Looking back.
20 Jun 2021I have a total of 35 ideas on my Notion page, 10 are “hot ideas” i.e ones on which I definitely do want to write. Most are product and business-related where I’ve to either do small research or just summarise with structure.
Yet, I keep coming back to typing on ancillary personal things. Maybe since Twitter is where I’d primarily post the former. Owing to extended WFH and bad work-life balance - I find Twitter to be too overwhelming and have almost stopped the usage. As a result, this blog is where I’m posting my thought and it’s mostly personal, always helps me clear my mind.
TLDR ~ I really like how this blog has turned out to be akin to therapy :D
Anywho. What’s with the title. I recently came across a tweet by Kunal Shah
“Comparing with others is the fastest and most reliable way to remain unhappy in life.
Comparing yourself against your past while having an image and personal goal for future is a non-toxic way to achieve progress.”
P.S - Really wanted to embed the tweet but it seems you need to have a plugin for it. Since I built the site on Github Pages, they disable the plugins for security reason. Here’s the link to tweet in case you want to see Indian techbois go crazy, as they do on KS’s timeline.
And this really hit me. I had been unusually hard on myself and anxious about it. Between performance at work, non-existent personal life and thoughts about the future (The return of a la MBA), it’s been super stressful week and invariable insecurity as I come face a bleak prospect of what is gonna happen 10 years down the line. The unknown - unknown as my colleague calls this :)
Some time back I interviewed for a PM job, cleared it and declined before they rolled out a final offer. I did that as I realised that’s not what I want to do for valid reasons. I wrote a mail to HR who was extremely professional during the whole process and as I actually enjoyed the whole process and firm - I even offered to connect them to people looking out.
The hiring Manager reached out and had a chat where he narrated his own perspective and also about how much potential I have. This was followed by his suggestion to come and work there, get “brand tag” and go for a solid Ivy MBA that would 10x my career. It always is good to hear when someone expresses confidence in you but I had buried the MBA hatchet for good and this came up like an old wound :(
This was followed by randomly coming across Dalan’s blog and reading his vvvvvvv relevant experience on same.
The triggering post in order of anxiety :
Normally - I exasperate for a few days and things settle down. Not this time, some more ancillary things happened, maybe those contributed as well but it’s fair to say - I don’t have a confident verdict on the MBA thing.
Somewhere deep down, I know Dalan is right. I don’t plan to startup. It’s tough to get calls from aspirational place. Most people I have asked have given mixed answers and I’ve mainly fed the answers with confirmation bias to base my decisions and partly how I’m actually a bad rat who has to go through the grunt again, something I feel is not fair. I did awesome work. Let me continue to do so. Why subject me to standardized exam, atrocious grade and classes again :/
All right, rant over. Now, back to tweet - Among all this, I really did lose the plot and felt quiet down the whole week. So this tweet triggered a thought stream that made me realise that I should appreciate what I’ve done for myself.
As a naive 21 year graduating from sorta unknown college to doing some awesome work, working with top-notch people and continuously getting an awesome opportunity. Not to mention, a pay that I never anticipated would come this earlier in my career. Part luck, part hard work and lot of perseverance and more to come.
It’s very easy to default to comparing pay with friends as that’s an objective metric. Never mind that most of my friends are rockstar developer who are literally like unicorns among the sea of a unicorn. But I think, I’ve done well for myself and I do wish to continue the same.
What I should be grateful especially about is the fact that I can feel the progress I’ve made - on a personal and professional front that is actually visible to me. I think that counts a lot. 1% better every day.
I so want to end with that image of 1.01 raised to power 365 but I think this has been cheesy enough.
See you all next week!
Cheers!
Shobhit