You can be Rich too” – with Pattabhiraman the owner of a calculator driven website Freefincal. Reasonably successful, but I guess these days people prefer reading online – and calculators anyway needed to be online.

So the desire to ‘publish’ is satiated – except to ‘milk’ the ability to sell more books. No. I am not in any race to publish more books. My desire to be a ‘Large selling’ author was met with luck and now I am happy blogging. The desire to publish has just vanished.

I may still publish, but well…

I started running half marathons and I realized that to get a medal all one needed to do was to fill up a participating form. If you went to the race, great, or the medal was couriered home. So simple. A huge, huge waste of resources. So stopped taking medals even if I attend the race. If I do collect I give it away to some kid who wants it…

That is the story of my GOALS.

Should you write a book? of course you should. If you take pride in saying “I published a book” or 2 books or 11 books…I am not in that race anymore.

I still wish to publish a few books – aimed at a specific audience and a fiction book. Not sure when I will find the energy to do it.

What do I really enjoy? talking about money. Blogging about money.

A book on equity is in my head. A book for teachers. A book for……….