The clock struck Six
It was time to make a Call
I was in a Fix
To get up or sleep off
A minute later I call
Only to hear a busy (dnd) tone
I don't give up and give another haul
This time it's the voice not unknown
'Haan Sid!' I hear
'Wake up, it's Six!' I say
Ten mins later a chime I hear
7:10 is what is Instagram says
We walk, We skip
We talk, We laugh
That's our typical trip
Which leaves us with pain in calf
Some of my older Poems -
some-thigns-may-be-better-left
At a personal and professional level, it is time to look back on the 2020 goals and audit ourselves. Next step is to make a list of new year goals for 2021. One of my hobbies is reading and I didn't read this year as much as I did last year. Reading 12 books will be on top of my list for next year and I have decided to add a bit of twist to it. This year we have explored a whole new aspect of the digital world and I would like to merge both. My idea is to do a live reading session, just like we have zoom gym and meditate together, etc.
There are many aspects that I need to sort out before proceeding, let me list down one by one.
Start - 1st January 2021
Reading speed - Depends on the book, maybe 2 weeks for a book.
Which book - I haven't finalized the first one. If you want to join me on this, let me know your choice of book and we can start with it. We can be reading different books together, that is fine too.
Where will we meet - It will be either Insta or youtube live.
Time - 6 to 6:30 am in the morning, every day. It is difficult to find undisturbed time for ourselves and so I plan to pick this morning hour. This also makes sure we wake up early :P
Accountability - There are great books and research showing that having an accountability partner increases your chances of achieving your goal.
Let me know your thoughts and or queries. You can reach me through any medium.
How I got this idea - a couple of years back, there was a college student who started meditate together. Every day at 6 am we used to meditate in silence in our respective rooms for 21 days. I also attended Jay Shetty's 20-day meditation session on youtube and this too was my source of inspiration.
CA Rachana Ranade - she has a youtube channel. She has many courses, free lectures, paid, etc related to investments and finance. This is not the part, she also comes live daily at 6 am, where she interacts with her audience. She does 10 min pranayam and some 10 min reading with all. This was the major source of inspiration for me.
It is just another experiment for me and I hope to reach my target number of books this year. In the process, I would like to connect with my friends and learn from them and more importantly GROW together.
Waiting to hear from you :)
We often try to answer where we will be 5 years from now? especially in interviews. The real question we should be asking ourselves is where we were 5 years back and how did we get here to the present day. I read this on another blog post - La Dolce Far Niente – The sweetness of doing nothing. This made me reflect back on my life and I try to answer this question in this post.
5 years back - 2015 - this was the year when I purchased my first vehicle - an Activa. Next month I will be celebrating the second anniversary of my Alto. So definitely, a lot has changed over the last 5 years.
5 years back during Navratri, I entered MRV (Mahindra Research Valley, Chennai) for the first time. This was my first job after college and my base location was Chennai. It was during Navratri that I took a train from Mumbai to Chennai with my batchmates to report on duty. Much of my last 5-year lessons have come from in and around Chennai.
The first thing after moving to a new city is to get a place to stay. I rented a flat with two other batchmates, ie who joined MRV with me. I didn't appreciate back then enough, but now I can see they were a family to me and helped me get through some good and tough times. They were always there - whether to celebrate someone's birthday to get over a disappointing appraisal at work. Thanks to this experience - I learned to adjust to others. Sometimes some of the roommates can be annoying, and you learn to fix the issue or get the patience to deal with it.
Staying away from family and with other bachelors meant that we have to take care of ourselves from food to clothes, from rent agreement to fixing household appliances. Along with work, we had to manage the house too. Especially you realize what all things are required to run the house. The different items include foodgrains, fruits, etc. Then soaps and detergents. Bedsheets, curtains, shoe polish etc. There were so many things I took for granted or ignored when living with parents in Mumbai, thanks to this experience I can now fend for myself if and when required.
The friends just make the learning process more fun. We used to mock each other for not knowing some of the basic things and we learned from each other's experiences. You also learn to divide the responsibilities and I think this is important for the post-marriage phase. Each one takes up what he/she likes and then you evenly divide the chores that no one likes but are essential.
Office - for most of my batchmates, this was the first corporate experience and it is hell a lot different from academics. The experience you have at work is very much dependent on the type of reporting manager you have. I was lucky I had a good manager to start off my career and he helped me play and grow to my strengths. Much of my current success is because of the freedom I got in the first year. Later on, it has been more or less smooth sailing. If you need anything, a raise, a resource, extra time, etc you need to ask for it. You will hardly get anything without asking. The good part - most of the time you will get a Yes for whatever you ask for.
The job also gave me a salary and it was a tough learning lesson to manage it. I started investing, having fun, buying things I liked, started saving recently, etc. I started filing my income tax returns too, like most salaried employees.
There are two takeaways for me here - 'Everyone in the corporate world is Selfish' - told by a senior
'You don't get promoted to the next level and then start learning or taking new responsibilities. You get promoted because you have been doing what is expected at the next level.' Told by super senior and this helps me to keep pushing at work, to do more than the current role requirement.
Sports - I was already into long-distance running by 2015. I ran my first full marathon after moving to Chennai. I ventured into cycling which helped me to push my endurance limit. I used to go for a 60 km solo ride and with friends, I was able to push 80+ km and explore new routes. The society where I stayed had a tennis court and I was able to continue Tennis over there, I started tennis in IIT. Tennis was just for fun, especially after office hours. The main take away was my Road bike and long-distance cycling. I was lean a couple of years back and then I got into experimenting with diet. I went vegan for three weeks, then after some time, I went on Keto. Things backfired after Keto and lack of motivation helped me gain around 10 kgs in the last couple of years. The lockdown didn't help either to get me in shape. I am on my way to recovery to get back to my 2015 weight target.
Going abroad - My first trip abroad was to Malaysia. Thanks to my friend, flatmate, and colleague - Kartik Ganesh, as a team we won Mahindra Auto Quotient and the first prize was a trip to Malaysia. He had been abroad before and it was great traveling with him. This was in 2017, then in 2018, I went on a Europe trip with my family. This was possible because my Cousin staying in UK.
Let me summarize the above points -
2015 I was a graduate student and entering into my first job. I am still in the same company but with a 5-year experience under my belt.
I completed 2 Coursera specialization on Machine learning and I am onto my PG Diploma in ML/AI.
From Marathon runner - I have become almost a couch potato
Crush - All my crush got married
I went to Chennai 5 years back, coz of this Covid I have been in Mumbai for the last three years and doing work from home.
In the last 5 years, I have learned to develop mobile apps.
I can cook a couple of sweet dishes and also make basic dishes like Dal, Rice, Roti, etc.
Type in the comments about your most significant transformation in the last 5 years.
In one of my earlier post I said Rab ne bana di jodi is one of my favorite movies, I might have seen that movie like more than 20 times. Recently I stumbled on Dil toh Pagal hai - 10 times I watched it last month. I used to think I like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai more than Dil toh Pagal hai, but I was wrong. After watching a few of his other movies recently I saw some commonalities between his roles back then and now. ie for movies which are like 10-15 years apart. I will list some of the eye-catching points -
In both, the movies Shah Rukh dies once then takes a rebirth. For quite some time he doesn't have a memory of his past life and then there is Eureka moment in the movie and he recollects everything.
In Dil toh pagal hai he plays the role of director of a dance/music show. Rahul (Shah Rukh) finds his love when he is in search of a new dancer for his next show. In Rab ne bana di jodi, he plays dual character, and interestingly, the name of one of the characters was Rahul.
In Chamatkar movie - Shah Rukh plays the role of a cricket coach of a college team. In Chak de India he is a hockey coach and in Mohabbatein he is a Music teacher - coaching students on Love :P
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Almost a year back I wrote a post - One at a Time - a snapshot of the same can be seen above. That was very brief where I was trying to make it poetic. In this post, I would like to revisit some of those items and give an actionable plan to anyone who wants to go down that path!
Want to run a marathon -
Start off with 1 km a day for a week. You just run continuously for 1 km. Before and after the run, walk atleast 1 km to warm up and cool down. After that you can ramp up each week and each month. Starting from 4th week you should be able to run 5 k daily at a comfortable speed. You can then move to variations like running up and down a fly over. Running fast 3 km one day and on another going for slow 6-7 km run.
The whole point is first to get out and keep moving. The main point of this post to stress on the point that to achieve anything, we have to start and keep moving. The start has to be small and mey be slow too but movement is important.
Coding -
New to coding - it is natural to feel down looking at all the machine learning hype going around. People will say you need to learn Python or R or something similar. Tons of materials available online paid and free. My advice is to pick minimum 2 and max 3 resources and start going through those course. I too was once a begineer and no one skip these baby steps. Atleast for first month, you have to sit through 2-3 hours daily and keep writing as many lines of code as possible. Best is to pick up a task and then go about writing a code for the same. This also involves learning to build logic and break down complex problems in small steps.
My second point, break down any any any task in small steps and even the impossible becomes possible. I did follow this task breakdown in building my first android app and it worked wonders. You just can't go big if you don't understand the fact that - You need to go small and into the details to eventually go Big one day.
Waking up early -
You might have heard -
You need to sleep early to wake up early
You need to have a goal which makes you wake up early
You need to plan ahead to make sure you wake up early
the list goes on and I am not denying any of it. I want to add one more (if you haven't heard it before)
Wake up early to make sure you sleep early the same day. If you are used to sleeping late, then it becomes tough to change the sleeping time. What I follow is, no matter at what time I sleep, I'll wake up early. I'll have an extra cup of coffee in the morning to get through the day, but at the end my body gets tired and I am able to sleep early and also wake up erly the next morning.
Writing a book -
If we breakdown the task then it is like you have to write a paragraph or a page each day and then increase the number of words you write each day. Guess what, there is another way around too. You can start a blog and write a post once a week. You can write short stories on FB and whatsapp story. You can write a paragraph - motivating or clarifying technical issues raised by your friend. Once you get the hang of writing, you can easily transfer that skill in writing a book.
Exercising -
The last one that I want to cover it up here. If you can wake up early,then getting to exercise won't be tough. My intention in writing this is to highlight the third point - having an accountability partner or a friend. In compnies we have our managers, TL or delivery deadlines to keep us on our toes. We need to have something similar in personal life to be on our toes. Thanks to my building friend who helped me get back to my morning routine. It started in August, we used to go for short walks at around 7:15-7:30. It was like 4-5 days a week. We had our ups and downs. We keep pushing each other to wake up early and then sweat it out hard on court. Now we are able to hit the park much early, cover more distance and also dedicate time for body weight exercises.
Take away - have an accountability partner.
Conclusion -
1. Movement is key, if you don't move or take action - nothing is gonna happen - Sorry for that.
2. It is good to have big aspirations, models and big guys to look upto it, but remeber you have to take small steps while starting out. There is no shortcut. It is journey your idols have gone through and now it time for you to walk that path. Be patient and kep Pushing - One step at a time.
3. Big projects or goals can be achieved if you are able to break it down into small manageable goals. Just follow the plan and have trust in yourself that eventually the big goal will be achieved.
4. Have an accountability partner.
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