Uncertainty is exciting! | Report 244

06 Sep 2021 . category: report . Comments
#singapore #startup #fitness #ideas

Welcome to #244, it’s September already!

Note: if you haven’t read the previous blog, please do so here for context!

Over the last week, i’ve been spending my time having calls/meetings with as many people from my network reminding me of that idea validation time period in August ‘18. i’m opening myself to volunteering opportunities in early stage startups, while at the same time trying to identify contract-based roles on the technical side.

i have landed upon a good opportunity to setup a data function in a startup, and i’ve been reading up about the Modern Data stack over the last few days. It’s an interesting field, and opens my mind to how i could have improved our data pipelining at Radicali. This opportunity allows me to work with a few seasoned technologists, and i’m keen to dive deeper.

A few questions i’m trying to answer with this exploration phase are:

• To achieve financial independence, what’s the ideal route for me - keeping in mind that i wish to live a happy and peaceful life from now onwards. i have to figure which industry should i be stepping into, whether i should focus on a bootstrapped/venture startup, how long should i take to finalize on this decision, and how should i go about exploring these questions.
• Continuing in Singapore by taking up a good job/starting up here, or moving back to India - this is one of those questions where all advice is cancelling out, and i am relying on my instincts. In order to kick off any contract work, i need to be moving back to India, and at the same time i plan to explore other projects/startups before going all-in.
• Is indiehacking and freelancing a feasible strategy in the long-term? This strategy has been invalidated as i’ve talked to more people in this domain.
• How much is too much. i’ve realized that in almost all situations, i follow the concept of ‘more is better’. Right now, since i have a lot of opportunities, i need to be careful as to what i pick up without compromising my quality of work.

i’ve realized that i need a thick skin to not let any piece of advice really get to me. Getting a few job offers too, but i’m not too keen right now. i hope i am able to see through everyone’s intentional/unintentional biases, and take the best decision for myself.

i revised Naval’s principles, and a couple of important maxims(so as to gain wealth) to remember are:

• Code and media are permissionless leverages.
• Gain Specific Knowledge, and productize yourself.

This makes it clear that i need to stay close to technology, grow into it, and build a personal brand that allows me to leverage my skillset for the rest of my life. Going to the Himalayas and indiehacking all alone seems a very romantic idea, which can potentially be explored for sometime, but in the long term - this strategy might not be the most optimal. Again, depends on what we are optimizing for, and i plan to optimize for wealth right now. Taleb says, to become a philosopher king, start with being a king, not being a philosopher.

i am taking some time to plan out my content strategy to build on the personal brand on Twitter & YouTube. Currently writing out the blog on my learnings from the last three years, i am targeting October 1st as the date i actively start this process.

i’m exploring an idea in the Product-led-growth domain, and i haven’t seen this sort of hype in the industry on many trends before. Very excited to dig deeper and get my hands dirty here.

One thing i’ve noticed is that Slack anxiety and delivery pressure around timelines is now gone, which allows me to explore whatever i wish. Personal discipline is still present to a large degree, but i need to keep myself even more accountable nowadays as there is no external force. As Rogan says, artificial suffering makes real suffering easier.

i had planned to start upskilling on blockchain development and frontend/app development last week, but it’s been difficult to do so with all that’s going on. i’ll probably start on this once there’s some amount of homeostasis.

On the fitness front, i put in two runs(including one 5K PR attempt at 23:02), 2 BJJ sessions where we worked on the Open Guard position from bottom, and 2 workouts at the gym. i have been taking it slightly easy on the workouts to rest my elbow, pain flared up again this week and i need to be careful here. i hit my goal of 60K for August and i’m targeting the same mileage for September too.

This weekend was beautiful - i spent the entire Saturday with friends as we headed out to the Bukit Batok nature park in the morning, raced up the World War 2 memorial stairs, had lunch at Dempsey hill, explored Fort Canning in the evening, dinner at Clarke Quay and wrapped up with a wild house party in the night. Sunday was spent recovering, planning, and then meeting up friends in the evening/night. Too much junk eaten, this week is punishment. i have a long list of places to visit on my Singapore bucket list, and i need to speed up progress on this!

On the NoFap log, i broke the streak on Day 7, currently feeling strong on Day 5. As i said above, more discipline needed to stick to the goals with zero external forces.

Uncertainty is exciting for sure, gotta keep hammerin’

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