Pause and Reflect : Priorities

So many things happened in the last few years. Let me try and summarize - two and a half years ago I left my cushy consulting job and relocated to Dubai to join THE ride hailing start-up of the region. Wife (W) moved after a few months. We're settled in many respects. BUT. 

It’s important to reflect - and see if the priorities have changed. Two years ago priorities were different - we had just gotten married, we had minimal savings - and daunting education, car and home loans. We made some big bets early in life (and I’m super proud about it). I'm happy to say that me from two and a half years ago - would say to the current me : You did well, my buoy.  

So what hereafter, what are we chasing? You probably noticed that I said ‘we’ - and not I. I'm speaking both of us (W included).

I'm not trying to say that marriage creates baggage - it basically means that if you’re married, you can have a collective vision for your life together.  

(On a side note - you might notice a slight change in my jargon. I’m probably a lot more corporatish now. Side effects, you see.)

Coming back to “collective” vision : it’s a vision of how the two of us see our life together. So, what are our collective priorities - and how do our individual drives and ambitions help us move towards our collective vision. If marriage is a company, then spouses are its co-founders. The company has a collective mission - and a vision to achieve it, it requires and expects different things from each of the co-founders - based on who's best placed to deliver what. Tag team.

So, coming back to the main point - what is our collective vision? : It’s probably hard to answer in one simple statement, we’re not there yet in terms of clarity. Let me try to break it down into a few important components.

Priority #1 - Be healthy : It’s not like we are obese right now - but we need to get healthier, we need to feel healthier. Better health drives productivity > productivity drives positive outcomes > positive outcomes provide happiness. We can always do with more happiness. Everyone can.  

Priority #2 - Evolve, constantly : We need to become better people in every dimension. In the immediate sense - it probably means that we will use our time effectively to improve ourselves - and enable ourselves to picking up professional challenges of higher complexity and skill . 

Every time we break a barrier -  we will have a moment of intermediate celebration and reflection. Then we’ll move-on to our next challenge. Having clarity of what we will call intermediate success will be the key here. We will define this individually.

Ultimate success is like infinity - you can only approach it, and never reach it. We’re aware that our whole life will be spent in this pursuit. I’m okay with that.   

Priority #3 - Family comes first : We’re blessed with great families. Our parents sacrificed many things to give us the privileges that we got, and are still getting. We will love them and take care of them whenever they need us. Period.

Priority #4 - Secure the future : It will be difficult for us to do justice to priority # 1-3, if we don’t have a way to secure our future. At the moment, I can only think of a financial lens to it - which basically means that we will ensure a certain standard of living for ourselves, always. And for that - we will plan accordingly for calamities, and for the risks we might want to take evolve.   

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I'm aware - that we'll have to make trade-off decisions between these priorities. We will under-index and over-index on a few - the trick will be for us to evaluate ourselves honestly and take steps in the right direction.

We are the CEO of our life - and we’re clear on what we’re going to focus on. Priorities can change in the future, but this seems like a good starting point for the next 5 years.

So, for now - Paused. Reflected. Heading for execution. 

10 days to corporate life – lessons to self

To start with, I have to say that this blog saw some kick ass activity in the last few weeks. I haven’t been posting regularly, so potentially a serial killer is studying me before he makes a move. That aside, I am keen to update my non-existent readers that I lost another 2 kilos – and I am sitting comfortably at 74kgs, as I write this. This again took me 45 days. And man, it was hard. Imagine losing weight in the last few weeks of your MBA.

There’s another thing on my mind these days: my life post the MBA. In exactly 10 days, I’m looking to join my job – and get into a certain routine of doing things. Time constraints will reappear and the art of prioritizing and multitasking will have to be honed.

Clearly (as you know it already) – this is not my first shot at a job. So, I somewhat have an idea of what it takes, and what it shouldn’t take. Being able to do the job well is a key goal, and I am totally looking to achieve it. However, I don’t want to make the same mistakes I made in the previous stint, so I’m thinking hard on how I’m going to run my life hereafter. Basically, I’m looking to list down what I should be focused at so that in case I lose myself once again in the vagaries of life, I can re-visit this blog post to remind myself, what I’m out there to achieve and how.

So here it goes:

#1 Dietary Discipline and Fitness: Well, you probably saw it coming. I’m come to believe strongly in the power of good health. Being fit is important for me. It enhances my self-confidence. It improves my productivity. To many, the word ‘discipline’ is almost irritating; as if it’s the synonym for uncool. I agree with them. It’s the boring way of doing things. You will have to compromise on the fun aspect. But for me, the latent gratification of seeing goal oriented results is much more satisfying than the short term doses on sporadic fun (at least on most days). And honestly, one can strike a balance. It’s not that I have to stop eating or drinking, all I have to do is being conscious of how much of these I’m having, and then see how much I can afford to, given my fitness goals. If you’re reading this, and are not convinced, then watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rbVQNTzCh8. Actually discipline goes beyond fitness. It’s about managing your sleep well, paying your bills on time, reading the newspaper everyday, not missing your breakfast, avoiding binge watching. These little things improve your way of life, in a much more important way than you can imagine.

#2 – Focus on Knowledge: This has been a goal in the previous jobs too. And it worked for me big time. My life shifted directions ever since I latched to the habit of reading newspapers. It makes you a much more aware person. It also makes you much more sociable; suddenly, you just have so much to talk about. There are obviously no concrete goals on how much I’m planning to read, but clearly I’m looking to keep myself up to date with domestic and world events, particularly in business. This would mean being regular with the newspaper, and a few Indian and world magazines.

#3 – Traveling: This one’s a little shaky, because I’m yet to figure out how much my job will require me to travel. In any case, two vacations a year should always be possible. I still have to figure out the details, but luxurious, exotic locations are what I’m after. What I really like about this goal, is that is mingles well with the dietary discipline one. I’m really, really looking forward to completing a few treks.      

#4 – Parents: I’m 27 years old, and I don’t think I’ve yet been able to do anything substantial for my parents. While my family understands that they and I have a different operating frequency, I feel, in my selfish interest, that being able to do something for them will bring some personal gratification. From something as simple as planning a family dinner every month, to buying little things for the house will do the job.

#5 – Get a house first: This I think, is a baniya thing. Of all things I want to buy with my money, a good house is right on the top of my list. With so many loans lurking over my head, to achieve this goal looks a little distant, but nevertheless it’s on the radar. Having one’s own house is the best way to improve one’s standard of living. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to achieve? – Improving our standard of living I mean.

This is an unending list, and I will keep adding on to it from time to time. It’s indeed a hard list to keep up with but I’m going to see how it goes in the next few months. I also hope I’m able to blog more often.

Ho ho ho!

I’m going to start with the usual – so much has changed, since the last time I blogged.

Tersely put, this is a recap so that I can maintain a mental diary of the chronology of important life events. Mind it that the events that I’m going to talk about are going to guide everything in my life: my career progression, my relationship with my parents, my marriage.  

I stepped foot in ISB on the 18^th April 2015. On 5^th December, I got a job offer from a top notch consulting firm, with a fairly plush pay package. Yay! I never thought I would manage so much. I have had such muted expectations from myself that it seems that my luck must be at its highest point that day. Anyways, now that I have the job, I’m just going to pretend that I deserved it.

I got the job in December, and I was done with my placement season. And therefore, I had a lot of time on my hands thereafter. But I basically didn’t do much besides partying, gaining 5 kilos, and screwing up my sixth term. Well worth it, I’d say. But eventually, I was hit by an epiphany about myself: nothing depresses me more in life than to not have a goal to pursue. If there’s no goal, there’s no feeling of accomplishment – there’s no adrenaline rush, there’s nothing to feel bogged down about, and nothing to pick myself up for, like the typical Hindi film hero.

I also realized that I don’t like revealing my goals explicitly to others. I’m a secret achiever, who tries to achieve what he has to, in a rather discrete, non-revealing way. When the goal is achieved, I may just come back to my room, close the door, and say – ‘Yay’ to myself, with a fist clenched, and a sheepish smile on my face. And that would be the end of it, till of course, I give myself something new to chew on.

These days, I have a couple of things that keep my mental bandwidth preoccupied. Good health, is one. I used to be 72 kilos, and still think that I’m not the fittest. Today, I weigh 76. It’s plainly disappointing to think how I let this happen. Anyways, I lost 4 kilos in the last 45 days, and slowly fitting back into the clothes that I had long abandoned. I’m treading a path of dietary discipline, and its making me a happier person. I’m not letting myself be till I get ‘Fit as Fuck’ (FaF) – it’s my personal verbiage.

If you’ve read my blog earlier, you would know that hardly a post goes without mentioning an update on my relationship angle. Since you see no mention, clearly it’s on the backburner. I was told that relationships don’t survive MBAs – definitely not two of them, and most certainly not simultaneously. My relationship survived alright; but it lost a  few of its senses. Pity. 

With a little time at hand

So for a change, today I have some time. It reminds of the days of nothingness, when had less to do but to introspect. Though I never really did any serious introspection. I think, I was just killing time thinking.

Anyways, it's been about four months here, and I'm significantly more uncertain about what I want to do in life, than I was when I came to ISB.

There are just so many options, and if there's anything I've realized about myself, it's that options baffle me. My indecisiveness almost always gets the better of me.

I screwed up the bidding process so badly that I got none of the courses I really wanted to take in the next term. While I feel slightly disappointed about this fuck up, I'm also simultaneously happy that I resorted to fate accompli - that is, I did not get to decide it for myself, and left it on chance. 

There's a limit of how bad it can get - I mean, it's just one term - and I'm hoping all the good guys took better courses anyways - so I'll be in a class which has a lower expectation about its own expectations. So, may be I'll get an A. Or May be not. Don't Know. Don't Care.

The high points of the day though was that I got to meet Ankur Warikoo today. When I meet people like him, it reinvigorates my zealousness; zealousness to do something different, to take risks, to achieve excellence, to be outspoken, to manage myself better - and what not. 

He said, it's important to know which industry one's headed towards. And I sat there thinking : where am I going? what am I pursuing? Consulting or Retail? What am I focusing on? Grades or Experience? Am I getting too comfortable here?

Surviving an MBA

It’s almost hard to believe that it’s been two months at ISB already. And really, what a roller coaster this is. As an alum rightly pointed out in a session yesterday – one won’t necessarily miss these days in the time to come. An MBA at ISB is ‘highway to hell’ – he rightly said.

 

But then, the eventfulness of the last months is hard to ignore. It’s like I squeeze out the eventfulness in the last four years of my life, it’ll probably be equal to the eventfulness I’ve squeezed in the last two months. Shit happens – and then it sorts itself out. By the end of it you’re all stressed and you’d like to burn the burn-out so you party like crazy. That pretty much sums it up.

Honestly speaking, in the first two weeks, I felt my natural self won’t even last in this place. There’s just so much going on around you all the time – and you tend to find yourself around so many great people that it’s almost impossible to be your own un-interesting self. But then like interest rates come down in a growing economy – people’s guard of pretentiousness comes down in a fast paced MBA. And then you feel you’re more like everybody – than you thought you were.

 

Not to say that there aren’t any jerks in your personal life. But then a few phone calls here and there – and you’re sorted. The funny thing is that there isn’t an iota (imaginary) second available to think about it. May be I spent the last four years thinking what I’ll do in life. And maybe I’ll spend this year doing things without thinking them through.

 

Also, I think I’m becoming more and more Punjabi everyday. Not something I’m terribly proud of. At the risk of exposing my bad taste in music, this one's on the jukebox.

 

 

 

Pistanthrophobia

So, I learnt a new word today - Pistanthrophobia. Going by the dictionary - it means the fear of trusting people. It's mostly described as a disorder. I think I suffer from it.

Now, to be brutally honest - I have a hard time trusting people or as some say, letting my guard down. I think I've always been wary of trusting people, but only recently have I seen a spillover of this personality trait in my professional life. 

If you're a stickler for getting the job done, and getting it done well - then you can only delegate stuff to people whom you really tend to trust ; perhaps, people who have as much at stake as yourself. But that doesn't happen always. I mean it's a hierarchy. Some people have more at stake and some have less. And as responsibilities increase, you'll have a hard time believing that you'll be able to get everything done by yourself - if you can't find anybody trustworthy.

It then boils down to inculcating this habit of trusting people first and then giving them opportunities - instead of hoping them to prove their trustworthiness first. And this applies not only in the professional sphere - but also in your personal life. We never completely trust all our friends, do we? It's a little trickier with friends than with colleagues at office. There's no job to get done here. One needs to trust their intent.

I need to draw this to a close now. The only self corrective action that I can think of from this moment of introspection - is to start trusting people more often. Instead of asking: Why should I trust him/her? - I need to ask - Why shouldn't I trust him/her? Life would be incredibly easier(and simple, and less devious) if everyone around yourself could be trusted.

So, if you know me - then I'm going to trust you - I'm going to trust your abilities, I'm going to trust your intent, I'm going to trust your willingness to help - unless of course you give me a reason for doing otherwise.

Notes to Self - I

Just so much has changed since the last time blogged.

I'm a year older. My hairline seems to be receding. I find myself in a long distance relationship. I also have an admit from ISB. So, in about a year's time I'm going to be an MBA. Believe me when I say that I don't, at the slightest, mean to boast.

I don't even know how much I've detested doing an MBA. But shit happens. There are enough motivations outside of yourself that guide your decisions. They're more influential than you would imagine.

I've probably lost my edge in blogging. That's what not being regular at something does to you - you're a dude one day, and another fine day you realize that you're a dud.

I believe the only thing that can make this blog interesting is if I be completely honest about how I see the world. More than three years out of college, and people still tend to think I'm diplomatic when it comes to being bitchy. I don't blame them. I don't really bitch that much - at least not in public. I'm going to change that from now on. May be I'm only going to bitch publicly now.

Perhaps,I need to start bitching about myself first. I'm such a non-sense prick at times. I depend solely on my ability to talk people into things. Things I believe in at that moment, and may not believe in, a few minutes later. I would end up being such a shitty manager. But may be I will change. Or may be I'll just become a lawyer one day.

On the top of my mind these days are relationship hassles. I'm a bit of a prick when it comes to being in a relationship. I'm super insecure, super suspicious, and super paranoid.

I think every boyfriend goes through this dilemma. Nobody wants to sound patronizing - but you just can't stand some stuff. I'm slowly learning the art of being direct. In a long distance relationship - the bandwidth to learn from non-verbal gestures is extremely limited (as you'd imagine).

Are you super insecure about your significant other? Well, don't kid yourself into believing that it's a signature of your affection. It's not. In most cases, it displays your competitive arrogance. Most people like to think of their boyfriends/girlfriends, as their prized possessions - and you fear losing them to others - just like you fear losing your face in public.

I think I'm getting better at dealing with this. Apathy helps. Engage yourself in something. Like I'm engaging myself in writing this. Try to remind yourself that you strive to be a good person first, and then an achiever. Then concepts of happiness and contentment will start creeping in your mind. Finally, you will begin to reason with yourself. And you'll start thinking of something more sensible.

On the jukebox.