Inspired at work, straying on personal goals, and getting a stripe on my white belt! | Report

17 Apr 2021 . category: report . Comments
#radicali #startup #singapore #fitness #bjj

Welcome to #231 - a four week report this time, lots to cover!

i went through a non-stop-work mode for a couple weeks in April, as we deployed some changes to the self-serve flow of the product. One of my major focus areas has been stability and documentation in our engineering process. We have started using Confluence & Jira actively, we have setup some structure around production deploy timings and tech team’s availability through customer support timings(9-6). i also had some calls to conduct a Gap Analysis on our infosecurity measures, will be working on it in the coming few months to get the security certification. We have started some preliminary fundraising discussions, will be updating more about this in the coming few months.

Right now, my daily routine involves waking up somewhere between 9-10AM after five-six hours of sleep. I thrust myself into work straightaway which isn’t ideal. This routine forces me to work late into the nights, and late nights are not the best times for maintaining internal discipline around how i spend our time. Because i am focussing on gym & jiujitsu in the nights, i’m unable to get in any runs or yoga sessions. Late night content consumption is also a waste of time, and not wholly productive.

To solve for these problems, i am committing to two workouts a day - one in the morning/afternoon and one in the evening. This will allow me to get in my runs/yoga, tire me out in the night and force me to have a better routine. i’ve started doing a stretching/foamroll session in the night everyday, will continue this.

i should be auditing my content consumption, as it has quite frankly gone to shit in the last few weeks. i’ve been watching stupid Twitch videos over dinner. i shall be consuming more content around JiuJitsu, and also think about my BJJ moves passively. That’s how i’ll get muscle memory working for me. A few weeks ago, i got my first stripe on the white belt - i was very happy and encouraged by that. It made my resolve to work hard even stronger. Humility is the core that martial arts brings to life, struggling to breath under someones entire bodyweight pressed against your chest and neck reminds me that my ego don’t mean anything in the larger scheme of things. There are a whole lot of killers in this world, better and stronger than me. What am i so angry of, what am i so upset about, what am i so egotistical of?

i recently got some more books from the National Library - currently finishing up Snowden’s Permanent Record, and parallely reading a bit of Arundhati Roy’s The End of Imagination and a brief english translation of the Upanishads. Happy that i’m sticking to a routine here.

Yesterday, i celebrated Friday evening with the ritual of the NoGi BJJ class followed by a group dinner with everyone. As Joe Rogan says, community is highly important and gives a lot of meaning to your life. i also sat down with our tech team and played a few games to wind down for the week, i played chess and then the team continued with Call of Duty later!

My family contracted Covid in the last couple weeks, and my dad is currently admitted in the hospital because of some abnormalities with the blood levels. It’s quite a tough time for them, and i try to remain positive and let it not affect me. There’s not much i can do other than bringing up their spirits. Sometimes God(or aliens) just take tests, and we got to stand up to these tests.

The world celebrated Holi in end March, i visited my uncle’s place for dinner and got some dinner(& Gujias!). Sometimes i feel like i don’t talk to my grandparents enough, it’s probably a generation gap issue and i don’t feel as comfortable - i should get better at it though. i met up with a bunch of friends on the last weekend of March as we played mafia and fought each other over who’s the civilian and who’s not. Good times :)

The weekends off late have been spent in planning the tasks for the next week, and also brainstorming product vision for the coming few months. There’s a lot to do - keep hammering!

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