Life Update + Insights (Version: Jan 2024)

A very Happy New Year if you’re reading this. Wishing the best for you and your loved ones.

This one, as you can guess from the title, is a life update. I’ll be talking about lessons from my last job, a 10-day Vipassana Meditation retreat, and share some book recommendations.

I took 2 weeks off the internet and it was probably the best thing ever. Highly recommend it if you can do it!

I recently quit my job at the company I was working with. It had been coming for months but we wrapped it up peacefully almost a month back. I’m super grateful for the entire experience and the lifelong friends I made along the journey.

A few lessons from the last 2 years of working at Alethea AI:

• Nothing matters more than people. Be it your community, your team, your family or friends, or your own ‘self’. I always prioritized people, especially the community (because we owed the most to them), and I have zero regrets about how I did things.

• The way you show up every day reflects the values you live by. Give your best and then start improving from there. It’ll help you grow immensely and make you a better team member (and someone people can look up to one day).

• Be overly communicative and kindly honest. Don’t be scared of being annoying, or seen as the person who doesn’t know, or simply who wouldn’t agree w everything being told to them. Clarity improves your speed and productivity better than coffee. One question can save the team hours of work!

  
  (Pssst.. There have been days when I told my manager that I was just procrastinating and we moved on to the next thing till I felt better to get back to the original task. It saved us time, managed expectations, and most importantly, built trust.)

• Lastly, respect your and others’ time! We all get the same 24 hours in a day. I’d be agitated if someone wasted my time, so why would I do that to the other?

I went for a 10-day Vipassana Meditation Course and I’ve never felt lighter than I do now. It is almost like someone took off my tinted sunglasses and I can see the colours now. A few insights:

• We are more deeply connected than we know. A calm mind can perceive subtle sensations and acknowledge sensitivities in our body that we normally don’t. We’d be much better off as a society only if we worked on ourselves before pointing fingers.
  

• The human mind and body are extremely delicate and fierce at the same time. Experiencing my sensitivities and strengths has helped me develop a newfound appreciation and respect for myself and others.
  

  Try this thought experiment by going back to the basics of Physics. The human body experiences 175,300 N atmospheric pressure on average. The pressure from inside the body is slightly higher than the outside to counter it. Imagine if you felt that force being applied from inside and outside all the time.
  

  The absence of consciousness of an experience doesn’t mean the absence of the event happening.

• We’re not even close to utilizing our full potential. Potential not utilized is potentially wasted in a way. We have a long way to go. It gives me hope and motivation to do more.
  

• You cannot pour into a glass from an empty jug. Fulfill yourself. Take care of yourself before taking care of others. Someone who doesn’t know what safety feels like can’t make the other feel safe. Someone who doesn’t know what happiness is can’t make the other happy. Someone who doesn’t know mathematics can’t do calculations for you.

A few recommended reads for 2024:

• Information Feudalism: Who owns the knowledge economy? by Peter Drahos

• Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

• The Myth of Normal by Dr Gabor Mate

• Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein

• The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

Thank you for making 2023 an amazing year for me, I hope this newsletter added some value to your life too. May 2024 brings the best for all of us.