Do epic shit: 7 key takeaways from my FreeFlowing session with Ankur Warikoo
"Changing my career track midway was hard. But I just couldn’t continue doing something that I did not love"
I come from humble beginnings. We never had enough, we were always out of money. But irrespective of the financial situation, my parents ensured that my sister and I got a good education. As a child, I shared my parents’ expectations. But when I was living my dream in the US, moving steadily towards my goal, I realised that what I had felt all along was infatuation, similar to being in love with a celebrity. I had had very little idea about the realities of the profession itself until then - the highs and lows, the depths, the intricacies. It became very clear to me that this was not something I could do for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t get me out of bed on a Monday morning, or power me through the week.?
So I came back home and restarted my career. My parents, when they sent me off to the US, had done so with the expectation that I would return a space scientist. When I didn’t, they were devastated, and they took a really long time to come to terms with it. Those were difficult times for all of us as a family. We were in financial debt, and there was the thought that all the years I had invested in moving towards my goal were wasted.?
When you’re young you don’t think much of losing a year here or there. I was studying on a scholarship and that undoubtedly made it easier for me to take the decision. I only had to deal with my emotions and the impact it had on my family. It is very possible that if I had been paying for my own education, I would have hung on. The sunk cost fallacy is real, because the stakes can get very high. More so because a lot of youngsters today only realise what they want to do while pursuing something else.?
"I share my failures in the hope that others learn from them and don’t repeat them"
As an introvert, I derive my energy from within myself, and from the things that I do. If I don’t know myself fully; if I hide my flaws and my own failures from myself, let alone the rest of the world, what others tell me will blindside me and unnerve me.?
Leaving my PhD and coming back home to begin, all over again, was a big setback. But it also got me thinking - how did I get here? What went wrong? Over the years, I have gotten used to this self-reflective method. I face my thoughts and confront my own truths.
Others can only see the result, the outside. Only I know what happened, day to day, every day.?
"Everything that I share doesn’t come from expertise, but from painful, personal experience. One of these learnings is about the purpose of money"
One of the many consequences of growing up without money was that I hated it. I blamed money for all our troubles, and I believed that if I solved for this, every other problem in my life will also magically get resolved. I took a long time to figure out the answer to this question: as an adult who grew up without money, will I spend the rest of my life chasing it or moving beyond it? Did I have to choose between the two? This brought me to the purpose of money itself.
I may not be making as much money as I would from a corporate job, but I feel fulfilled. I feel light, because I already have freedom. Freedom to sleep in the afternoons, spend it with family, or read a book. Freedom to work when I want, and to say no to work I don’t want to pick up. In my opinion, the freedom to make such choices is a privilege?
"I absolutely love my relationship with time"
I have been tracking time studiously from my early teens. At that time I would end my day by calculating my ‘efficiency ratio’. It was a percentage that measured how many of my waking hours were employed in work that I defined as ‘productive’. My goal was to be at 75% over the course of the week.?
Today I am able to get a lot of things done, not because I am the smartest, or because I work the hardest, but because of two factors:
Firstly, I know what to say no to; consequently, I am clear on what I will agree to do. I turn down anything that is not my immediate priority.
Secondly, I maintain a schedule. I give time the respect it deserves by maintaining a schedule. Being professional about it means that the schedule doesn’t control me; I control the schedule. I make changes to my schedule too, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be one.?
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"Being myself makes it easier to be consistent"
Being authentic means that I am the same, whether you meet me at a mall or over a zoom call. Being myself makes it easier to be consistent, but it also exposes my flaws. I don’t want to cover them up, because that would mean not being myself. So I might make mistakes in what I say, endorse or react to. I strive to own up to them, and apologise when I am wrong. I want to be a person who grows with others. I don’t want to be a static personality who says everything perfectly all the time and expects unilateral acceptance to all of my opinions.?
What I have realised over and over is that people - surprisingly, ironically - trust those who own up to their mistakes a lot more than people who don’t. I aim to be such a person.?
"The secret of my content is not flashes of inspiration, but an evolving process of creativity"
When it comes to creating content consistently, day after day, it is as much about creativity as it is about the process. We all have so many thoughts, but we might second guess them. I document my thoughts, and rarely second guess them. I am conscious that what might seem straightforward to me, might feel like a revelation to someone just starting their career, or a younger professional grappling with a similar problem.?
Secondly, I observe everything and everyone around me keenly. I create my thoughts from books I read and from life experiences. I am very interested in people, and am also an intent listener. All of this helps bring my thoughts together.?
Thirdly, and something that may not be obvious, is that creativity is eventually a process. I have to keep doing it, even when it gets boring. I have always been a process driven, data oriented person. While putting together a team to manage content, we established a process. While it undergoes improvements too, it provides is a steady stream of content, a content factory of sorts. We all have many thoughts and ideas, but it is as important to put them through a process.?
"My purpose is to create awareness because I believe that many of our decisions, both past and present, stem from a place of ignorance"
In the first half of my life, I didn’t think and stop to question why I was doing what I was doing even once. I carried on in the present, with a decision made in my past
When I was young, most of my choices were made in ignorance. I just didn’t know any better. In Class 11 we are asked to pick science, commerce or arts, and we inevitably do what our families tell us to do. Or it becomes a default choice because of our grades. This decision doesn’t come from understanding what these three streams mean, or what we are good at. I feel that most of the decisions we continue to take in life - whether it is money, relationships or career - are similar.?
The jobs we do, the people we work with, the interests we pursue, most of them are chosen with the assumption that the only choices available are the ones that are immediately visible to us. This is not to say that we need to be aware of every single choice available. That would be impossible. But some exploration, to look beyond the known, explore from within ourselves, what we want to do and why, can go a long way in making our lives more meaningful.
Everything I do, from the money I spend, how I schedule my time, to my friends, to creating and scaling content, are active choices. They are made with the awareness that out of all the other things out there, I am doing these. I believe that being aware - intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, physically, socially - will help with better choices. I still make poor choices, but it has become a smaller percentage over time. Just reducing the number of bad decisions will have an exponential impact on our overall quality of life.?
PS: Here's the link to our full conversation: