Despite writing about how I’m reaping the fruits of my savings or whatever, I often feel useless and behind.
I’m due to start working soon, and I have put in the effort to start my own business during this time off, so I don’t struggle to justify my ‘sabbatical’ when people ask what I’ve been up to. But I also know I could have done much more with the same time.
This morning, I saw my brother’s text saying he’d been offered an internship at Bridgewater. I hadn’t even known he was interviewing. I’m proud of him, of course, but I instantly felt a lot worse about myself.
A year ago, I set out to start my own digital marketing business with the dream of retiring my dad within a couple of years. While I’m happy that this will still happen soon, even if it’s not through me, I can’t help but compare where I am now to where I thought I’d be.
A year ago when I was confident in building a successful business, I would’ve seen starting another 9-5 job, i.e. giving in to trading time for money, as a failure.
Now, I’m honestly kind of glad I’m getting back into it, and it’s beyond the basic reason of having the safety of a steady income.
My previous experiences working as a software engineer haven’t been great. I’ve seen a big company environment as well as a startup one, and I didn’t fit well into either.
But I wasn’t even thinking of applying for jobs again, when the company I’m now about to join caught my eye, and I instantly knew it would be a great fit if I were lucky enough to get in.
I hadn’t felt that way about any other workplace before, so this felt new. And each interview round just confirmed the feeling even more.
Another difference this time is that I know what I want. Earlier, the answer would mainly be money. But this time, it’s something that will actually motivate me to excel at the work I do, rather than simply keep my job. And I’ve come to realize what it is as I’ve tried out different things that haven’t worked over time.
See, I set out to learn digital marketing after I lost my previous job, in an attempt to create a business out of it that could eventually serve as a passive income stream, freeing up my time to do things of more interest to me — things I didn’t see as ‘work’.
I gained marketing skills and then combined them with tech skills from my education and attempted to launch a business out of Fluenci, a language learning app that I developed (and marketed). Later, I added another app, TuneTutor, to the package.
While I struggled to monetize these apps, through Fluenci and TuneTutor I fell in love with the solopreneurship journey and realized that that’s what I eventually want to do full-time.
I also know that I want to do it around building digital products, because what did I get a degree for otherwise? (Just kidding, I do actually like it. It’s thrilling to be creative in a way that solves problems for people, and all you need to make apps is a laptop. It’s a gold mine.)
After my last attempt, I realized that I need to upskill before I try to launch a new business on my own, and that’s how I’m looking at this new job. Of course I’ll be working for them, but I’ll know that the skills I develop during my time there are going to serve me in the long run with my personal ventures, and that’s the kind of motivation I need. That’s the motivation I lacked the last two times round.
It helps incredibly that this is exactly the kind of growth my new company fosters. I went to a retreat they organized recently, and it just confirmed everything — their 20-something-year-old engineers lead huge products, everyone has extreme ownership over their work, and you get to wear a bunch of different hats. They have relatively few employees for the amount of work they do, meaning that each engineer delivers a lot of impact, and in turn, career growth is insane. That’s the kind of growth I’m aiming for.
For now, as long as I have a full-time job lined up, I won’t feel like I’m wasting life. I’m determined not to let it run on autopilot like before. If I’m doing this, I’m doing it right and I’m learning. I never thought I’d be saying this, but I can’t wait to start work there.
At the same time, my brain is already running ahead to everything else I want to do. I need to figure out what to do with Fluenci and TuneTutor — sell them? Grow them? Do I even have the time or interest anymore? What about the sunk cost?
I’ll have to figure it out.
Until the start date comes though, I need to stay focused on my goals for Japan.
The balance has been hard to strike. When I spend the day inside studying, I feel like I’m missing out on the actual experience of being in a foreign country. But when I go out and don’t understand more than a few words of what I hear, or 5% of what I read, I feel like I’d be better off studying first so I can later actually engage with the language.
Lately, studying has won out. Yesterday was a full study day and a productive one. I planned for today to be the same. But with annoyingly low concentration levels, I was barely able to get started until evening. I just couldn’t focus.
I either need to find a better balance or stop being such a productivity freak and stop making it a problem (which, let’s be honest, is not happening).
I’ve also been doing off-topic things like applying to Y Combinator even though I know I won’t be able to commit, simply to see if my ideas have potential. And while I know the timing is probably impossible, I have co-founder calls lined up soon.
Sometimes you just have to put the wheels in motion and not think too much beforehand. That’s how Bloomberg happened. That’s how Silvr happened. And by my Silvr lining (see what I did there?) and my everything-happens-for-the-best policy, things usually work out.
It’s also a psychological trick — Parkinson’s Law. If you overload your plate, you somehow find a way to get most of it done. I realized this at university after I took up and somehow passed an insane amount of courses during my second year, and I preach it to everyone who asks. It’s what my brother does too, without labeling it, and he gets more shit done than anyone else I know.
The opposite is also true: if you don’t take on much, you don’t do much. I fell behind lately, and this is the state I’ve been in this past year. I’ve gone on about it enough in this post already to bring it up again.
I know what I’m doing now, and I’m on track to re-enter an era of productivity. Feeling guilty about what’s gone isn’t going to help.
I just need to buckle up, be a tourist, learn Japanese (!!), and stay sane.