Tag: jeff wald

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DGQ 7: If You Had To Live Your Life Over Again, What Problem Would You Have Sought Help For And Whom Would You Have Gone To?

After an investor’s recommendation recently, I stumbled on this question in an article in The Atlantic about the Grant Study. An incredible 80-year long longitudinal study following 268 Harvard-educated men and how they developed as adults. While most of the Grant Study men remain anonymous, some have publicly identified themselves, like Ben Bradlee and President John F. Kennedy. Simply put, it was history’s longest study on happiness. There were some fascinating discoveries in that study so far, like the six factors that acted leading indicators to healthy aging:

  1. Physical activity,
  2. A mature adaptive lifestyle to cope with ups and downs,
  3. Little use of alcohol,
  4. No smoking,
  5. Stable marriage, and
  6. Maintaining a normal weight.

I highly recommend reading George Vaillant’s Aging Well. If you’re short on time, Robert Waldinger’s TED talk. But I digress.

Despite always preaching to others that they should ask for help when they need it, I’m a terrible practitioner of my own advice. Sometimes I find it incredibly hard to ask for help from others. In situations I should be the expert in. In moments when I don’t think my problems are as big as others’. And in times when I don’t know what I want. While I hate to admit it, it’s often a problem attributed to my ego. And sometimes, unwittingly.

If you had to live your life over again, what problem would you have sought help for and whom would you have gone to?

The reason I love this question so much is that in asking it, we suspend our ego. It’s often easier to open up about the “[potholes] in the rearview mirror” than “[open] up about the potholes ahead” to use the words of Jeff Wald. It’s easier to answer What were you scared of as a child? than What are you scared of today?. I find it easier to:

  1. Reflect on what I should have asked for help in.
  2. Understand why I should have asked for help sooner in an empirical situation.
  3. Then use those first principles to inform me when I should ask for help now.

Your mileage may very much vary. But nevertheless, over the past week, I found it to be an interesting thought exercise to go through. At the very minimum, something to journal on.

Photo by J W on Unsplash

The DGQ series is a series dedicated to my process of question discovery and execution. When curiosity is the why, DGQ is the how. It’s an inside scoop of what goes on in my noggin’. My hope is that it offers some illumination to you, my readers, so you can tackle the world and build relationships with my best tools at your disposal. It also happens to stand for damn good questions, or dumb and garbled questions. I’ll let you decide which it falls under.

Subscribe to more of my shenaniganery. Warning: Not all of it will be worth the subscription. But hey, it’s free. But even if you don’t, you can always come back at your own pace.

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#unfiltered #26 Am I At My Best Right Now?

I’ve been debating for the longest time whether I should put out this post or not. Not only does it require me to “open up about the potholes“, as Jeff Wald puts it, I’m not sure how I should be feeling. Or maybe I do, but I’m just not willing to admit it to myself.

Last week, I read Brad Feld‘s post, “Are You At Your Best Right Now?“. And it was the final push that gave me the courage to write this. After all, this wouldn’t be a member of the #unfiltered series if I wasn’t sharing my raw thoughts.

Am I at my best right now?

I’ve had the long standing belief that if I’m not making any new mistakes, then I’m not taking risks.

And if I’m not taking risks, I’m not improving.

For the past 6 months of quarantine, I haven’t made any mistakes… neither ones I’m proud of nor severely regret. Half of which I believe most people could do without. Though I don’t set myself up for mistakes that I think are foolhardy from the get-go, I am not learning if I don’t make any mistakes at all. I’m not talking about mistakes that I make without a second thought of regret. Like drinking 7 cups of water today, rather than 8. Or forgetting to put up the toilet seat. Or a grammatical error in my writing.

I’m talking about mistakes that have defined, define, and will define my life’s trajectory. Inflection points that draw our life’s story on a once blank canvas.

My pursuit of ‘the best’ prior

In my first two years of college, I made many mistakes as an operator, as a friend, and to my promises. I over-promised and under-delivered. I let a friend I really respected and cared for down. To the organizations I was lucky to be a part of, I juggled too many things at once, thinking multi-tasking was an attribute of pride and prestige.

In my third year of college, I took networking to a new level. And along the way, burned bridges in my persistence and lack of awareness.

In my fourth year, drained from the relentless ego contest, I took a step back to reflect and be more candid than I gave myself the liberty to previously. In my pursuit of honesty, once again but in a different context, I didn’t consider the impact of my words with a handful of friends.

In graduating, I took a risk to not accept the offers I had on the table – some of which I know people would fight for. I chose a path that I felt I wouldn’t regret in the then amazing upside of the economy.

In the years following, I made bets to be at places, to be with people, and to learn from them that I had doubts other platforms would provide. In retrospect, some more foolish than others. Placing trust and hope that some of my friends who knew considered in ill faith.

But every time I learned.

I became a stronger person than when I went in.

Now

These days when friends, colleagues, and strangers ask “How are you doing?” or “How have you been?”, I’ve become my own worst nightmare.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m okay.”

While I’m not lying, I hate myself the moment I utter those words. First how much it’s become a knee jerk reaction. But secondly, and more importantly, how much hasn’t changed since the pandemic.

Like many of my friends and colleagues, and I’m sure, many more on this planet, I had 2020 plans. Plans to take risks and make mistakes. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, many of them have been put on a stalemate. At the same time, I know many of my friends aren’t doing well. From breakups to layoffs to the impending doom of deportation to deaths in the family, I feel like I should be the last person to complain.

In closing

I want to be clear. I’m not looking for pity here. But I want you to know. It’s okay. You’re not alone. While we all are feeling a different magnitude of emotions now, you’re not alone, when “I’m okay” belies what we’re all feeling right now. I can’t speak for others, but I am not at my best right now.

If you need someone to talk to or just someone to listen, I’m here.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

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v24.0

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

My parents have always conditioned me to plan each of my ages out. When I was younger, every year I ranked up they would ask me what I want to get done. At the same time, I never felt a strong commitment to New Year’s resolutions. Maybe it was ’cause of the gingerbread cookies. Or the Christmas presents. Or the fireworks and the ball drop. But that lull between the holidays wasn’t conducive to me setting meaningful goals. The “promises” I made carried no weight behind them.

Three years back, after reading Brad Feld’s birthday resolution, I decided to start setting my own birthday resolutions. Outside of a mere date shift, there were 3 reasons I chose to do so:

  1. I had time to recover from the holidays – to get my head straight.
  2. I was motivated watching my friends, family, and coworkers tackle their New Year’s resolutions in the month prior. (Admittedly, more often than not, they lose their initial trajectory, but I only saw the beginning of many of their inverse parabolas.) Motivation is one side of the coin; FOMO is another.
  3. In that motivating January, assuming I haven’t yet completed my previous year’s resolution(s), it motivates me to finish strong – the “last mile” sprint.

That said, this is my first year posting my resolutions publicly. Why? One, it’s to keep me accountable. Two, as Jeff Wald once said, “practice true vulnerability by opening up about the potholes ahead, not just the ones in the rearview mirror.” And one of my resolutions from v23.0 was to become more comfortable being vulnerable. So, what will the new update look like?

Here are the patch notes:

Build ideas from 0 to 1.

This year, I plan to actively help 2 startups go from idea to product-market fit. After 3 years on the venture side of the cap table, the one thing I’ve noticed more and more is that I miss getting my hands dirty, especially in the early stages. I miss the ups and downs. I miss the freaky moments (and the big wins). It may sound a bit weird. But I may have emotionally removed myself from being entrepreneurial and trapped myself in a bird’s-eye perspective only. And I hate it.

More artistically creative outputs.

Two years ago, I started idea-journaling by inspiration from my former college professor. After going through 9.5 idea journals, I realized I’ve spent less than 10% of my ideation space on artistic pursuits. 40% on VC and startups. 40% on personal projects and experiments. 10% everything else. There’s clearly a lack of diversity in my creative space. So, this year, I’m committing to producing one new art piece every week – be it a new drawing, music composition, culinary permutation, or something that’ll surprise myself. My deepest gratitude to my friends who gave me new canvases to explore my creative white space. You can track my progress on my Instagram.

Balancing Social Media.

In the year when many of my peers are unplugging, I’m going to be more active on social media, fine print included. I’m going to explore more by contributing content on this blog, my Instagram (for artistic pursuits), LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Reddit, and Discord.

I’ve always shied away from social media – not because of some grandiose sense of self-discipline, but rather since I’ve never been able to fully conquer my shell of introversion. After all, my Facebook profile picture and lack of presence is my form of psychological armor.

That said, I still won’t be scrolling through my news feed on social media. But I will aim to respond to every comment and DM that comes my way. I’m a firm believer in responding to the commitment and time people take to write a thoughtful message. Luckily, I’m also at a stage in my life and career when I don’t have more messages/emails than I can manage.

Reconnecting.

Over the past half decade, I’ve grown a lot from reaching out to, learning from, and helping new folks in my network. And, I’m grateful for each and every experience. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them. But as a result of constant pursuits of new experiences and expanding my network, I haven’t been able to reconnect with friends, mentors, teachers, and acquaintances I’ve had in the past, outside of my annual holiday greetings and thanks. In this new update, I’m committing 10 minutes every day to meaningfully rekindle old flames that I haven’t caught up with in the past 6 months.

Read more.

By virtue of reconnecting with friends from my past, it’s useful to have content and inspiration when reconnecting, but also as a means to widen my own knowledge horizon. Outside of work and my one-book-a-month of reading, I’ll be indulging in a minimum of an hour of diverse reading every day via the ‘Discover’ tab on Pocket.

Sleep and wake earlier.

Ever since college, I’ve been a night owl. It’s weird ’cause in college, students apparently have this ego contest of how many ‘all-nighters’ one can pull and still be ‘alive’. Being young and naive, I joined in the chorus, but I never won. In fact, in my entire college career, I pulled only 2 all-nighters, not even back-to-back, and I was already dead. But it ended up ruining my sleep schedule. I would go to sleep between 12 and 3AM. Sometimes for no reason at all.

After I came back from my holiday Europe trip, mostly due to jet lag, I started sleeping at 9PM every night for the first week. I felt so much more refreshed in the morning and through most of the day than when I didn’t. But also, there’s so much less noise in the morning between 4:30 and 6:30AM – both on social media and in the neighborhood. And I could much of my creative work done. This year, I’m going to sleep at 10PM latest and wake at 4:30AM.

Goal-oriented exercise.

I haven’t necessarily been unfit, but my daily routines seem to drone by without any personal achievement or goal in mind. I have no plans to reach my past physical prowess where I spent 30-40 hours a week spent on exercise. But this year, I’ll stick to 2 goals for health and exercise: sub-5:30 mile and 20 pull-ups. (I’m at a 7:15 and 7 pull-ups at the time of writing this post.)

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It’s going to be an exciting year, and I plan to have plenty of hotfixes before I reach v25.0, hopefully daily. Thank you to my friends for all the birthday wishes, support, and feedback.

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