Entering Q4, hopes are high | 3-week report 213-215

19 Oct 2020 . category: report . Comments
#radicali #startup #singapore #relationships #fitness

Welcome to a three-week recap of October so far - i should be sticking to my weekly reports regularly, there’s a lot lost when i’m trying to consolidate more than one week into a report.

Writing these reports send me in an hour long thinking session about how i’m spending my time, and to be honest, a fair bit of useless daydreaming. Once October hits, it tells me that it’s time to start reflecting on what the fuck actually happened in the last nine months. i’m currently listening to the song linked above(Balli aur mein) - it has beautiful storytelling, and is highly conducive to have an introspection session with my mind.

At work, we have some ambitious goals set out for the next three months, and that should be taking my maximum mindshare. Work put me in some stressful moments off late. Handling stress & uncertainty is like a muscle, if i don’t do it enough - i’m making it harder for myself.

Need to be constantly checking in with myself as to where i’m heading, there’s no manager or supervisor who’s gonna come in to ask about my well being or growth. To be fair, as a twenty-four year old man, i shouldn’t need someone to check in on me - i need to ensure i’m on the log, taking enough risks to optimize for long-term potential. i often think about the decision of quitting my job to start something of my own, and how big of a butterfly effect some decisions have. The amount of effort we try to optimize our calendars/schedules for taking good micro-decisions on a day-to-day basis does not match the output - it is not even close to the effect that long-term serendipitous decisions could have. i’m not sure what is the formula to take good long-term decisions, but if i’m not actively thinking about them - then i’ll fall prey to an inertial mindset getting comfortable with what i’m doing on a day-to-day. This is where cognitive dissonance hits, and i hope i’m able to navigate it well with deep thinking.

At work, we finished a deploy pushing forwards in a quarter-long project to reshape our prouduct. We had a board meeting for Q3, and did employee checkins for the last quarter as well. I did some heavylifting on backend dev myself, that made it difficult to focus on planning for a week. Made it up with some isolated time this week spent on thinking and writing down my thoughts with a physical pen. Planning with pen & paper somehow makes things easier before moving it to the cloud. i’ve moved all my calls to the mornings, and that has made a huge difference to my overall productivity - the first 4-5 hours are on Google Meets, which gives me the rest of the day to focus on my work. We’ve made some changes to our standup structure, with the aim of making things asynchronous on a long-term basis.

Recently we recordeed the 29th episode on the Early Twenties, and talked about running yet again! i also committed to running a full marathon in Jan/Feb ‘21.

i visited the Singapore National library for the first time, and got myself two books - which i’ve not started reading yet. i feel ashamed of admitting this, and even after creating a #library channel on work slack, i haven’t made any progress on my reading. The only way to fix this is to wake up earlier, and crack in 30-60 minutes of reading before starting the day, and that means i need to fix my sleep timings.

On the fitness front, the commitment to the full marathon pushed me towards creating a mileage plan for the next three months. i put in a 20K run last weekend, which was fulfilling but i’ve fallen off the track this week - need to get back to long runs to callous the mind. i’ve also did a few one-offs on the weekends like cycling, basketball and tennis to keep things alive and fun. i haven’t been consistent on going to the gym but i’ve made it a point to get in at least 15 minutes of weight training at home with my dumbbells.

On the relationship side, it’s been one month since i met my date, and i’ve seen considerable changes in how i look at my day-to-day. i’ve managed to keep my weekdays fairly balanced, while the weekends have been good destressers where we go out or spend time together. When with her, it’s one of the few times in the day that i’m not actively or subconsciously thinking/worrying about work - and that’s probably a good thing. Not sure if measuring a relationship with productivity gains is the right way to look at things, but it’s the only measurable metric i can think of. There are other improvements that wouldn’t be as apparent to me - building empathy & kindness being a few. One of October’s goals is to bring discipline in time management in this area. Will update more on this front in future blogs :)

i’ve been teaching coding to my sister off late, and it showed me how far i’ve come from when i took CS50 back in 2013. Time flies, and it’s gonna fly faster with time. 3 months to 2021, keep hammering.

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