A Hidden Gift in Being Grounded: Lessons from my 18 Years
Table of Contents
I know this is a long read.
So while you‘re more than welcome to go crazy and take in every word, feel free to use the TOC below to be picky and read what seems most interesting.
Enjoy!
The Idea of an Annual, Personal Letter
A Blessing in Disguise
A Transformative Moment of Chance by a Stranger
The Amazing Friends I Never Asked For
Never Having a Stable Group of Friends (until Middle School)
Lessons are Best Taught through First-Hand Experiences💡
About Environment 🥇
- The people and places you spend time with and around the most are the ones to most influence your work habits and attitude
- The subconscious is heavily dependant on where you are
- Make decisions around the people you’ll be around
About Common Realizations that Should be Common Sense 💁♀️
- We Are the Top 1%
About Impact = Entrepreneurship 🎯
- Business as the Best Mode of Delivering Value to Billions
- Big Companies vs. Small Companies
About Being Good at Problem Finding and Generating Ideas 🔋
- Naivety is the Underdog
- KISS for Everyone
- Nobody Can Stop a Good Idea 💥⛔️
- When it Comes to Leading
About Optimizing for Unique Experiences and Knowledge
How to Learn When No One’s Teaching
Stop Following Rules + Do What Makes Sense
People Are Behind Everything
$10 000 in 3 hours
Don’t Take No for an Answer
Thoughts Under Construction 🚧
- Failure is such a humbling power
- Cut out every word that you don’t need
- It’s just a little dust
- No role is too small
- You always have more time
- Always follow through on what you said you will do
- Procrastination is a lame way to risk losing opportunities
- Never give up time to spend with someone
- The more I learn about various topics in life, the less I know what I want to spend my life doing
- High school is a game
- “Never give up on something you can’t go a day without thinking about”
- I love watching journeys
- My Dad lets me talk back
A decade is a long time for anyone. But this past one is especially significant for me because it was my first full decade I’ve lived through, and I’m a sucker for symbolic events (especially things like this that prompt a bit of nostalgia 🥺).
And before you say it, when I said decade, I meant the time between two years ending in ‘0’ 😅.
I’ve learned quite a few important lessons through various significant experiences that defined what I value, how I behave and how I treat my life.
Granted, I’m far from wise. I’m at peace with knowing I have only a fraction of the life experiences that build honest perspectives about life. What I’ve learned is from my 18-years and privileged conversations from much older.
Come back in 30 years and I’ll have a lot more to share. 😉
The most personally influential lessons I’ve learned — the ones with the most profound impact on my thinking, habits and values, are one’s gained from direct experience of various life events.
Many of those are regular teenager events, but some experiences, I’ve been lucky to have come across, and privileged what I’ve been taught helped me realize them.
Those are directly in thanks to the people that have helped guide me to the realization of mindsets, habits and thoughts that enabled me to motivate myself to do meaningful work.
The Idea of an Annual, Personal Letter
At the turn of the decade (wow I still get a rush saying that), I wanted to reflect on all the lessons learned from the numerous events that have occurred in my life so far.
The likes of Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz write annual letters for their respective organizations, and unlike other CEO addresses, they are packed with lessons they extract from the running of their business that can be applied to our lives. Here’s Bezos’ 2018 Shareholder Letter breaking down ‘high standards’. Great read.
I’ve been wanting to replicate something similar, albeit one not derived from the operation of a company (yet😏) and one that is personal in its lessons highlighted, by the context in which they were learned.
As such, I’m humbled you’re reading my first personal annual letter 🥁🥁.
A Blessing In Disguise
Pop culture and modern media make the idea of getting grounded look much worse than it is.
In the 8th grade, I did some things that resulted in getting grounded for 2 months without any devices (any kid today would revolt 😬). I was only allowed to go out for and play with friends for an hour. I was only allowed to watch TV (we only had like 20 channels) and was otherwise left to figure out how to entertain myself on my own.
And yes, for the parents reading this, I did learn my lesson 🙄: don’t get discovered if you’re doing something you shouldn’t be. LOL kidding.
One weekend morning just before summer break after graduating middle school, I found a copy of this MoneySense magazine on our kitchen island, and like it’s designed for, the title immediately caught my eye. I devoured it.
I became hooked on learning more about personal finance and financial literacy. I started studying stocks and the market (as much as I could understand), I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, the Wealthy Barber by David Chilton (I was a huge Dragons’ Den fan 😅) and bought a subscription to more MoneySense issues.
Who knew being grounded for a few months, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Ever since that time, even after I got my devices back, I’ve never lost interest in any financial news or resources. I’m the guy out of my group of friends people come to for help understanding the markets or financial products. Remember that this is still the 8th grade.
This pre-established passion for personal finance helped guide technical projects I would work on later on in high school.
As such, I’m forever grateful for doing the bad thing I did and getting caught (only half kidding here), because otherwise, I would’ve been too distracted to notice these resources sitting in my house.
This initial passion sparked every other thing I became interested in that led me to where I am. If we were going down a root cause tree, this is it. Had I not been grounded, the path of my life would be entirely different at this point.
I wouldn’t have been prepared with the understanding I had to find a new focus area and the curiosity I would’ve forgone had I had my iPod, to realize the opportunity of these resources, and diving into them.
A Transformative Moment of Chance by a Stranger
Up until grade 11, I practiced a pretty normal teenage lifestyle. The basics: school, sports, chilling with friends, procrastinating on homework, bingeing test studying, and things like that (I was never really into video games tho 🤔).
Up until then, there was no significant moment that changed the trajectory of my life and what I prioritized my time doing. It was just the usual. And looking back, the most baffling thing to me is that I was happy with the way I lived. As much fun as it was though, in retrospect, I was missing an understanding of the world in a way that let me realize a purpose.
The Knowledge Society (TKS), a human accelerator for young people based out of Toronto (and rapidly growing!) is often mischaracterized as a place for teens to learn about emerging tech. And even though that technically is true, that’s not where the value is (at least not for me).
One part of it was learning about these cool technologies I’ve dove deep in, like machine learning, computer vision, quantum computing and the likes (speaking of, check out my portfolio here 😉). The other, arguably more important part, is the realization that our lives are blessed to be wealthy to afford education, housing and food. And given that, we have the power to work towards solving the world’s largest problems, that impact billions, starting now.
Not to mention the most underrated benefit of the program, becoming friends with extremely smart and driven teens.
They’re genuine and interesting people; perfect friend material.
Many will go on to lead various organizations/initiatives in the future.
Swarit from 2 years ago is baffled of what Swarit from today, writing this, knows.
A Series of Unintentional Events
Right after my tenth grade, I attended an overnight student business conference hosted at a local university with another friend. We quickly became friends with two individuals, siblings, who we happened to meet by chance while playing pool in the game room.
One of the siblings ended up joining the TKS program. So throughout my grade 11 year, as I was hard at work learning university physics, he was building machine learning systems, visiting the offices of Shopify, meeting CEOs and all that jazz THAT NO OTHER TEENAGER DOES.
I was struck. Eventually, I learned I could live vicariously through his experiences thanks to his Instagram story; and TKS was the reason it was possible.
That is how I ended up applying. Of course, without my parents knowing; this program I had barely heard of, would burn a $5k hole in my pocket.
Months went by, my application was assessed, and went I through an interview round with a stranger (who now is one of my close mentor…cheers to you Navid💚). Not too long after, I was offered a position.
And I turned it down. I said no to this thing I was so excited to join.
The mistake was mine: I didn’t run it by my parents until I got in. And there’s no subtle way to slide into a conversation at the dinner table that I need $5k. lol.
I was bummed out for a while, but I accepted the fact that money was tight and it wasn’t logistically possible to spare $5k to a program which, from my parent’s perspective, had no merit. And I understand their point of being hesitant. I knew I would be missing out, but either way, it wasn’t the end of the world. I sent the ‘no thanks’ email.
A few days later out of the blue, one of the founders (also my interviewer) followed up asking to chat over the phone. This was a sign of hope for me; I was curious to know what he wanted now.
Over the phone, he reiterated the value of TKS and his confidence in me. It was for sure empowering. But the facts hadn’t changed: the cash wasn’t there. And I was just straightforward about that being the reason I had to turn the offer down.
But Navid was persistent.
My professional and personal growth and development are in large credit to this single moment of the Navid not taking my no. He was under no obligation to follow up, but I am where I am largely because of what he did. And for that, I’m forever grateful.
As you can tell, thanks to the program’s flexibility and an agreement of compromise, things worked out. And here I am. 😏
Thanks to that stroke of luck, I now have this aching to build solutions that solve complicated problems. I research, learn and build things with emerging technologies to get a good understanding while I explore different problems that exist, so when I come across an opportunity to make a tangible impact, I’m prepared to execute. On top of all that, I have the valuable relationships I’ve built throughout.
TKS changed my entire mindset. I can’t sit still anymore without seeing problems in the world and my daily life and constantly trying to solve different things and learn about new tech.
I can’t imagine going back to my life than with what I know now.
The Amazing Friends I Never Asked For
After my family, my circle of friends are who I appreciate the most. These are people I learn from, and have fun and fool around with. People I’ve known as long as 7 years.
In the 6th grade, I applied for an enhanced learning program school. Back then, it was a pretty big deal for me to get accepted into a special middle school program where smart kids (read: those with great grades) went.
And I didn’t get in. I had to go to my local middle school. And that was one of the best things that ever happened to me because I met and became friends with some of the people I’m close to now.
And yes, I had no idea what I was or wasn’t missing by being turned down from those enhanced learning skills, but you just don’t know what you don’t know and I had to appreciate what I ended up with, and it was more than anything I could’ve bargained for.
In hindsight, I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out. I wouldn’t be who I am, in part without the people I met and became lifelong friends with at this middle school. All because I made the most of the hand I was dealt with and accepted the situation I was in with no regret.
I had learned my lesson with grades, however: no matter how good of a fit I thought I was for an enhanced learning program, the numbers on my report card was Bible-like for the gatekeepers of high school.
Well, two can play at that game 😎.
When applying to high school programs, I was very intentional in crafting a strong application and report card. I studied hard to get acceptance to an Advanced Placement high school program.
But everything has a component of unforeseen stroke of luck.
My grades in the 8th grade were average. And with the time to apply to high school closing in, I had to resort to dealing with teachers directly.
One afternoon after school I cornered one of my teachers, who taught science, history, math and English (in my eyes, the perfect target for some persuading MUAHAHA), and started talking about a few assignments as small talk. Eventually, I made a plea for her to raise my grades across all major subjects if I took on extra assignments. She reluctantly agreed.
After a few assignments, to my surprise, she said I didn’t need to continue. She agreed to raise my mark by 12% across 5 categories.
Without a doubt, this single event — that I wouldn’t have been lucky to entertain had I not simply asked — gave me my acceptance.
And for that I’m grateful.
Some of the closest and lifelong friends I’ve ever had (and will have), extremely supportive teachers and learning moments came from this school. My life would’ve been completely different up to this point without such an amazing stroke of luck, paired with my readiness to realize such an opportunity (having my grades raised to confirm my entrance).
Never Having a Stable Group of Friends (until Middle School)
As I was growing up, I’ve moved homes 5 times, and school 7 times.
Meaning, I had to start from scratch making new friends right after saying goodbye to people I’m just starting to get to know 6 times.
That’s 5 more times than most kids I’ve met have had to.
All for no bad reason: My parents made a large number of sacrifices and took on a lot of work to make life good for our family after immigrating to Canada back in 2001.
The reason we kept moving around was that my dad’s work kept moving around until it settled down when I neared the end of middle school.
I had become habitually trained and comfortable with making new friends, putting myself out there, not being shy and talking to everyone.
It was the only way I could make friends in school. It was, from a kid’s perspective, a ‘do or die’ event.
Going through that over and over, I realize I’m more open and outgoing with my friends, fearless to introduce myself and meet people with new folks, and extremely comfortable with presenting and talking to a large group of people.
The reason I can so naturally speak is that I was thrown into the deep end of the pool and forced to swim.
I didn’t have a choice. I had to make friends. My only option was to swallow my fear and put myself out there. And boy, did it pay off.
Lessons are Best Taught through First-Hand Experiences💡
My dad has always told me to take advantage of his and others’ wisdom when it comes to certain things. And from a young age, I came to not like that sentence cause it would always follow something I did wrong (which I thought wasn’t wrong lol).
I see his point.
Especially in situations where the stakes are high and one is unsure of my commitment, it makes more sense to talk to someone and get their perspective instead of putting myself through the same experience, to end up at the same learning.
There’s something powerful in learning a lesson that took someone x years to learn, in a matter of minutes. The key here is, what does it take to have that lesson engrained.
People only learn something if they want to.
It couldn’t be truer. Unless I, internally, was motivated to learn and implement the lessons from others’ experience, it made no benefit just listening (and getting a superficial understanding).
It’s something I’m still working to do subconsciously: internalize lessons that are spoken to me.
But the most profound learnings, of course, are ones that come directly from first-hand experiences and events; the larger the impact on my life they have (the delta of my life before and after an event), the more engrained the learning.
Here are some lessons that are engrained more than ever.
About Environment 🥇
The people and places you spend time with and around the most are the ones to most influence your work habits and attitude.
“You are the average of the 5 people you hang around most”
Pretty true.
Teachers and friends in high school, who are young and hungry for advancing whatever they’re passionate in (yes, even the teachers!) constantly trying to grow and challenge each other; students in TKS always talking about problems, ideas, mindsets and technologies to progress towards their goal of having significant impact; all, create an environment of high pressure (in a good way) and encourage working more and demanding more progress is a beautiful system.
Moving from this to a university where studying and school-related activities (superficial extra-curriculars), being the minimum, is everything most people are willing to do, you learn to really appreciate being in a driven environment.
After you lose that luxury and learn the importance of a driven environment, it’s up to you to chase that.
Right now, I need to do everything in my power and influence events out of my direct control to create or move into an environment where I’m around like-minded people.
It’s my responsibility, and it only hurts me if I don’t take it seriously.
Everyone relatively driven person wants to get better at what they’re doing, but not always does motivation come from inside.
If the people around you don’t care about anything other than doing the necessary minimum and don’t worry about their impact, purpose and passion, it’s not going to make you feel any different.
Don’t get caught in determination diffusion.
The subconscious is heavily dependant on where you are.
I have a hard time getting work done in my dorm room. My brain sees my bed and the fridge and immediately associates it as a place of relaxation and calmness.
And that’s true — I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But when it comes to getting work done, I want to be anything but calm: I want to be excited, moving quickly, focused with full effort.
Those are two different moods, and, at least for me, I can’t be doing a task requiring a different mood than what the environment I’m in suggests.
My work is done in the cafeteria beside a big window right next to the sun. When I eat, I sit in a very different place than when I work, so my moods are isolated and contained even while being in the same physical space.
But that makes sense: living at home, before university, there’s a specific chair in a specific corner I would use when doing work. Yes, it’s also right next to a window. And I wouldn’t use that spot for anything else. Eating and sleeping, while taking place in the same house, happened in separate locations.
Even in one space, my moods associated with different tasks were kept isolated from one another, allowing me to change my physical location, to influence my subconscious attitude.
Make decisions around the people you’ll be around.
In hindsight, when picking universities, I would’ve chosen the one that surrounded me with the most driven and smartest people in a high-calibre way, meaning with a great number of interactions with said people (a term I stole from Farhan Thawar (VP, Shopify) via e2 Podcasts).
Now, looking forward, when choosing places of work, a team to start a project or company with, friends to go on an adventure, I want to pick the people who are passionate about what they do, beyond the minimum acceptable tasks.
Because if they do what they love with determination, I can count on them bringing that same attitude to anything I do with them, and subconsciously, influencing me to adopt the same attitude for my work when I’m not the most motivated.
When it comes to picking your university of study, in many cases it doesn’t matter about perceived educational excellence. There are driven people everywhere; all you ‘gotta do is find them.
So many senior executives and entrepreneurs of companies come from all walks of life; various universities, childhoods, countries and early experiences.
As long as you stay driven, it doesn’t matter where you go.
It’s a piece of advice embedded in me ever a parent-teacher conference in the first grade; it slowly grew from superficial to an inherent understanding as I moved through various environments in my life. Thanks, Mrs. Caudle.
About Common Realizations that Should be Common Sense 💁♀️
We Are the Top 1%
Students in schools are so focused on good grades, good degrees and good jobs. It’s all to get a sufficient amount of “success”.
I put that in quotes because oftentimes, the goal is a roof over our head, food on our table, and the ability to have good work hours and weekends off.
Sure, some people like bigger houses, or more cars, or large vacations, or whatever. The point is, we all are trying to just survive with comfort.
To be in the top 1% of earners in the world, households must earn over ~C$ 43 000 annually.
THAT’S INSANE!
Most of us, including a large majority of school-age children in Canada, are in that 1%. Thanks to our parents (or their parents), we already have the luxury of food on our table, a home, education, healthcare, reduced transportation costs, and other benefits the other 99% ARE DREAMING OF.
Should we be ashamed of our luxuries? Not at all.
But we have a moral responsibility to take the utmost advantage of our favourable condition and make something of it.
There is no point in having been granted a life of relative comfort and having a goal of achieving a little bit more comfort.
We should be using all means necessary to create opportunities for growth for anyone and everyone else; and developing techniques of a cheaper, more effective, more efficient, faster way of getting things done.
The goal should be to positively impact the lives of a great number of people.
And when that’s the case, one’s worst-case scenario is everyone else’s the best-case scenario: ending up with a regular job
Is that selfish? Definitely. Actors of impact probably feel awesome doing what they do!
But that’s the way humanity pushes forward: benefiting other lives, or influencing one to benefit other lives.
One who dies rich dies disgraced. — Andrew Carnegie
Do people make money from doing that? Some make billions, some make nothing.
And though its probably fun to be rich, it’s solving problems and spearheading solutions to the many millions of people that give a rush!
Life isn’t about being happy! It’s about doing something great. — Daniel Ek
Business is just the most efficient mode of delivering sustainable solutions to the masses. (more on this later though)
About Impact = Entrepreneurship 🎯
Business as the Best Mode of Delivering Value to Billions
I’m confident I’ve been able to drive home to point on creating value in others’ lives. Positively impacting millions (if not billions) should be a moral obligation for the wealthy (especially all of us in the top 1%, compared to the other 99%) at the very least, and a means of constantly staying excited at best.
But nowhere in that conclusion is entrepreneurship or starting a company directly implied; though it’s often the chosen means to the desired ends.
For-profit companies that provide products and services that tangibly benefit peoples’ lives by improving (making things cheaper, quicker, etc) certain processes are the most sustainable way to continuously impact billions of lives.
Charity isn’t sustainable because there isn’t a constant supply of funds to run an operation. There needs to be money generated from the inherent operation to fund scaling and spreading the services of a business.
And in a world where many impactful ventures work off of key technologies, there needs to be a consistent source of funds to power such an operation.
Do people make money along the way? Definitely. Those leading initiatives still need to make a living. Impactful businesses serve as a livelihood for employees and are capable of delivering value to tons of people.
Shopify, a provider of e-commerce tools allowing anyone to start a business, wouldn’t be able to continue operation if it made no money. It has to charge it’s customers to consistently provide amazing services that impove said customer’s lives.
Startups are the best way to make a considerable impact on billions of people.
Big Companies vs. Small Companies
For the past 20 years, there’s been great excitement among the entrepreneurship and startup community about the power to deliver impact by small, lean ventures in fields where large players are providing sub-par services.
In many cases, large companies have become stagnant in innovating and constantly improving and were reaping the benefits of little competition by taking a break.
Like the hare in the tortoise vs. hare fairytale.
It’s been the case for quite a while that startups simply do things better.
Except, now as the startups of the 2000s and 1990s have evolved into relatively large companies (FAANGT and others) it’s not entirely clear who does things better, and who to work for to have the largest direct impact on customer’s lives.
Relatively straightforward, one’s impact and value in an organization are inversely proportional to the size of the company: you become more replaceable and negligible as a company grows in size (just because of the vast size of the team) than the value of being one in a small team at a small organization.
That being said, Tobi Lutke (CEO, Shopify) beautifully explained in a podcast that if a small team in a startup can solve problem better (quicker, cheaper, more effectively, etc) than a large company working in the same field, there’s something the large company is doing wrong; and there really is no point of the business if there’s no significant play to catch up and improve.
Right now, no one is doing e-commerce software-as-a-service better than — at the time of writing — $72b giant Shopify.
Being realistic in opportunities is the most effective way to contribute to impact, or fix the status quo if need be.
About Being Good at Problem Finding and Generating Ideas 🔋
Naivety is the Underdog
The freshest, most inexperienced perspectives are often the most simple and effective.
Often in various complicated industries, many large players in the space have been operating for quite some while.
And like mentioned previously, just because a large company has been doing something for a while and relatively well, doesn’t mean its best done like that.
Even the experts aren’t complete experts.
Elon Musk had no rocket experience when he instructed his team to scavenge household components to build a rocket, scaling costs down to 1/5 original launch vehicle build prices.
Being naive in a new field, but with a strong ambition to innovate, often provides a fresh perspective on a problem, and can lead to a more effective solution.
Don’t be afraid to be the youngest and least knowledgable in the room.
Fintech challenger banks are doing well because they challenged conventional thinking. The same goes for essentially every other field where a startup has gained good traction.
Uber in the rideshare space against taxis in the business for over 100 years. Airbnb against the hotel industry in the hospitality industry for centuries.
Naive but driven people constantly keep reinventing and transform how problems are solved for their customers.
KISS for Everyone
Keep it simple and stupid, that is 😅.
As Robert James Waller said, complexity is easy. Making things simple is the real challenge.
When it comes to solving problems, breaking things down to first-principles is the best way of understanding root causes, and then addressing those needs.
For a solution to be better than the status quo and improve in some way complexity doesn’t cut it, because in most cases, complexity doesn’t cause any improvement.
Make things simple. It’s hard, but it pays off.
Nobody Can Stop a Good Idea 💥⛔️
My experience working at a big Canadian bank and interacting with senior leadership left me surprised about how optimistic and forward-thinking many people are in an organization that’s relatively left to catch up.
No one can stop a good idea whose time has come.
Not even if it threatens the bottom line of a few companies. If it solves a customer’s problem than right now, it’s gonna’ get out eventually, and it’ll definitely be sustainable if executed well.
There’s nothing anyone can do to stop a great founder-type individual championing building and implementation of a great idea.
When it Comes to Leading
I take this right out of a great leadership article, but it manifested for me through my managers during my internship this past summer.
Essentially the idea balances the difference between managers and leaders, making a distinction about how well they lead, even though both have a responsibility to lead.
Managers do things right, but leaders do the right things.
The day after reading an article about this I had to sit in on a meeting with a few team members. All of the rooms were booked and one of my managers insisted we do the meeting in a kitchen area (a little uncomfortable, but totally doable), while my second manager made the decision to take the senior management-reserved room while it was open, only needing a kitchen meeting in last resort if that reserved room needed to be occupied.
The manager does things right, but the leader does the right things; even if it means it’s against the ‘rules’.
About Optimizing for Unique Experiences and Knowledge
No one is born with some sort of superpower that gives them a natural advantage over others (other than good old’ Superman of course).
The only way to create an advantage is to know more, have done more and have experienced more unique things than the next guy.
At each point in our lives — at least, what I assume from life until now for me — everyone is relatively equal in age and calibre when competing for various opportunities.
It’s up to you to differentiate and leave a killer impression, for whatever it is you’re looking for: funding, jobs and internships, educational institutions, volunteer roles, board seats or anything.
If you’re unique — as in, you’ve done, built and know unique things — you have the edge. Simple as that.
Expose yourself to many unique experiences, because the development of a passion happens when many (sometimes unrelated) events happen at the same time, giving us a unique perspective about a topic.
Great ideas come from in-depth knowledge meeting unique experiences, and the goal should be to build both.
For me, that happened to be the intersection between an interest in consumer finance and a new burst of exposure and knowledge to exponential technologies. And again, at the meet of investigative journalism and genetic editing (looking at virus outbreaks and endemics (yes I wrote this before this new influenza strand outbreak)).
Increased unique experiences and interactions with different types of people lead to an otherwise unseen exposure to ideas, projects, technologies, opportunities, and most importantly, relationships.
If you pigeonhole yourself to one group or set of activities or people (or none), you will not have any unique experiences.
If we always shy away from feeling uncomfortable we’re never going to have access to unique situations.
One of the first things I did in my freshman year of university was to join a bunch of clubs usually reserved for upper years. There is no rule against a first-year, so nothing was stopping me, other than feeling a little awkward.
How to Learn When No One’s Teaching
There’s a crazy amount of information available on the internet to become an expert at something, and it’s our fault if we don’t take full advantage of it.
You can now learn from other people’s experiences and educational careers directly! WTF.
It’s as simple as that:
- I can watch macroeconomics lectures from Gregory Mankiw (Harvard economics professor, textbook author, and Bush-era Policy Advisor);
- Machine learning and computer vision from Sebastian Thurn (first Google Self-Driving Car Project lead);
- Method acting techniques based on Stanislavski’s system from Natalie Portman (multiple Oscar nominee and winner)
And that’s just to name a few of the courses and content I’ve consumed, that come to mind!
Everything from structured online courses, YouTube tutorials, articles on this very platform and podcasts, to name some common content forms, for which so many are free!
Podcasts are essentially unlimited supply of intelligent opinions and thoughts directly delivered to my ear, on-demand.
There has never been a time when the information was so accessible, in-depth, in a wide variety, with expert opinions, to such a great deal of people!
That being said, after the learning begins, the most efficient way to get good at something is to
- Teach it, and,
- Use the skills you’re trying to learn to make a tangible output, as you learn (AKA CREATE STUFF)
When it comes to problem-finding and problem-solving in order to fix a process impacting many people, unique experiences drive great ideas.
If you don’t become unique in what you do and learn, your span of exposure will be so small you won’t have any idea what problems exist to solve; even if you’re not trying to start a startup, conceiving crazy ideas is outside the realm of possibility.
Stop Following Rules + Do What Makes Sense
A great series of thoughts to which the label, to ‘stop following rules’, I’m stealing from Farhan (VP, Shopify).
There are a ton of ‘unspoken rules’ and general practices that we should follow, but there are a ton that just doesn’t make sense.
Just do what makes sense; don’t worry about what most people do.
Even if it’s counter to every piece of advice you’ve heard; be confident in knowing what’s right and what makes sense.
In 8th grade, I had an art class where one assignment was to take a hardcover chapter book and build an origami structure out of the pages, colour them differently, and bend the two covers of the book to each other, creating a sort of wheel-like figure with the bind on the inside.
Well, the book I had happened to have a spy story in it, and instead of working on this large project, I read every art period and finished the book. And I had nothing to show for this assignment.
I got off the hook though. I wanted to read, not destroy the book, and so I just didn’t do what I was told and what everyone else was doing.
Not only did it leave me with a good story, but proof that doing what makes sense isn’t going to screw you over, even if you’re going against directions for a while, as long as you do it with genuine intentions.
Another one:
Though more people attempt this, for a teenager, cold-emailing and cold-messaging legit people was a scary thing to do, even if it was all digital.
The instant assumption is no one is going to respond.
But after sending out hundreds, to many of which I got no response, there still are quite a few individuals that are open to interacting with a teen. They enjoy sharing their work and journey.
When it comes to applying to jobs, many think applying through the online portal is the best way, and you should definitely apply.
I have a buddy who got a job through meeting an upper-year student at a university business competition, struck up a conversation over something not related to jobs, and eventually got introductions to HR managers leading to a summer internship at a bank.
Do things that make sense to get to your goal. Don’t just follow the herd. And be natural when you do it.
People Are Behind Everything
When someone talks about a great achievement from a company, organization or initiative, it’s not actually that entity achieving a goal.
There are people behind it. People make up the team that causes events that to happen, and that team happens to be synonymous with the organization they’re apart of.
Tesla is a company that launched the Model 3. Technically it is, but the company is just a collection of driven people.
People do things. A team of people is given various titles, but at the end of the day, they’re people like you and me.
Two policies I live by, knowing this:
- Become friends with people, not just making them someone in your network. Everyone is so interesting and there’s so much to learn, and who doesn’t like more friends!?
- At networking events, talk to a few people for a long time, not a lot of people for short times. Friendship needs time to develop. If you keep hopping around meeting new people, you’re left with a bunch of superficial relationships, and that’s nowhere near as valuable as a few strong relationships in the making.
- Every person walking and living around you have such unique perspectives and stories; every stranger we don’t talk to is a missed learning opportunity. I’ve learned things and have heard perspectives at Union Station eating lunch by myself (met an engineering graduate from 40 years ago who lived on the same floor as me during his dorm life!), shared uber rides have collided the paths of myself and people I would never get a chance to meet, like startup founders, venture capitalists and backpackers. I don’t expect anything out of meeting these people but in these random encounters, I let the conversation drive itself and go with the flow!
Point number 3 comes from a realization I had about myself, about my fascination with looking at cities, people and things moving. I love looking out windows, from higher elevations or moving vehicles. It’s an amazing place to think about things and let your mind run free.
Believe in, invest in and develop great relationships with people, because people run the world.
$10 000 in 3 hours
Show passion in whatever you do and with whoever you get a chance to talk to.
At a tech conference in 2019, after sneaking into the speakers’ lounge, I met a founder working on a funds transfer startup, who had already sold a previous company, and now was expanding his current operations.
We chatted for 3 hours, talking about exponential technologies, grand visions, and predictions of the future and how tech will play its role.
He invited a few friends and me to his offices to help consult with the design and implementation strategy for his company.
And during the initial conversation, the most surprising moment was when he offered each of us some cash if we needed to try out prototypes and companies for when we’re serious in implementation.
It literally took 3 hours of a few kids just nerding out with someone a little older with similar passions, to be offered serious cash. There was no hesitancy on his side: he immediately got attracted to the passion exhibited.
And the coolest part was, getting an offer for funding for ideas was the last thing on my mind!
Show passion in everything you do. Know that your age doesn’t matter, what you’re saying and how you think does.
The person was also not a famous CEO and was someone we met by a chance encounter and were extremely smart. It’s often instinctive to think famous business leaders are smart, and many are, but those that are less famous are something more brilliant than household names. Title ≠ intelligence. It seems obvious, but it’s crazy how overlooked it is.
Don’t Take No for an Answer
When I say this, I specifically mean it for professional opportunities, while it’s not pestering or annoying, not after someone tells you to stop and not in a continuous way.
If the answer was no using one tactic of trying to grab an opportunity, don’t keep trying the same thing. Get creative.
In grade 10 I was apart of a high school week-long entrepreneurship boot camp at the University of Waterloo and had a chance to interact with TD’s innovation lab.
I kept in touch with the great folks there and started bringing up my interest in working with them for the summer. It was entertained up to a point but was eventually shut down and told no because I was too young (16).
Regardless, I still kept in touch, because at this point, these people were like friends to me.
Two years after, through TKS I had the chance to interview for an AI internship as a high schooler.
The feedback I received at the age of 16 was I needed to be in university, and at least 18. All of that didn’t actually come up as true.
My amazing friends who were coworkers were as young as 15 years old at the time, and TD had to change the process of hiring just to be able to run a minor through the system.
The learning here? No one is too young. People will change their answer from no to yes and will do work to make it possible if they see the value, you just have to help show the value. Don’t take no for an answer.
If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thoughts Under Construction 🚧
Failure is such a humbling power
My first memorable experience of failure is in the 8th grade when I wasn’t chosen by my class to complete at the school-level in a speech competition. Until then, most things I had wanted I would’ve gotten.
This point onwards, I was learning I gotta’ keep my game always perfected and never slack off because whatever it is I want won’t just magically fall into my lap.
Cut out every word that you don’t need
My 9th-grade Geography teacher has dropped a lot of wisdom without much attention from the other 15-year-olds.
This one’s simple: When you’re writing something, say it in the easiest, most simple way possible; cut out the bullshit and don’t have the thesaurus open.
If you’re purposely trying to sound smarter, chances are you sound the opposite.
It’s just a little dust
Again — 9th-grade Geography, this time a field trip. I didn’t talk to many kids on the bus, I would just keep gazing out the window looking at things go by.
We came to a mining site where dust was flying through the open school bus windows as kids rushed to close it, and Mrs. Cartmell, my Geography teacher, innocently says “It’s just a little dust guys”.
And I don’t know what hit me, but I was deep in my thoughts, and I immediately jumped to think about how people over-complicate situations and see them as worse than things actually are. Things probably aren’t as bad as it seems, and someone in the world definitely has it worse.
This is something I always think of when I’m stressed, and it calms me down.
A great talk by Chris Hadfield, talking about perceived fear often being different than the actual danger illustrates this beautifully.
No role is too small
In grade 9 I hated being the kid that fetched new batteries in competition. It was a gruelling job, no appreciation, all my friends were in the stands, and I would just be in the crew zone around high school seniors (who I was really scared of back in the day!).
So I quit. And the person took my spot worked their way up to lead the team to World Championships in our senior year. Props to her, but no doubt she established her reputation via my role.
Teacher-supervisors were using the ‘battery kid’ role to see who will do anything for the team; a test of determination and interest.
One of the best bargains for lessons learned; stakes weren’t the highest for me, but the lesson will stick with me for the rest of my life.
You always have more time
When people say they don’t have time, they’re lying.
If Elon Musk can run two multi-billion-dollar companies, have 5 children, attempt a personal life and still keep his Twitter game up, you definitely have time for that project or this assignment, or to exercise or hang out with friends.
You need to find the time. Making a calendar to visualize my time was the easiest thing for me to see where I was spending — and wasting — my time, and how to use it better.
Seeing is believing.
Taking care of yourself is the first step to helping taking care of the rest of the world
Exercise. Sleep. Spend time with friends and family. Explore the world. Relax.
It’s about doing work all the time because making yourself happy and healthy makes you better at your job.
And if you’re like me interested in impactful startups, being good at your job means being good at making others’ lives better. And those are high stakes.
Always follow through on what you said you will do
I’ve made the mistake of not following through on what I did. More than once; more than I should’ve.
It took me repeating a mistake to really get it ingrained that my word and my work is my reputation; my brand. Never sacrifice that.
Procrastination is a lame way to risk losing opportunities
Won’t share my personal story on this (at least, this year), because I came to screwing up big time in an event where the stakes were really high, just because I pushed off work.
I literally saved myself by 6 hours; any later and I would’ve lost this big thing. It would’ve been devastating.
I was too calm; underestimated the stakes and pushed back getting the work done.
I got lucky this time, but it won’t necessarily happen next time, but I’m gonna make sure there isn’t going to be a ‘next time’.
Procrastination, and beating it, is a mental trick. There is no actual barrier to getting work done. Just do it. Don’t think about distractions.
The only way to stop pushing stuff off is to stop thinking about pushing it off.
Sounds so simple, yet is so hard.
Never give up time to spend with someone
Friends and family are everything, and life is fragile.
Don’t say no to people you love.
I’ve been lucky to not been taught this by experience, and it’s something I’ll take someone else’s validation of point on.
The more I learn about various topics in life, the less I know what I want to spend my life doing
The more I learn, the less I know. Great quote, and so true.
I thought I knew what I was passionate about exhaustively, and though learning about new things doesn’t change what fascinates me now, it definitely adds to the list.
And it’s an amazing feeling to have so many things you’re interested in doing: a feeling of purpose and responsibility.
Life is about figuring out what you don’t want to do because what you want to do keeps evolving.
I look forward to ‘figuring it out’ and letting life guide the way.
High school is a game
Turns out, if you really want to learn you have to do it outside of a high school environment.
Unless you’re lucky to have a few great teachers (I’m thankful I did), grades are the name of the game, at least for university.
It sucks that’s the way it is, but the internet is a convenient middle ground.
Learn what you’re passionate about, and get good grades if you need, but both those things may not be the same.
“Never give up on something you can’t go a day without thinking about”
Winston Churchill definitely had his way with words.
If you love and care about something so much it doesn’t leave your mind, never let it go and never give up.
I love watching journeys
I love podcasts depicting the struggle and journey of founders in large companies.
It was the seed of a realization of my obsession with consuming and telling of great stories. There is a real human chemical reaction to listening to stories.
I’ve found myself watching behind-the-scenes clips of blockbuster films more times and with more interest than the actual film. I’m fascinated by the ability of people to play different characters and evoke emotions out of viewers.
Ever watch Daniel Day-Lewis or Tom Hanks? They mould into any character and dedicate themselves to ‘becoming’ who they are to play.
That level of dedication and execution is a high, and I’ve always been attracted to giving and receiving performance that brings forth specific emotions in the audience.
Movies, a modern expression of human creativity, is the most genius way of inspiring others to do great things; because the most important thing is to inspire people to do what they love. (Kobe Bryant).
I’m the guy who changed careers every time he watched a movie. 🤣
My Dad lets me talk back
Discussions, arguments and respectful talk-back are encouraged by my parents.
I ask questions, reconfirm family decisions (in most cases) and debate against my parent’s opinions.
I was raised that way; asking questions, being curious and thinking on my own were habits that, as a kid, my parents pushed me to do.
Sometimes it bites them in the ass when I’m wrong for sure and don’t see it, but I’m thankful they decided it was a small price to pay to train a mindset of inquisitiveness.
On that note, if you’ve been reading the whole thing, I applaud you. I don’t expect most people to read or skim through all of this. This letter is a way of reflecting on my life, clearing my thoughts and sharing my learnings.
If you’ve skimmed through this and picked to read whatever you enjoyed, I’m glad you did. I commend taking an approach wasting the least time while maximizing what you get out of me.
I encourage you to reach out if you have any thoughts or reflections of your own. I’m all ears. My dad always told me I have fewer mouths than ears for a reason.
Two key takeaways from writing this?
WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. I spent a month actively and consciously thinking about small details in my life so far that impacted me. Many were cut out, and many I wish I could expand on. But whatever it is, no matter how much you think you’ll be able to remember it, you won’t. Write stuff down the second you think of it; you’ll regret forgetting.
Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes you should learn lessons from other people’s wisdom. Be good at lesson bargaining: you’re looking for the most efficient and cheapest price on good lessons. Sometimes that’s experiencing things yourself, and other times it’ll save you time, money and heartache to take it from someone who’s been through something similar.
In honour of Kobe Bryant, I leave you with a few notes about purpose of life, as I see it.
We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, but to create something that will.
Thanks for reading my work. I’m humbled.
Cheers. Swarit.
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