Annual letter to peers, mentors and benefactors — 2020
Letter 3 of 25
2020. What a year!
If I were asked to describe this year, I wouldn’t be able to. It is weird, because I believe I am good at describing things.
It was tough to get through the day, but the months flew by. This year, more than any other year, this saying seems to be true.
But even in all this uncontrolled chaos and controlled lockdowns, few things came around. In my personal life. Like the ending of some part of a book series.
I closed a lot of open chapters in my life.
I have a habit of writing random thoughts in a notebook (online), whenever I have them. Back in 2019, I wrote in this notebook “finalise the responsibilities you want to take ahead, close everything else.” And in 2020, I was successful in doing that.
I will talk about some of these things later in this letter. But I guess a lighter start would be better. For me, the highlights of this year were:
- Painting:
Since 2017 I have been trying to do one new thing every year. Last year, it was running 4 half-marathons. This year, it was painting. I started with oil pastels, with which I had some experience as a kid. And then moved to completely unknown territory of acrylic paints. I always knew that I would be able to adapt to painting, and my instinct was correct. My goal was to end the year with 1 painting that I could proudly hang on my wall. I guess I am pretty close, but I am not satisfied with the ones I have yet. - Working remotely:
With the advent of remote jobs and co-working spaces in offbeat locations, we all get to read a lot about people working from wherever. I too fantasised about it, but I knew as a Product Manager it would be tougher. That changed this year because all jobs were forced to become remote. I took advantage of that and worked for almost a month from the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. And then I spent the last week of the year on the beaches of Goa. It was fascinating. I was able to try white water rafting in Rishikesh, and surfing & kayaking in Goa. All 3 were first time experiences for me. Another new experience was learning Blackjack and actually making a little money on a cruise casino in Goa, 2 days in a row. It was not much, but it was thrilling and confidence boosting. - A killer year at work:
I had a productive and impactful year at work. We were able to ship a bunch of product features from our pod where I was directly overseeing everything. A lot of the holes in my product management knowledge were filled, a lot of new ones surfaced up. I am sure I would be able to fill those in the coming years, but overall I became a little more well-rounded in my profession. The natural instinct to lead/influence people and the confidence to make decisions in low context settings are the 2 things holding me together, and compensating for everything else that I need to learn to get better at this profession. But I can see visible improvements in my skillset in 2020, especially my understanding of software development process from an engineering lens. In 2018 and 2019, I had improved my understanding of product design, and I am hopeful that in the coming years I will keep getting better at the remaining few facets too. - An eventful personal life:
I got a 2BHK on rent in Bangalore and set it up myself. I started living the kind of “bachelor life” that I always saw in TV series and movies, and thought was not meant for me. The timing was definitely a little off, because if I didn’t have this apartment, I would have worked from a new place every month of this year. But since I was paying rent every month, I waited until October end before making the decision to try different locations.
With everything being said and done, I don’t think I have a lot of complaints with 2020. Except obviously that I was not able to travel outside India.
I ended my last annual letter with 2 action items —
- In 2020, I will travel to 3 new countries.
- In 2020, I plan to do physical meetings with interesting people in my 2nd and 3rd degree network.
Both of these seem laughable now. Obviously both were not possible this year. In fact, I have actually given up on number 2 anyway. Once global lockdown is lifted, I will only resume the travelling to different countries part.
Checking the compass. Making sure I am headed in the right direction.
In my last annual letter, I mentioned my short term goals briefly at 2 different places:
- “I do know that I want to take less number of bets and be more sure of every bet I take.”
- “As mentioned earlier, I have already found the direction I want to sail in. In the next 2–3 years, I plan to just focus on steadying my ship. No speed racing and no exploration, just getting 3 things right: 1) Start building capital; 2) Keep working on capability; 3) Don’t lose sight of physical, mental and spiritual fitness.”
I think other than physical fitness, I was able to work on the rest of the plan decently well. I think I wasted a significant amount of time this year on Instagram and other trivial pursuits, but as decided, I didn’t start any new long term thing. I am happy with the work I am doing currently and I want to just focus on that for the next 2–3 years. My current mindset is to avoid frequent changes in direction at all costs during this period. Building capability and capital for the next phase is important. I hope I will do a better job at improving physical fitness in 2021.
This year I thought a little more about the overall game plan, and I have some more clarity now. At the very highest of levels, but still within the materialistic sphere, I just want to do these 3 things:
- Find something that I enjoy, that the world values and that I can be good at
- Create something that the world values
- Find someone I can enjoy the life with
1 is done. 2 and 3 are pending. This year I did think quite less about number 2 and quite a lot about number 3. My dream was to do 2 before 3, but I might have had my priorities wrong.
Resolving the internal conflicts. Getting more comfortable in your own skin.
I might have hinted before that I do suffer from FOMO. It is embarrassing. I realised this in 2019 and have improved a lot since. That was the reason for reducing the number of bets and being more sure about every bet I take.
From that lens, 2020 was a good year.
Even before I took admission in college for undergraduate studies, I had this dream of studying at a top 10 college in the world. It was clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to do it in under-graduation. I was so distracted at that time with personal problems that I might have missed out on a premier college in India too, forget about global best. So automatically, that dream got transferred into doing a Masters from one of these colleges. I never made any outright attempt throughout college, or even after graduating. In fact, I never even scheduled a GRE or GMAT test, but every once in a while I used to catch myself just casually browsing the academic websites of these universities.
It is definitely FOMO. For me, it is the equivalent of someone looking at a sports car or bike at a traffic red light and wishing they had it at home, even if they would just drive it 10 times in a year.
Although I never had a good enough reason to leave, and I always had something interesting to do, it did remain at the back of my mind throughout the last decade. It still is. And I don’t think it is going anywhere unless I complete that goal.
But this year, I did put things in better perspective.
I know I am going to do it at some point. But now I see it for what it actually is: a personal whim, rather than an actual loss. Like some people have a whim to see a city before they die. With this lens, I don’t see my current work as a conflict to this goal, and hence am more at ease now. There are a few things I need to wrap up before I go and complete that whim too.
Whims and childhood dreams
As mentioned in my first annual letter, I see life as a limited time amusement park. And I am here to play as many games as possible before my time is over. When I was in senior secondary school (aka high school for some), I had started developing a general image of the kind of person I will grow up to be. And I came up with the answer that I want to be the grand father with super cool stories about things I have done.
It is funny even now, but a high school kid imagining himself to be a grand father is funnier. But I always got drawn to the same things. For example, while watching Harry Potter, I never saw myself as Harry. Not even once. I wanted to be Albus Dumbledore. This one time I was in Stanford for a casual visit (as a tourist), and I saw this Indian family whose kid was studying in Stanford. He had brought his grandparents and parents for a campus tour. As he was showing the entry to the clocktower, his grand father remarked it looked different from the time when he was a student at Stanford, and I think I felt so many emotions in that one moment that I actually had to go in a corner to calm myself. That’s the kind of life I want to live, and those are the kind of stories I want to tell.
And I hope everyone else too would get to live the life they always dreamed of. Let me know if I can help in anyway.
This is my 3rd annual letter. Hopefully I will be able to write 22 more before my time ends in this amusement park that we know as life. As a practice, I am attaching my 1st annual letter here. It will help give more context to all the blabbering that follows in the other letters.
