Reversing the Doughnut

The two most common comments I hear from people are: “You are leading the kind of life I wish I led",?and a puzzled “What are you actually doing right now?”. The first comes with a tinge of envy, the second with a great deal of bewilderment.

When I answer that “I am spending the rest of my life learning”, the bewilderment becomes stupefaction. To some people it seems like the old “I am preparing for the IAS” story – not really ‘doing real stuff’, just wandering around…

So, let me explain again here, rehashing something I had put out in May last year with some updates:

I left my job and a great corporate life to strike out on my own.?It's not a novel thing, lot of people do so when they hit their forties or so. The pandemic accelerated this trend, as people realised the really important things in life – health, family, community, passions. What was a little unusual, perhaps, was what I did or did not do, after I exited corporate life. Most people do a typical ‘ tech startup ’, some are ‘evaluating options’, many partner with like-minded people and open a consulting firm, some start a restaurant in goa

I did start my own advisory company which had just me. I had no ambitions for it or go big or go home! I seemed to have my fingers in numerous: advising, consulting, teaching, studying, speaking, writing, coaching. Sometimes I joked I was growing extra fingers… So, a bunch of people thought that I was meandering along, with a lack of focus and commitment. And so, a lot of people would be at a loss of words to describe what is it that I really do.

On the other hand, I have always known and have been super-clear and super-focused on what I am doing in my Career 2.0: I am LEARNING.

Let me explain: I believe that conventional careers are mostly about earning , and a lot less about learning. So, as the roughly scribbled diagram here explains, the core is about earning – the salary , the bonuses, the esops , the designation, the responsibility, team size. Peripherally, as the diagram depicts, it is about learning. What you learn is incidental to what you earn, as you focus your entire career around the earning bit.

In my Career 2.0, I have ‘reversed this doughnut’. The core is about learning, and what I earn is only to financially support myself, as I learn. Simple.

So, every year I learn something formally: In 2018, I learnt to be an Executive #coach; in 2019, I learnt future tech at Singularity University ; in 2020, I learnt to be an Independent board?director In 2021, I learnt as much as I could about enterprise AI. In 2022, I am learning the ethics , philosophy and History of Artificial Intelligence , through my second Masters at 英国剑桥大学 Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (MSt – AI, Ethics, Society). When I teach the Metaverse?at Ashoka University , I learn so much about it from the students. Next year, it will potentially be about what Nandan Nilekani describes as ‘digitization at population scale’ in India…

Everything that I do, I do to learn. In my Advisory assignments, I have been learnt a lot about Sleep science at Duroflex , about being Agile with 思特沃克软件技术（中国）有限公司 about business models and Platforms from the guru Sangeet Paul Choudary ? himself at Mahindra Group , Enterprise AI from another guru Anand Mahurkar at Findability Sciences . When I speak at events and to clients, every single time I learn about them and what they are doing. Through my writing a Mint ?column every fortnight, I learn a little bit about a new technology or business every 15 days: Quantum Computing , drones , mRNA?…

So, that is what I am doing in my second career: Learning a huge number of new things. And earning something to support all the learning.

How does this ‘reversed doughnut’ taste? Is it really as fun and cool as people think it is? More on that in a post in the next couple of days. For those who made it tell here, hope you learnt something!