15 Dec 2021
I’ve been asking myself “What opportunities can’t I see because they’re not having big titles enough?”
The very best opportunities for learning and growth rarely comes with big titles. In my experience, people early in the career who takes bets on exciting, but non-prestigious are more successful in the long run.
You can out-perform your peers by finding under priced projects that others don’t judge to be valuable.
Everybody wants to be high status. But despite the financial rewards, few people are willing to work on low-status projects, even they have the potential to become highly successful in the long run.
The world is filled with under-priced opportunities that are only to available to people who are comfortable to work in low status, but promising to grow big.
01 Dec 2021
One of my privileges is living in Chennai close to the India’s longest beach Bay of Bengal. I often cycle across the highway stretch from OMR to Mahabalipuram on the scenic east coast road on the weekends. I get to do this from Sept to Feb every year. Thanks to amazing Chennai weather during Sep to Feb,and the rest of the year, it’s horrible. The physicality of cycling is one thing, but reflecting on my life, I think I am more grateful for the lessons it teaches me about perseverance and mental strength.
At first, the experience was awful, even 5-10 KM was exhausting for me. My heart spiked even for a short distance of 2 KM. But the people I cycle with – all more experienced on endurance biking than myself – pushed me to keep going.
Almost 3 months later, I’ve started feeling comfortable cycling 50-100 KM average every day, I’ve gradually improved my distance by 1% every day with a lot of consistent efforts.
I use this cycling experience to ground me when I think about life challenges. Almost 6 months back, when I could barely cycle 2 Km distance and now covering 50 KM average is become a routine and reminds myself that anything can be possible by simply showing up and doing the work, every single day.
Another insight I gained from cycling with remarkable people. They are remarkable because they remind me of how accessible success are, only if we put in the effort every day. In the beginning, I used to avoid cycling with people thinking whether I could match their speed and distance. (I still feel this way). But I have slowly gained the confidence by practice.
Being with the remarkable people every day shows me the important aspects of human condition. I understood that, all human being will have bad days, bad weeks and, injuries. We all keep going anyway and this is most important action we can choose to take in cycling, as in life.
01 Nov 2021
Many tech companies have been working remote for most of the year due to COVID, expecting to return to the office sometime in 2022. I have recently learned that most of companies are considering hybrid model as a future work model. This announcement marked a mind shift for me, where I need to stop just surviving remote work, and start thriving in remote work. Not only for my own sake, but also for the teams I lead.
My Work from home setup and routine
In the begining, I struggled to adapt to new remote work environment. I was missing my daily rountine of going to office, socializing etc.
But slowly I started adapting to new home office setup and the rountine. But,I push myself everyday to get out of home, for both cycling, walking
and socializing. I take short walks with my dog "Kio" twice a day, which helps me to clear my mind and refocus.
Engaging with my team remotely
The key to building great remote relationships is intention. You need to try harder to find have meaningful meetings, and truly understand each person’s perspective. We try to communciate asynchronously when possible. Like other remote teams, we primarily gather in Ringcentral chat room more often to communicate asynchronously to keep everyone up to date. We try to have weekly 1:1 meetings and monthly once All hands meeting.
Learnings and Best Practices
Communication
- Have Weekly 1:1 Meetings
- Shift to Async communication using Chat tools
- Use effectively collaboration tools like Confluence or Google docs for taking meeting notes
- Use Kanban tools like JIRA/Trello for at-a-glance status updates related to project work
- Increase written communication by reducing meetings
Meetings
- Start and end in time
- Most meetings need to be recorded
- Share Minutes of meetings
16 Jun 2020
Grit, Gravel and Gear
I am always fascinated with adventures trips, especially going around the world on cycling through wild forest, mountains and rivers. I came across this new book "Grit, Gravel and Gear" in a local store during this lockdown. It is written by an author "Dhruv Bogra", an Indian cyclist, who shares his 400 days of cycling trip experience from Alaska to Argentina.
For anyone, who has a dream to travel and explore the world, I would recommend to read this book to get an idea on what it takes in planning for a such long trip.
The author talks about his experience in planning this long trip and its challenges. It covers about his lonel cycling experience in dense forest around Alaska and Canadian borders and his sleepless nights during camping in the night around the lake side's due to fear of Bears attack. The most interesting is, the author also shares lot of tips on local food, local stores, restaurants from Alaska to Argentina, which was interesting to read. Few chapters were bit boring, it was very repetitive. We can skip few parts of the book. Few chapters are quite interesting.
Enjoy reading!
12 Jun 2020
Back Stage
The book "Back Stage", is a biography of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Indian Economist and past deputy chairman of Planning commission of India.
The book talks about on how India transformed itself from economic crisis through reform changes and policies implemented between 1991 to 2010. Great insights on how key decisions was taken during a serious crisis.