A letter to my past
Congratulations on having drudged through 2 years of business school, with so much competition and all those genius people that drudged along with you, you did eventually manage to carve a niche for yourself and pass the ultimate test that is the final stamp for successful MBA education - you got a job!
Now you find yourself set in a 9 to 5 routine that is liberating and confusing at the same time. You like having the money, money that you have earned, earned through your own sweat and hard work (so you think). But you find it is not the life that was sold to you, you’re forced to listen to people who you think “don’t have half my IQ” (so entitled, you), you don’t know how to navigate the office space with all its politics and people, you wish you could have a user manual for it all.
Well kid, it's been 7 years since, and I still wish I could have that manual. I have a hunch that some people do have the rulebook because they seem to climb from one step the next one above (maybe they do, but I can't discount luck), whereas my own journey is more like a drunk person climbing the stairs. In any case, I have been able to put together a handy reference of sorts that you can refer to every once in a while - I’ve found that my life was in some way made worse for not following these “rules”. Read them.
Rocky Balboa will tell you that it is not about how hard you hit but about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. All of that is well and good. The Fighter in your will get back up eventually, good stuff.
But what I also want to tell you is - if you have a God or something like that - Something that you could hold beyond question and beyond understanding, whose decisions and actions are mysterious, maybe even random but never to be questioned - then you’d have a relaxed mind, and all that released stress would allow you to be present in the moment and not jeopardize your future by thinking about what went wrong in the past. If you could say, right after life puts you to the ground, “As you will, my _____ (God, lord, luck, life, destiny etc.)” and essentially handover the reins after putting in your best effort. Forgive yourself.
This will lead you to have unnecessary stress in your mind, lead you to miss out on opportunities that could have been yours, I feel sad just thinking about it.
What you need is to KNOW therefore is that everything is going to be alright. What you need to do is believe in the face of all odds that things are going to turn out fine. I can tell you that all adversities that you will face will eventually turn out fine (though I don’t think you will believe me). But even if you do not believe me, please, believe in yourself and your ability to prevail against all odds - you have demonstrated it in the past and you WILL repeat it in the future. Everything is going to turn out fine.
I want you to lose this tendency. Most things command a premium for a reason - they actually work better. And the time you inevitably spend repairing or replacing as a consequence of skimping on quality in the first place will cost you more in totality than a high quality first purchase. This works for habits as well, for example if you skimp on a healthy breakfast then the time you lose though lack of energy and sometimes sickness will cost you more than a hearty meal every morning.
Focus on quality, be picky about what enters your life but once decided then buy once and buy the best you can so you can rely on it for the long term, don't go in with a deal seeker mindset.
Understand that a good life is about saying "no" long enough so that you eventually get to the things you can proudly, enthusiastically say "yes" to 100%.
Now you find yourself set in a 9 to 5 routine that is liberating and confusing at the same time. You like having the money, money that you have earned, earned through your own sweat and hard work (so you think). But you find it is not the life that was sold to you, you’re forced to listen to people who you think “don’t have half my IQ” (so entitled, you), you don’t know how to navigate the office space with all its politics and people, you wish you could have a user manual for it all.
Keep “God” handy
Oh, you will work hard, you will work your butt off, you will make the right moves, you will impress the right people and then someone (God?) or something (luck?) will come in and take it all away. And the sad part is that you will not be able to do anything about it. You will whine and complain and grovel, but nothing will come out of it. The even sadder part is that this will happen to you many times, oh so many times. You will get up and life will trip you, you will get up again and life will trip you over again.Rocky Balboa will tell you that it is not about how hard you hit but about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. All of that is well and good. The Fighter in your will get back up eventually, good stuff.
But what I also want to tell you is - if you have a God or something like that - Something that you could hold beyond question and beyond understanding, whose decisions and actions are mysterious, maybe even random but never to be questioned - then you’d have a relaxed mind, and all that released stress would allow you to be present in the moment and not jeopardize your future by thinking about what went wrong in the past. If you could say, right after life puts you to the ground, “As you will, my _____ (God, lord, luck, life, destiny etc.)” and essentially handover the reins after putting in your best effort. Forgive yourself.
Stop overthinking - Do not extrapolate to doom
Some people are blessed with a mind that focuses on the right thing and only the right thing. Unfortunately for you; while your mind is powerful, it is uncontrolled. Till now you’ve been able to make it work for you and direct it's power to your advantage (maybe because you had a step-by-step programme courtesy the Indian education system). However, when you start your professional career, with no one to guide and direct you, you will find that your mind likes to spend analysing for the 100th time what your boss said at work or how you could have had it better than your current employer or any of the other useless thoughts that your mind is so good at generating. Very soon you’ll realize that it is even better at thinking of apocalyptic events originating from innocuous beginnings - like how a substandard presentation will lead you to eventually getting fired and ending up on the streets, destitute. And then you will spend even more time convincing yourself of how that doomsday will never come - you will essentially fight yourself. And that is perhaps the worst situation that a person can find themselves in, a prisoner of their own making, imprisoned in their own mind.This will lead you to have unnecessary stress in your mind, lead you to miss out on opportunities that could have been yours, I feel sad just thinking about it.
What you need is to KNOW therefore is that everything is going to be alright. What you need to do is believe in the face of all odds that things are going to turn out fine. I can tell you that all adversities that you will face will eventually turn out fine (though I don’t think you will believe me). But even if you do not believe me, please, believe in yourself and your ability to prevail against all odds - you have demonstrated it in the past and you WILL repeat it in the future. Everything is going to turn out fine.
Don't skimp on quality
Early in your career you’ll have a cheapo mindset - that is, you’ll try to make do with the bare minimum. You’ll buy a plastic stool instead of a proper chair, you will eat plain bread in the name of breakfast, you will buy cheap leather shoes off the sidewalk. And you will think you are the smart guy, because this way you're going to be rich (you won't) and you won't be affected by the compromises (you will).I want you to lose this tendency. Most things command a premium for a reason - they actually work better. And the time you inevitably spend repairing or replacing as a consequence of skimping on quality in the first place will cost you more in totality than a high quality first purchase. This works for habits as well, for example if you skimp on a healthy breakfast then the time you lose though lack of energy and sometimes sickness will cost you more than a hearty meal every morning.
Focus on quality, be picky about what enters your life but once decided then buy once and buy the best you can so you can rely on it for the long term, don't go in with a deal seeker mindset.
Choose your NOs carefully but stick with them
Life will give put you in difficult situations, it will ask you to do things that go against your ideology. And somewhere down the line you WILL find yourself in a situation that you are uncomfortable in. It will be in such times that you have to figure out your “NOs”. Most often for you it is going to happen when your work/boss demands that you put in extra/odd hours while in your heart you know you’d rather be relaxing and unwinding. Then, when you do decide to relax and unwind instead of sending in that report you will feel FOMO, a regret that you should’ve worked instead. DO NOT DO THIS.Understand that a good life is about saying "no" long enough so that you eventually get to the things you can proudly, enthusiastically say "yes" to 100%.
Anything you do in life is a choice and with it come consequences, once you decide what you DO NOT stand for then stick with it, proudly. You will reap the rewards that ensue either way - a relaxed mind/body for a slower career path - but that is fine - there is no right or wrong - it was your decision - you took it and will face bravely whatever comes next. Don’t second guess yourself.
The question to ask yourself during these times is “How are they my benchmark?”
How are some people who happened to graduate from the same institute at the same time as you, with whom you have spent not more than 1% of your life experiences, with whom you have everything different apart from the name of your business school - how are these people YOUR benchmark? How are these people with whom you by sheer randomness got acquainted, otherwise would not have been aware of their existence - how are they now suddenly YOUR benchmark? How are these people who have had entirely different upbringing, who have grown up under different life circumstances, who have been in entirely different situations as you, who have in fact been bestowed with their own specific skills and drawbacks as persons which are in no circumstance going to be a mirror of what you have been bestowed with - how are they YOUR benchmark?
When you think about it you will realize it really is absurd comparing yourself with others, it's illogical, comparison is done between things that can be compared - and if you try to “compare” the performance of two things that have an overwhelmingly vast majority of characteristics that are dissimilar then it is no surprise that you will end up lost.
Build alternate (passive) income early
Life is unpredictable and no matter how solid your position in your company or how stable your sources of income are, there is always the possibility of things going wrong and suddenly you find that solid pillar shaking. So, don’t put all your eggs in one basket and don’t rely on a single source of income. Ideally, you’d want to develop alternate passive income, passive because it will not require your active involvement and free you up for other pursuits. But developing alternate passive income requires dedication and consistency. Day after day of taking small steps in the direction of a side gig or project that will hopefully someday blossom into an income stream.They are not your benchmark. You are.
You have a big problem of comparing yourself with others, and then deciding whether you should be happy or not. It's not as apparent yet but will become soon when you start getting news of what awesome careers your “peers” are having. You will start thinking how you are slowing down in your life, how you should be where they are but you are stuck here. This will make you morose. And it will start impacting how you interact at work; you will feel sad that you are still doing your old job while your “peers” are doing newer things, you’ll start expecting promotions because they are getting them and then when you don’t get it will sabotage your relationship with your boss. Worst of all though, you will lose on your peace of mind while you think all of this, robbing you of precious time you could have spent LIVING.The question to ask yourself during these times is “How are they my benchmark?”
How are some people who happened to graduate from the same institute at the same time as you, with whom you have spent not more than 1% of your life experiences, with whom you have everything different apart from the name of your business school - how are these people YOUR benchmark? How are these people with whom you by sheer randomness got acquainted, otherwise would not have been aware of their existence - how are they now suddenly YOUR benchmark? How are these people who have had entirely different upbringing, who have grown up under different life circumstances, who have been in entirely different situations as you, who have in fact been bestowed with their own specific skills and drawbacks as persons which are in no circumstance going to be a mirror of what you have been bestowed with - how are they YOUR benchmark?
When you think about it you will realize it really is absurd comparing yourself with others, it's illogical, comparison is done between things that can be compared - and if you try to “compare” the performance of two things that have an overwhelmingly vast majority of characteristics that are dissimilar then it is no surprise that you will end up lost.
Not only is comparison the great stealer of joy, it is also an exercise in futility. Don’t do it, it's illogical if you do it once and borderline insane if you do it repeatedly. Live YOUR life, not anyone else’s.
PS: If you are really so worried about getting left behind then compare with YOURSELF and how you have performed in the past, at least that comparison is valid as the two things you are comparing (you present and your past self) are actually comparable. If you are able to “beat” your past self by even a thin margin and be able to do it repeatedly day after day soon you will realize that you are far ahead of anyone whom you ever thought of as a “benchmark”.
PS: If you are really so worried about getting left behind then compare with YOURSELF and how you have performed in the past, at least that comparison is valid as the two things you are comparing (you present and your past self) are actually comparable. If you are able to “beat” your past self by even a thin margin and be able to do it repeatedly day after day soon you will realize that you are far ahead of anyone whom you ever thought of as a “benchmark”.
Find a sponsor at work
The thing about organizations today (and maybe for the next 100 years or so till the time AI becomes optimized enough to conduct performance dialogues) is that they are inefficient.What I mean by that is they are made up of humans they are also subject to human flaws - the flaw in this context is impressionability. When someone is impressionable it means they are susceptible to being influenced by external forces and might not apply their mind to checking the veracity of claims. When used for entire organizations it means that the organizational culture is such that it is over indexed on judging employee capability/potential basis what impression they are able to make on others and under indexed on factually evaluating employees for competence.
Plus, there is another flaw at play as well - limited resources/time. Organizations try to ensure that their ROI per employee is positive, that is, the money (or benefit) they are getting out of an individual employee is higher than the money (or benefit) that they are paying to them, some will even try to maximize this difference the higher up someone is in the hierarchy. Now, managers just don’t have the time to do justice to evaluating an employee’s ROI and instead rely on heuristics such as how popular they are, what is their general impression on the floor and WHAT OTHERS SAY OF THEM.
That is why you see around you all of these time strapped and fatigued managers rushing from one meeting to another. These two factors combine to make most organizations (the one you are working for right now included) a place where you have to show that you are a smart and hard worker worth getting elevated along with actually being a smart and hard worker worth getting elevated.
Most organizations will try to balance it out by having processes and rituals like peer reviews, 360 feedback, periodic reviews, anonymized ratings etc. but I suspect it never really does much apart from increasing HR expenses. Organizations are likely to remain compromised like this, in my view, for some time to come.
And therefore, as much as you hate it, as much as you would rather want your work to speak for itself, you have to find a sponsor at work.
A sponsor is someone whose word carries weight in the organization and who is willing to put their reputation behind you, someone who backs you during those critical meetings where annual ratings are decided. I wish I knew this when I was your age but hey, at least I know it now.
So, there you have it, 7 solid rules to keep your life in check as you navigate the corporate jungle. I wish you all the best and hope that the advice contained in this letter will hold you in good stead.
Best
Aviral of February 2020
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