Overview

I am back again to blogging my yearly reflection after a break of 2 years. First, I want to be honest about the reason I didn’t write for the 2 years. Simple answer is I didn’t have the motivation. I know that is quite easy to say but needs a deeper introspection. Did I get lazy? Were the years too overwhelming? I don’t have a clear answer yet but have some general notes. 2020 and 2021 were covid years filled with horrible covid stories which I didn’t particularly want to relive. Also I was in comfort of my home for 2 years which made me lazy and not write much.

Despite all the hardships, I feel those 2 years taught me a lot about myself as well. Most importantly is the fickleness of life. Everyone has limited time on this planet. This had a profound impact on my various mental models which I will try to touch upon in the article. But let’s move on and turn a new leaf this year. I have promised myself now to write every year. The key here would be discipline, so from next time there would be no excuse of lack of motivation 😛.

Coming back to this year, I feel this year has been most defining years of my life. There were experiences which I never thought I would have gained in my entire life and the lrearning from it.

Biggest news of year 2022:-

Got a job @Meta (FAANG dream)
Moved from Delhi (India) to London (UK).
Met the king of UK 😛

Highlights

Career Growth

This has to start with the biggest change. I switched my jobs from MediaNet to Meta at London. I had no plans for a switch but got approached by meta recruiter which ignited my interest. And the reason they were able to find me was a good LinkedIn profile. If you want to learn build LinkedIn effectively, you can watch this video. Luckily, I was able to clear the interview loop and moved from Delhi to London. For practicing DS & Algo I simply did questions on Leetcode and kept doing them until I felt confident.

Though technically a career switch is not equivalent to career growth per se, but in my case all my jobs involved different kind of exposure. BrowserStack was a SaaS start-up where focus was towards growth of the business, bringing in more customers. MediaNet(B2C/B2B) was a more established and mature business and invlolved incremental changes to features. Meta is a very big corporate where my current focus is to increase the revenue. This gives me lot of exposure into various different companies. In future I can make an informed where I live to work.

Travelling

In two years, I couldn’t travel much due to covid restriction. So, in 2022 I decided to be at my travel best. General guideline was to not lose any travel opportunity due to some made up stupid reason in my mind. Prioritise things I like and just do them. Travelling happens to be one of them. Whether it is hiking, exploring unfamiliar places, observing new cultures, I like it all.

This realisation and the change in mental model came after covid restrictions. I rued over the fact that I didn’t travel much in pre covid era. I was too engrossed in myself that I let the time slip by. Also, another thought that changed my model, was something that my friend told me. This is the sweet spot where we have the combination of freedom, money and energy.

I travelled extensively in UK. Again, my most of the plans were impromptu. Planning every trip just 3-4 days before the actual departure. To name a few places, I travelled to Bristol, Scotland, Wales and many other places. The best part travelling here is I get to see untouched nature. Hikes here though less strenuous than Himalayas but are incredibly beautiful.

Health, Fitness and Nutrition

With all the gyms closed due to covid restrictions, all the progress I had made in 2019 and 2020 almost went waste. All the gains were lost by early 2022. I just had the experience of training from 2019. If I could do in 2019, then I can do it again. I sprung back and restarted hitting gym from May 2022. I am proud of the fact that I could make gym a habit. Now each day that I don’t go to gym I feel guilty and the next day take an immediate action. Consistency is the key, even when other things seemed difficult persisted with gym.

For me fitness is not only going to the gym, it is about the overall physical well being. The progress in my running has been amazing❤️. I did my first 5K this year under 6”/km, did multiple 10Ks, attended HIIT classes. Played various games like badminton, table tennis. Occasional days of swimming. And the long walks around the city. I loved exploring new outdoor activities like rock climbing and kayaking. I did any physical activity to complete my daily goal of 30min exercise and 900cal move goal.

Fitness trackers give me an extra motivation to keep my streaks and calorie burn going. It is clear to me; exercising IS my silent therapy. It keeps my mind sharp and energy levels up. If I do a challenging thing in the morning, other tasks in the day automatically falls into place. It becomes highlight of the day and gives me a unique belief that I can achieve anything.

I realised how clean air improved my health after shifting to UK from India. WHen I went back to Delhi I could instantly feel the smog and difficulty in breathing. And I got ill for a week due to the pollution related allergies.

I keep experimenting with my nutrition and the trend continued this year. I tried eating limited gluten, protein-based diet, plant based. Things that stuck are the streaks where I don’t consume sugar at all. Somehow those days body feels much easier to work with, the ingeneral feeling is awesome. But those are personally extremely difficult since I am a dessert lover. Second is having one meal in the day as salad. Third change that I liked but was extreme is the increased productivity with hunger. I would directly eat the lunch, had amazing morning with work.

Reading

I again read less than what I expected. I think I read total of 4 books this year. I know that is quite a small number 😭. Though some of the books I read were real quality reads. This year reading recommendation would be 7 habits of highly effective people. It is an amazing book, based upon the life principles and improving the mental models.

Finance

Stock market was the new fad in India, following which I opened my first stock demat account in 2020. This paved my way into the financial world. Learnt all about the basics from various Youtube channels like Warikoo, Akshat shrivastav, pranjal kamra. These youtube channels taught me value of investing and starting early. I got interested into various investing instruments and discussed regularaly about them with my friends. I delved much depper into various stock investment starategies, tried making some algorithms as well which didn’t work that well 😛. With so much interest in the finance world, I am sure it will open some doors in the future.

P.S - I strongly suggest everyone to start investing, in any instrument of your risk appetite. Risk: FD < Gold < Bonds < MF < Stocks < Crypto. Hit me up anytime if anyone wants to discuss anything about finance.

Misc

Everything was not rosy as it sounds, it is difficult to live far from the family. The possibility of only able to visit them twice per year breaks my heart. This teaches an important lesson of not taking anyone for granted. Life of comfort is much easier to live but the life with hardship is much more rewarding. Just like muscle fibre, human beings only grow when are hurt.

My previous reflection for 2019 :- Hello, 2020

Thanks for reading. Look out for the next post on the my 2023 goals..