Investing Time

As soon as you have the capacity to detach, and not be a productive asset, you are playing a completely different game. 

If YOU are “not required”. You have the ability to invest time. This may, or may not, be for something that will turn you back into a productive asset. 

Some areas require years of education before there is any sign of output. Sometimes, you even need to put in years of education just to be able to understand the signs! 

Money is a blunt cross-discipline tool to demonstrate output in areas others don’t understand. Someone pays you to do that? Someone pays you a lot to do that? Ok, it must be valuable. 

Not needing to demonstrate value in the short term allows you to go through long stretches of not knowing what you are doing. Asking embarrassing questions. Feeling annoying. Connecting dots. Mapping your ignorance. Not being respected. 

We sort people based on how quickly they pick things up. Sometimes, deep understanding requires admitting ignorance AND YET persisting. 

We have a bias to monitoring and action. For some things to do their work, they need to be left alone. For some things to do their work, they can’t also have to do the communication work of keeping others regularly informed.

"Show me the Money"

50-15-5-Rule

Money can make money. 

A path to freeing yourself from being a productive asset is the 50-15-5-Rule. If you have an income stream because YOU are a productive asset being paid for your work, and you have capacity to gain significant control over your expenses, you can apply this rule. 

It starts by not consuming everything you produce. 

If you can invest half (50%) every year, for 15 years, and your money makes 5% real return (paid $5 for each $100 that works, AFTER all expenses and inflation)… then your capital can grow to the point where your money makes as much money as you were spending. 

These are aggressive assumptions. Investing half is hard. 15 years is long. 5% is proper work for proper money. 

All that said... it is possible to get to the point where you have an engine. 

An engine is capital that (on average), earns more than you spend (on average). 

If you sustainably spend less than your money sustainably earns, then you are no longer bound by the constraints of money on how you spend your time and energy.

Half

Connected Energy

Real understanding of what is permanent, and what really matters, is the step you need to go through for true liberation. For the ability to engage effortlessly. 

You can still be doing amazing things, but without the weight of anxiety that sits on you. You build a practice that gets you to that stage over the long term. It takes commitment. A commitment that connects what you do every day. Small goals that add up. 

The productivity that matters is the *compounding* of a productive asset. The real driver is not simply being noisily creative, but whether that creativity is connected. Reinvesting rather than consuming energy and life. 

Where the outcome of what we do is not just something we have now. Where we become custodians, with constant growth through the pulsing cycle of life. 

We can come back into “the system” rather than simply raging against it. Adapting, adjusting, accomodating. Starting from where you are. Connecting to where others are. Compounding rather than consuming. 

Where what you do is not just about you and hand-to-mouth survival. Where what you do is driven by real understanding of why you are doing it.

Where does your energy go?

Boxing for Respect

When relationships are transactional, there is a need for conspicuous action in order to earn respect. 

Like insisting that someone does half the chores. Famously, in most relationships if you ask everyone what percentage of the chores they do, it always adds up to more than 100%. We know what we do. We only see what is conspicuous from others. 

When you have to box for respect, there is a temptation to indulge in destructive behaviour. If you don’t get recognised, you may tear the other person down, “I don’t think your choices are all that fantastic”. Or you have to pump yourself up, “I am actually quite a big deal.” 

To release yourself from this wrestling match, there is a need to internalise your own sense of value. To let go of the need to be a conspicuously productive asset. To let go of the constant call to prove yourself to other people, particularly if it is conflicting with your own values. 

Then your choices can become relational. There is no scorecard. There are no metrics. You give (and receive) without measure.

Ancient Greek Boxers

Framework for Release

Financial Yoga is a framework for release from seeing yourself as a productive asset. An asset is not simply something you have. 

It is true that you can buy and sell things that are not productive. They can be referred to as an asset, even though they do not do anything. They may even go up in price if more people want the thing, and more is not made. 

Cash can be a wasting asset. Something that reduces in value because of inflation and costs (e.g. in a money market fund, or because of bank charges). 

What makes an asset something that can release the necessity for you to earn money, is when the asset itself earns money. If that money is reinvested, then the asset can grow, and earn more. By working rather than wasting. 

Property can be a productive asset, if you get rent from it, but you are not making anything. So if you live in the property, you should not consider it an asset. You are consuming what it produces. The same for cars if you are driving them for you. For most people who own them, their house and car is not there biggest asset. They are. Their capacity to earn is. 

Productive assets are not valued for what they are, they are valued for what they produce. That is why you do not want to be a productive asset. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not everything we should do, should make money. 

Count yourself lucky if the thing you are passionate about, and competent at, is also something that makes money. To finance the difficult-to-monetize good ideas, you need to solve the funding problem and generate energy from good business ideas.

Release

Releasing Constraints

Building an engine (Capital which can work on your behalf) creates the capacity to stop focusing on yourself as an individual. We all have to eat. Many of us have dependents who rely on us financially. Which unfortunately means we can be seen as productive assets. Valued for the money that consumes the majority of our time. A few get the perfect combination of “what you are good at, what people want, and what you love”. Applying all three filters cuts out a lot of activity. Things you are good at and love, that don’t pay? Things people want, and you love, but you aren’t “good” at? People can get stuck doing things that people want and that they are good at, but they don’t love. Many people can’t pick and choose. They take the opportunities presented, and are too busy being a productive asset and meeting obligations to have capacity to breathe and change path. And life passes them by. If you want to stop seeing yourself as a productive asset, you need to build an engine that replaces your need to earn money. If you need to earn money (as most people do), there will be real world constraints of supply and demand that form the boxes in which we are paid. The hold of those constraints gets released if you can gradually create breathing space. 

 

Dum and Dee

People don’t need to be Productive Assets. Yet we know it costs money to live. You can’t opt out of reality. “Asset Liability Matching” (ALM) is a tool used by Actuaries to manage the risk of future obligations. If you know you are going to have to pay a variable amount in the future, it helps if the assets   put aside to pay that amount vary in the same way. The “Lifestyle to which you are accustomed” is lazy man’s ALM. You spend whatever you earn. When the month’s money runs out, you self-isolate till pay day. The only discipline required is to earn more money. The only solution available is income and work. Doing more. But you can also reduce risk by initially building a buffer (Emergency Funds) and then gradually building an Engine (Capital that can earn money by working). This requires new types of discipline. The money is “there” but not there to be spent. Your Lifestyle has to be within self-regulated constraints. Spending chunks of the Engine is firing your money. Our primary liability is the money we have to spend. Matching that to your income will mean you have to be a Productive Asset. Matched to your spending. Detachment is the first step to freedom.

Don't match your Income and Spending

Building Redundancy

The foundations matter more than the fireworks. A key to Capitalism is the idea that you can make yourself redundant if you are an owner. Ownership is absolutely fundamental and not negotiable. Exponential Growth means what you see now isn’t comparable to the end number if you have skin in the game. Especially if the culture is one of “we hire smart people and leave them alone”. If there is no facetime monitoring, then it doesn’t matter how much of your own sweat went into getting a job done. It matters if the job is done. Plenty of managers gradually find people they trust, and do less of the work themselves. If they are buddies with the people cutting the pie up, and were there when the foundations were being built, they can put their running shoes on and head off to the park while the machine keeps moving. Get a corner office. Work on “strategic thinking”. Make sure the effort you are putting in is foundation building. If you are living hand-to-mouth, it is likely you are building someone else’s redundancy.

Redundant Power Supply

Scarcity and Abundance

Life preparation was very gendered in the bubble I grew up in. One example of this was that Mathematics was compulsory in High School for boys, but not for girls. I lived in a Patriarchal society where men ruled outside the home, and women ruled inside. Feminism was rising (at a lag), but it was very much focused on Choice for women. No pressure (different pressure). What would you like to do (you should probably do this)? Let’s chip away at the obvious obstacles (well, do our best). Girls doing Boys’ things is serious. Boys doing Girls’ things is funny. Implicitly acknowledging a hierarchy of where we place value. For Boys, choices were squashed and pragmatism was promoted. How are you going to put food on the table? Put childish choices aside. Man up. The horrible truth of the world is that if you follow what you love, it is often harder to monetise. In part, because a fundamental of love is abundance, and a fundamental of money-making is scarcity. In a gendered world, it was women who focused on love, and men who financed it.

Unwinding Scarcity

What Reality Counts

Not everything that counts can be counted. Investment is not a game you play where Risk and Return are knowable and the only two items on the scoreboard. What you do genuinely matters. Fundamentally. It’s not a game. My biggest quibble with wealth creation is the illusion of control and associated arrogance that can arise in people who have “done well”. Like the TV series Westworld where the penny drops about “what are we actually doing here?”, it is easy for us to get fooled by randomness. To see patterns we want to see. To get lost in our own illusions. At times of major crisis, you need to look beyond the numbers. What really matters? What is a distraction? What is the core that will allow you to rebuild? What are you building and why? Throw away the stop watch. The time sheets. The productivity measures. Time and opportunity cost lose their power. Repurpose to meet the challenge.

What really matters?

Detachment Device

Disability Insurance is the most important form of cover when we are expected to be productive assets. It doesn’t cover your ability to live. It covers your ability to earn. Those are different things. If you aren’t “useful” to someone else, the costs of life continue. Insurance Companies also provide cover for non-income earning activities like Daily Tasks, because normally when people can’t do things like open a door, pick up a cup, or walk up stairs, the world doesn’t treat them as well. We revolve around self sufficiency. Around utility. Around transactions. It’s brutal. When we think of insurance, often it is Life Insurance that is the first thought, but the sad truth is a person’s earning capacity or cost that is what is being covered. You can’t ensure life. Like insurance on a sentimental ring, it covers the dollar amount, not the sentiment. Building Capital or getting insurance are simply means to take that angst off the table. A detachment device to allow someone to be a someone, not a means to an end.  

Lotus - soaring over muddy waters 

yet still producing beauty

Being Productive

An Engine is Capital which earns (on average) more than you spend (on average). Capital can earn money in the same way as people can for their labour. Both can be productive assets. Either as lenders (being paid interest/salaries) or as owners (being paid through dividends and growth). Both can be weighed and measured by concepts like Meritocracy. Afrikaans has an appropriate saying for the idea of treating people as productive assets. It gives “’n klein bietjie kots in my mond”, which translates as… a little bit of vomit in my mouth. Money and Capital are fungible. That means they can be put to multiple uses, and one dollar is exactly the same as another. One person is not exactly the same as another. Money can get 20 jobs (or 1000), but a person typically has to focus on one (although jobs for life are now rare). A Base is Capital which earns (on average) more than you need to spend. A Base can provide you with a Basic Income. A Basic Income provides space to breathe, removes the panic, and empowers you to make basic choices beyond survival as a productive asset.

Savour v Seek

Before the year 1800, the world was very different. There were less than 1 Billion of us. Although scattered around the world speaking different languages, our day to day lives were not that dissimilar. Different rituals, beliefs and ways of seeing, but we were mostly poor, illiterate farmers. One way to describe what has happened since then is massive, unsustainable, growth. In a world of farmers, idleness is a significant vice. You need every hand available to assist in the fight for survival. That deep-rooted driver to be 'doing something productive' - meant less conscious sitting, conscious breathing, conscious discussion. There was work to be done. We spent the last 200 years growing out of scarcity. Much of the work we need to do over the next 200 years will be growing into abundance. Learning to savour rather than seek.

Work and Wires

When I visualise the future, I don't see a world where Technology has taken over and there are devices and gizmos everywhere. I see wires and chunky invasive things slowly being replaced with nature and space. I see small becoming possible again. AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky mentions tasks being divided into the hand, the head, and the heart. Industrialisation replaces the hand as machines scale up to do unskilled tasks far more efficiently than our multipurpose biology could ever dream of. Blue collars get replaced by steel. Next will come the head tasks. We are not far away from White collars being replaced. What proportion of the jobs of Lawyers, Actuaries, Doctors, Engineers, Architects are algorithms. Strings of instructions. If it is something you can be told how to do, a computer can do it.

Bye Bye White Collar

Bluetooth removes wires. What happens when Artificial Intelligence removes work? We are already used to being able to work remotely and farm out tasks. If you can send instructions, a computer can do it. Unless you are part of a very small set of people who are asking for unusual/creative things to be done, a computer can likely learn from all the other times it has been done. All driverless cars can automatically know about a pothole once one has gone through it. What happens when work and wires disappear?

The future I see is where obstacles have been removed. The technology acts as a platform. AirBnB is a great example. Why didn't people invite people into their homes before? Because it was hard. They aren't building anything, they are removing obstacles, making things easier and opening up connections. The stuff that can't be replaced is more than an instruction. It is the interaction of people, places, objects, time and space.

Google turns the idea of having a product you have to sell on its head. Most people think they never click on adverts. They don't even know the search results are the advert. They don't know how Google makes money. Amazon turns the idea of making a profit on its head. Over an incredibly long period they build a bigger and bigger business through reinvestment. What if an Artificial Intelligence business able to do all sorts of remote jobs better than people reinvested its profits by Giving Directly. What if that extended to the point where every human on the planet suddenly started receiving a universal income of around $75,000? This would seem odd. Like Google 'giving away' free search. But what if the AI realised that if everyone had 'enough', they would have far more people using their services? What if more people using Goomazon meant a bigger Goomazon?

I think there is a world beyond work. A world beyond an exchange economy. It is exciting. It means we have to start thinking about time in ways beyond productivity. It means we have to think of motivation beyond building something. It means we start getting into the juicy parts of life.

We get to savour life.

My Mini Me, Your Mini Me

Things are complicated. I know that, but you don't have to play. The Swiss 10-Year Bond yield is now negative. That may sound complicated and there are lots of things that happen around that, but it can be simple. If you buy this bond, what you are doing is lending the Swiss Government money for 10 years. Lending is however an odd word since you will be paying for the pleasure. How much people will buy this 'loan' from you for may vary during the 10 years, but if you just hold it (and ignore inflation), you know what your, sorry I mean the borrowers, return will be. I have always struggled with bonds (as in why to buy them) and so do not claim to be an expert in any way. Many of the bond experts I know don't actually invest their own money in bonds. They improve the returns for other investors who have already chosen to invest in bonds. That is a valuable service, but not encouraging for people looking for something to invest in.

Source: The Washington Post & Bloomberg

I wrote about how money isn't actually a thing. The rich don't have 'hoards' of wealth. Money basically serves as a paper trail for ownership and a signal of potential spending power. Stuff happens, money just indicates who it is happening for and helps it happen. I like to think of money as an employee... or a Mini Me. Unless you are born to wealth, you are the primary employee to start in Me Inc. If you put your money in cash, you are allowing your Mini Me to work for someone else. Since so many people put their money in cash, there is no need to pay you very much, if anything at all. This is why Banks don't pay very much return on money market accounts. Supply is not limited. Putting your money in cash is like letting your Mini Me have a sleep at the bank until you need them. The Bank then lends out your Mini Mes (keeping a few in case people need them), but charges a more reasonable rate and asks some questions of the borrowers. It doesn't just lend indiscriminately. That is why people and businesses have to make a case to borrow. The bank wants to know that the money is going to be used productively and is likely to be paid back.

If you 'invest' in a bond, you are lending money. The bond just allows you to sell the loan to someone else. This means you are the one lending the Mini Me rather than the bank. The yield is the salary your Mini Me is paid. Or in the case of Switzerland, the salary you pay for your Mini Me to work. In all cases the value of whatever work the Mini Me does goes to the borrower. A Government will spend your money and if they are good, invest in infrastructure and services that improve the quality of life for citizens. They will pay you back through taxes, future borrowing, or printing more money. Unlike governments (and lay people), a business shouldn't borrow just to spend. A rational business owner will only borrow the Mini Me if they believe that he will make more than the salary required. That is where the wealth will go.

If instead of letting your Mini Me sleepover at the bank, or go work for the Government, you get it to work for you, you get to keep whatever is made. If you don't use it, Mini Me grows bigger. If you are both feeding him aggressively and he is doing stuff that lets him feed himself, he grows faster and faster. Eventually Mini Me becomes Min Me, then Mi Me, then mMe and finally Me. At that point, if you don't change your required standard of living, you can go do something else. You won't work for money, your money will work for you.

I do believe the markets are pretty efficient. What I think that means is that they are good at balancing supply and demand and moving assets around to where they are productive. The problem is that who gets the benefit of the productivity depends on who decides to let their Mini Me sleep, work for someone else or work for them. Some people will gladly pay you nothing or let you pay them to let your Mini Me work for them. My issue with the idea of the Efficient Market is that people think cash and bonds are risk free assets. We are taught that equities are risky assets. How many times have you been told that you should slowly shift assets to hold more bonds as you get older to reduce risk. Risk is much more complicated than that. Very important to know though is that it is wrong to think that you get paid to take risk and can naively take risk off the table. At the moment, cash and bonds are return free risk. The only thing you know is that your Mini Me will be waiting for you when you decide to use him.

I will keep My Mini Me to myself thank you very much. And I will make sure he is doing something productive.

*I will make former colleagues in compliance proud by putting a disclaimer. This is not advice and I take no responsibility for you acting on it. This is the way I think. We are all responsible for our own decisions. The one thing you can't choose is to take no risk. You can choose to try and understand the risks you take. Good luck. Have you hugged your compliance officer today?

Order v Spice

Two important motivators beyond money are a sense of control and of variety. The two fight each other a little since pleasant surprises are awesome but control prevents negative surprises. Outside of the work environment, many have a desire to just let things be. We don't want to apply the same 'productive rigour' we do in the office at home. I am certainly guilty of my personal admin being nowhere close to as in order as my work stuff. We don't want to do things like balanced scorecards, annual reviews, core values and team meetings since they start making life seem like a business. We separate business like conduct from personal conduct. One example of this is the way relationship building is approached from a business perspective. It is very helpful to keep a record of meetings to refer back to. The approach may be to make sure you speak to someone at least once a quarter, see them in person at least once a year, and ensure that you respond in a timely and considered fashion to their questions or issues. How many friends do you apply that to? Quite often I can end up not seeing a friend who is very important to me and then have to take a wander through my mind to figure out when the last time we saw each other was. At worst, I don't even know what is important to them any more.

Atul Gawande wrote a very interesting book called 'The Checklist Manifesto' where he looked at the impact of checklists on various professions including Nursing and Pilots. He believes that sometimes important things just get missed, not on purpose, but because of the way our minds work. Part of the strength of the human brain is the ability to fill in gaps and make jumps. This means our minds are comfortable with holes. Without a consciousness check, nurses may miss appropriate tests and pilots may think they have flicked a particular switch (partly because they have flicked that switch thousands of times and so the memory of having done it may be a memory from much further back). This has multiple applications. Investment analysts may have lists they work through to make sure they have covered the important bases in analysing a business. Teachers may have lists to check that they have looked for various progress milestones for their students.

When it comes to personal relationships, we seem to have an inbuilt resistance alarm that goes off immediately when thing seem too constructed or ordered. Even in the work environment, those lists seem an infringement on our authority over our choices. The temptation is to go with the flow. Important stuff can then get missed. Birthdays is the obvious example. Even just seeing or talking to friends is another. I think one of the issues that messes with happiness is that we end up not giving the attention we want to give to some things, not because they aren't important, but because we simply didn't think of it. When we remember, we berate ourselves. Martial Arts are well known for their routines. I have added a video of a little kid doing his first kata. Developing set movements helps ensure the bases are covered. I do the same in the style of yoga I practise and teach. There are 12 basic postures you work through to make sure nothing important is left out. As long as you don't cut out spice and surprise, making sure you make some time for everything that is important is vital. Use it or lose it.

http://www.sivananda.co.uk/

Get Lost

There are some things you can measure and some things you can't. Having a clear, objective, quantifiable goal can be addictive - it can let you feel like you have everything under control. It is much easier to be productive when you can say, 'these are the three things I want to achieve today', and then to tick them off. We apparently get a hit of dopamine when we do manage to hit these targets.

A child with the spending power of an adult would struggle to make it down the tantrum tunnel. You know that tunnel of sweets by the check out counter when the parent is trapped and the kid has to survive to the end without blowing their minds. The risk when you try measure everything is that you become the child rather than the adult. The measures are so sweet, you can't think of anything else.

Source: Hardwareretailing.com

What I am wanting to study and talk about are the obstacles to learning new skills. What I don't want to focus on is the efficiency side of things. Tim Ferris is doing some awesome work in his Four Hour Series showing ways to free up time by doing things better and cutting out waste. Incorporating productivity measures is great, but above that I do think there is stuff we simply can't measure.

Malcolm Gladwell talked about needing 10,000 hours of practice to become world class at something. Matthew Syed continued with the idea and spoke of how practice needs to be purposeful. Ken Robinson wrote about the need to find that place where talents and desire intersect and how those who succeeded found that powerful combination.

So you need to put the time in. There need to be objective criteria. You need to love what you do.

There is also some value in going off the clock. In stopping measuring and getting a little lost. When you use satellite navigation to get somewhere, sometimes you are not able to get there by yourself. Above that, you don't discover the flavour off the route. I spoke the other day of our 'Sense of Authenticity' - I think part of method acting or our ability to tell if someone is talking about something someone else does or something they have done is our ability to tell if it is worth doing in and of itself. I love the Afrikaans word 'Kuier' - it translates as visit, but that doesn't quite capture it. When you 'Kuier', you are in no rush and you have no measurable goal. Yes there is an intersection of 'talent and desire' but it isn't explosive, it is comfortable. Beyond the very valid points Ferris, Gladwell, Syed and Robinson make about finding success - I think perhaps one of the things we haven't explored enough is the value of regularly just getting lost in the things we love.

Making the Best

We are given very little time and lots of options. We are given wonderful imaginations that can vividly imagine 'What if' scenarios. We can empathise. We can dream. We can remember. And we can do. Sometimes I like to imagine that any choice that I had to make, or any thing that that happened to me also happened the other way. Every left turn also had a right turn. I did both. All that is left is then to make the best of this path, because that is what the other 'mes (mees?)' are doing. Trying to 'make the best' though is a rather western approach. For the most part, we obsess about productivity. We love things that are measurable. We don't want to waste time. We want to see improvement. Meditation is a particularly good example of where we struggle. You sit down, close your eyes and get really frustrated at how hard it is to still your mind. For the most part, we choose other activities that are active because then that grabs our attention and we don't think about our worries.

For most of the history of mankind, we lived in extreme poverty. We are making massive inroads into eradicating it. It is awe inspiring to watch what is happening in China and the rest of the developing world when we take a step back and look at the facts.

I think our obsession with productivity and measurables has had a large part to play in that. The question is - what happens next? While the developed world has helped the developing world to lift themselves up, I think we have a lot to learn from cultures that focus more on the things you can't measure. It is not just the East that has some of the ideas though. On my reading list is 'In Praise of Idleness' by Bertrand Russell described on the cover as 'a collection of essays in which he espouses the virtues of cool reflection and free enquiry; a voice of calm in a world of maddening unreason'.

Deciding what to measure and what to just experience.

Exciting times.

A Crazy Potter Who Likes Tea

Whenever I visit John Bauer, it is like been transported into some parallel, rather odd universe.

John is a potter. A crazy potter. A crazy potter who likes tea. And John the crazy potter who likes tea will have a cup up tea with you in his rather odd universe in Greenwood Road, Harfield Village. You would not need a house number. His house/study/universe is rather obvious.

John reminds me of the movie 'The Prestige'. The reason for this is that when you first meet him, it seems like he is acting. Think of some amalgamation between the Queens English, a libertine, a conservative, a west end theatre actor and you may have a taste of his strange world. Why I say he reminds me of 'The Prestige' is the consistency with which he lives this life.

It is not stretching the truth to say he lives pottery. It is everywhere, and he lives within his workshop - constantly producing.

John is a good example of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours combined with no fear of making mistakes. There is stuff he does which can't be taught. He has stumbled across new techniques as he becomes fascinated by the 'errors' he makes and tries to build on their beauty.

Needless to say, I am a big fan of his work.

The Bees that came to live with John...

The Power of Play

The chapter 'Fields of Play' in Postrel's book looks at a subject familiar to many motivational talks which reposition work as play. That is not how she talks about it. She is talking of the importance of having a 'playful' spirit when approaching serious topics. Of knowing the rules really well, but then knowing where to test/break them. Of bringing together different fields of thought or activity and trying out new combinations. What Seth Godin calls being a heretic.

I am conscious though of the romance of this all. And though a romantic at heart, a few well directed kicks to the head and stomach have made me a little more cynical.

I agree and like the idea of playfulness and experimentation in learning. Children learn through play, and adults are normally really good at something when they really enjoy it... i.e. when they are still learning and they are still playing. But... it does also take hard work. It does also take sucking up some of the tough stuff in the beginning, and putting the hours in in order to play later. Few people get to wake up every day and do only the things they love doing all the time.

At some stage we all have to 'eat our vegetables'. Sometimes, you start enjoying the veggies. Sometimes, you just eat them so you can have your pudding.