Everyone seems to be doing a yearly app for me. What a sweet gesture. Reminded me of doing one myself, from everythig that I remember. So here we go.

First, lets take stock.. (from 2021 review)

• At least 12 hours of physical activity each week: ✅
  Ran over 750 km this year. The best I have done in all these years of stepping out in shoes. Went running 123 days in the year. 33%. GG.
  Was more active most months than in 2021. The ones I was not, I was in Banglore. Need to fix this. The location shouldn’t dictate activity. I should. Note for 2023. [Play, do not get played.]

• Travel more. New places, IDK. But generally was out of the house more. Went back to a couple of old-known places. Not a good excuse but yes. Travel made the year look more productive all around:
  
  Stayed in Yol for 20 days. By far the best getaway this year. Road tripped from Delhi. Missed flight for the first time, because coffee is more important. Courtesy: Aniket
  
  Goa. Courtesy: Groww
  
  Travelled to Pilani via Jaipur. First-time road trip from Jaipur to Pilani. GG. Courtesy: Surakshit.
  
  Travelled to Jim Corbett. Courtesy: Family.
  
  Travelled back and forth Delhi-Banglore (4 times). Roamed in Banglore as a tourist for the first time. GG. Met more BnBs owers than friends.We take this mometum into 2023. Just be on the road more. Feels more real.

• Spend more time with close people.
  Family ✅
  Friends ❎ : Need to massively get better here. Epic Fail.

• 2 blogs each month. EPIC FAIL. While I published 14 times, which is more than last year, the target was unmet. The blog has done better, in terms of visitors, but I should have been more conscious of this goal. We will take this target again for 2023. No new target unless the last one is met.

• Do more. Vague public goal. Need to get better here, but this was achieved. Took FlyWheel to production. Sold it. Felt like parenting a daughter and giving her away in marriage. Good run. Went ahead to figure out the next thing to do. Note to self: Focus and execution is more important than ideas. Need to drill this in every-day. We will do even more in 2023. Let’s go.

• Say “No” more. EPIC FAIL. Need to get better here. No is such a powerful word that can make life experiences 10x. No needs to be imbibed. It seems like a negative word but it has a disproportionate impact on life. Will say No more.

2022 came with its own set of learnings and challenges. Things looked bleak in the first 3 months of the year. Coming out of the lockdown, the energy to be socially active was nowhere where it should have been. Normalcy slowly returned. Optimism for life is back. Covid wiped out 2 years of actual human contact. We were kind of kidding ourselves when we said that would be the “New Normal”. It could never have been. It brought into perspective how each day that allows for free-flowing natural interaction is necessary to feel alive. It wiped out 2 crucial formative years of life. We need to recover them back and then some. Petition to subtract 2 years from everyone’s age. Specially the early 20s folks.. 😟

Professional :3

Professionally this year was more stable. Life at Groww is generally good. (Apart from the daily shenanigans of work). Got to learn a lot from the users who use the product. It’s kind of amazing how you can kind of assess and put people into buckets by seeing how they click and view things on a digital platform. Groww has helped develop very different areas (in terms of skills) that I have as a working professional. Life at Flipkart was felt more protected. Groww is more raw. Maybe a blog on learnings later. But yes, the day job has been good.

The best part of the year of building and selling Flywheel. A whole blog around that lies on the site. Selling is tough. I am not great at that yet. It’s like doing planks. Every 30 seconds feels like 5 minutes. As you progressively increase the time period, it just keeps getting tougher. Never easier. Mad respect for people who do it day in and day out.

Have been working on a new idea ever since. Generative AI, like for everyone else, caught my attention too. And I feel it can help make generic, fun creation easier, which will democratise story telling even further. We will build and release it soon. More on that later.

So, in a nutshell, professionally, the year was full of learnings. You win some, and you lose some. More wins than losses this year. Which is all that we can realistically aspire for.

Personal

Huge personal loss. A close friend passed away. So many plans were made, never executed. Only myself to blame. Still shocked. Will always be in my thoughts. ❤

Developments have been good. The two years in solace have taught me what makes me tick. I can almost in real time now feel which part of my brain is causing which emotion to come out. The origins are familiar now. Time to take action on it. (Stop and modify if bad, Speed and amplify if good).

So much of our response is learnt. Started meditating and did that for a good 45 days at a stretch. Helps me go into the third-person mode and assess how my life would look or affect someone else. Powerful, trippy, and helps keep self-awareness updated.

Finding the state of flow is more about understanding in which parts and interactions happiness lies and amplifying them. If you understand the cause of action, it is easier to move forward quickly and leave behind inaction. Practising leaving behind inaction in the personal sphere is important and will be done more going ahead.

A lot of feedback on how I have taken out less time for people than I should have. How I am not really affected by what the person in front of me feels etc, is taken. Is fair. Will be worked upon.

Learnings

Everything in life is a game. Everything is boring. Everything requires reps to be put in to become better at it and to go on top of the leaderboard. The same levels, obstacles, and boss levels. Hence playing what you like, or bending the rules of the game to your advantage/ease is important.

The point I have taken to heart this year is that, if you are anyway now playing the game, (if you are born in India, you are😛) the game will have to be played. There is no way to escape it. And the juice lies in changing the rules such that

You actually play the game rather than being played.

Set ordeals and rules have been written to make it easier for people to just go through the motions and keep the game running. There are enough side quests, unexplored, which can make the game exciting. These side quests are so unknown that you can decide how they run and look.

A lot of life is also about XP (experience points). There are no two ways around XP. The more you put the reps in, the longer, the more XP you have. There are cheat codes, but they don’t get you the XP you want.

Achievement of each goal needs the same thing. Reps. Time. More reps. More time. And the leaderboard will have your name.

Talking about winning. Life is not 0 sum. Something I realised while exploring another side of life. Spirituality. Blog on that later, but here is the simple crux:

Hinduism has so many Gods and Goddesses. There is space for even more. It teaches us that even when stakes are as high as being God or not, life is not 0 sum. If you can master skills, and there are lakhs of different skills to master, you become God. And you walk among the greats, cause you set out to be a master of something, and you achieved it.

Hence a win to me doesn’t mean it needs to be a loss to someone else. So many times, I feel I have not won because someone else has won something else. The goal was different. So the win is different. Winning should be localised to personal goals and not external goals.

Big gyan. But what else is this blog for. Lol.

You are the average of top 5 content creators you consume 😛 Yes the adage has chaged in 2022.

My top 5 places/people/artists to consume content were:

1. The All In Podcast (Youtube)
2. SOIC (School of intrinsic compounding: Youtube)
3. Matt Taibbi (Substack)
4. Kill tony (Youtube: Fun)
5. Cut The Clutter (Shekhar Gupta, The Print: Youtube)

Yes. Youtube ows my life 😛

2023

A lot more focus is required in 2023. Again, specific checklists are personal but guiding principles for the year:

1. Be more active: 15 hours of physical activity/week. Watch what you eat. Always.
2. Travel: At least 4 new places. 1 each quarter. Please 🙏
3. Time with close people is most valuable. Seek it.
4. Do more. Chill more. Say No more.
5. Read and write more. 12 books, 20 posts.
6. Be more focussed.

2022 was awesome. Felt alive. We remember people that left. We rejoice in their memories. We live with their thoughts in mind, live with their ideas. We live to make the world a better place for us and others. Times are tough, they always are. We learn and mould ourselves. Hope the new year brings loads of joy and hunger to get what you want in life. See you in 2023. Have a great one. Let’s be happy together.

Lets Play, Not be played in 2023.

Thanks for visiting the blog. A special soundtrack below. 🙂

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