Lessons of 2023

Alright, folks, 2023 is drawing to a close.

It has been one of the most challenging years for me since its inception. I deliberately took some time off the grid to reflect, process, and focus on personal growth in solitude.

The first week of January 2023 hit me hard. I experienced a painful breakup. Simultaneously, I had to part ways with Questbook, my full-time developer job.

In hindsight, the seeds of both my personal and professional challenges were sown at the end of 2022. Battling constant anxiety, I failed to recognise my deteriorating mental health until the entire structure of my life collapsed. This forced me to scrutinise my choices, habits, and decisions.

Fortunately, I secured another job in February, initially on a short-term contract that extended due to additional workload. However, my dissatisfaction with this new position began from the start. Despite joining with the hope of making a positive impact, the toxic environment, fueled by a misalignment with the founders and the product vision, made it untenable. I resigned on December 6, 2023.

Throughout this journey, I've learned numerous lessons, each deserving its own blog post. Here are few of my realisations:

1. A company's culture is shaped by its founders. Trust your instincts; if you sense misalignment, don't be swayed by perks. No amount of money can compensate for the toll on mental health in a toxic environment.

2. You can only win big, when you're consistent.

3. Consistency is achievable only when your fundamentals are in order—this includes the food you eat, your physical fitness, and your emotional health.

   If any of these aspects goes awry, you'll need to address it first to establish and maintain consistency.

4. Dream big, and avoid settling. The moment you attempt to settle, the other party may attempt to extract the most from you. When you adopt a defensive mindset, you begin to lose self-confidence, which is far more worse than losing a job.

5. When you're not dreaming big, every problem becomes your problem. However, when you have a larger vision for your life, only the problems that hinder that vision will truly matter.

6. Don't centralise your source of happiness. Seek joy in everything you do. Find a hobby and make space to spend time with your thoughts and yourself.

7. Work with people who have 10-15 years vision of their own life, who have life outside work, with whom you can get on a random call to discuss life on bad days. Tech and startup bubble is lonely and very fucking delusional.

8. Be ambitious and yet content under your skin. Be humble, in grander scheme of the universe we are just another sand particle.

9. Find a hobby or a creative channel, and just do it for fun, with 0 expectations.

   Go be a student again, but this time for yourself and not for the grades.

10. Be in a relationship, where there is a strong sense of respect for each other. Their actions aligns with their words. They know how to manage their emotions well.

    You don't have to compensate for someone's bad personality.

11. There's a difference between someone who can be your partner and someone with whom you can have a family. Choose the latter, but before that you should realise why having a good family is important.

What's for 2024?

1. Play more cricket, get more fitter and healthy.

2. Work on building a world-class product in public which is going to push my engineering boundaries and enable me to meet, learn from really smart people around the world.

3. Travel, explore, try good food around our country and hopefully world.