Tag: right time

Thirty to twenty nine

I turned twenty nine today. Yesterday to be precise; I see the clock has just ticked past midnight. And I’m sensing that my “project thirty”, where I had decided to not take up a full time job until I turn thirty and do “all the things I ever wanted to do”, is already in trouble.

Sensing that over the last two months of joblessness I hadn’t been spending my time usefully (Parkinson’s law and all that), I decided to sit down today and make a list of all those things that I’ve ever wanted to do and haven’t been able to, which I want to do before I’m thirty. It took me a couple of hours maybe, maybe a little less than that. At the end of it, I had a grand two page bullet-pointed word document to show for my efforts. To be honest, it looked rather skinny.

I started a (time) budgeting and planning exercise, and figured out how much time I would need to do all that. Apart from a few big holidays I’ve planned, I realized that the rest of the activities can actually be worked around a “normal” work schedule, as long as I don’t take up a job that will eat away all my time. Yes, the list of “things I always wanted to do” include entrepreneurship and freelancing, but again, bereft of concrete ideas I’ve started getting doubts if this is the right time to do that. Things are quite unclear right now.

I’m more open to taking up a full time job now than I was a week or so back. I need to not make the mistake again of taking up something that I’m not suited for, or something that won’t inspire me, or something that wouldn’t allow me to do the other things that I’ve wanted to do. Again, I personally don’t mind a “portfolio life” also, where I have a couple of part time gigs rather than a full time job. Ideally, something that would allow me the time and mind space to do my side projects on the side, while also generating some revenue.

I know I want to live in Bangalore. I know that I don’t want to take up an offshored job again (a mistake I’ve done twice in the past; not something I would want to repeat, ever). I have a reasonable idea about the kind of work I want to do, though I’m quite flexible about it. I want to do something that I feel for and be proud of doing – something more than just a “CMP”. And again, something that gives me the time and space to do my own things also. And yes, I know it’s going to be hard to find something to fit these constraints (Bangalore and non-offshored reduces the sample space quite a bit, I know). And I’ll continue my Project Thirty while I seek to find something on these lines, I guess.

Or maybe I’m giving up too early. Or maybe not, that I’m just being pragmatic. Maybe I’m bowing to pressures, both internal and external. Maybe I’m just taking a rational decision. Nevertheless,

I shall not take up a job that I won’t be proud doing.

I shall not take up an offshored job.

I shall not give up on the agenda of project thirty, which is quite exhaustive. It remains a priority.

I want to have a fulfilling life, and not feel like I’m wasting time.

I’m going to keep my mind sane, and try not to succumb to pressures.

Managing self

When I look back at my early career (high school and early part of college), and wonder how I was so successful back then, I think it was primarily because back then I was pretty good at managing myself. Even at that early (!! ) age, I had a good idea of what I was good at, and was able to either take paths that were aligned to my strengths, or outsource cleverly, in order to do a good job of things.

For example, back when I was in 12th standard, I was “Maths Association President” in my school, and was in charge of organizing the Maths section of the school exhibition. The first thing I realized then was that while I was technically good, I sucked at managing people, and the first person I recruited was someone who I got along well with, and who I thought was an excellent people manager. I think together we managed to do a pretty terrific job.

Another example was when I was preparing to get into IIM. I recognized that CAT was something I was inherently good at, but wasn’t sure of my ability to do well in interviews. So I decided to prepare hard for CAT (though I thought I didn’t really need it), so as to maximize my performance there and render the interview irrelevant. Thinking back about my IIMB interview, I’m surprised they let me in at all, and I guess that was because of my CAT maximization only.

There were several other such occasions. Like when I decided not to prepare for JEE at all in my 11th standard in order to “conserve myself” for the push in 12th. Or when I spent a week doing nothing after my 12th boards, so that I could time my “big JEE push” such that I peaked at the right time. Or when I decided not to care about grades in courses that I loathed (as long as I passed, of course) so that I could spend more time and enjoy the courses I liked. In short, I loved being my own boss.

5 years of work in 4 different places has been largely unsatisfactory, as the more perceptive of you might have inferred from my posts. The biggest challenge so far has been in motivating myself to do something that I don’t just care about, only because I’m being paid a salary. And thinking more about it, it might be because I never really grasped the full import of what I was signing for every time I signed for a job. And I must admit there were times I lied, though not consciously. I tried to convince people I was good at getting things done (something I absolutely suck at). I told them I’m a decent programmer (I’m an excellent programmer but a lousy software engineer). And so forth.

In essence I realize  that over the last five to six years I’ve failed miserably at managing myself. At getting myself into things that I enjoyed, at taking routes that I enjoy rather than one professed by someone else, at doing what I really want to do rather than what someone else wants me to do, and so forth. Essentially, by mortgaging my time to someone else, in exchange for a salary four times, I’ve actually lost the right to manage myself. And for someone with unusual skills and weaknesses (as I think I am), it is no surprise that things haven’t gone too well at all.

I do hope I can make a career in a way that I don’t mortgage my time in entirety to someone else. To be able to work, and be paid for it, but to do things my way. In other words, I don’t want to take up a full time job. To paraphrase a line I read in an extract of Aman Sethi’s A Free Man I need to recognize that I need my azaadi also, and shouldn’t give it up for kamaai.