nonlinear

October 2022

Over the past few months, I haven't worked the hardest. I have been chilling to a great extent. I get just enough work done. A LOT of my time goes into mindless things of college. But I am still reaping the fruits of my past hard work.

Before this current period of "low hard work", I was on a sprint. I was constantly trying to build things. A lot of things were stupid but I was building and learning way too much. I even took up an internship when my end-semester exams were just around the corner (which did impact my grades in that semester, negatively :p). I was desperate. I was looking to break into tech. I was jumping on anything I could. I was trying to find my rhythm. In that process, I even got isolated a bit. I hardly ever went out. The spread of Covid-19 was a major driving force in my isolation. Though, it was not the fundamental reason. It just happened to create a kind of world where distancing was necessary. This led me to never come out of the room. I was programming all the time, watching YouTube for mental breaks. I picked up on various technical concepts and did a lot of technical interviews. An interview with a fairly big startup back in 2021 was an eye-opener to how much more I have to learn in order to get where I want to be. I obviously flunked that interview but it taught me a lot. I even did competitive programming (because I heard all the cool kids do it :p) for some time. I wasn't very good at it. Yet, I kept doing it.

In order to reflect, this begs an important question? Was all of this worth it? Was it worth spending so many hours just being obsessed with one thing? Probably yes. In hindsight, I wouldn't have been able to talk about job queues in my interview at Investmint if I hadn't built binge and retain. I wouldn't have realized that my way of handling requests in unseen is kinda stupid and inefficient if I hadn't failed an interview at the "fairly big startup". I wouldn't have been able to contribute to Google's go-github project if I hadn't picked up on Go. All of those random and seemingly stupid things, those sleepless nights of fixing bugs were in a way necessary to shape my mind. It is one thing to get all the learnings from a book or a person and another to learn from experience. Sure, learning from a book or a person can save you time. But still, the journey is your own. It cannot come out of something or somebody else. You probably have to live through the ups and downs of the process of upskilling in order to build yourself. This is also why software development cannot be automated so easily. You can have a bot write programs for you but you cannot really automate grit and perseverance (at least yet).

From this, I derive an important learning. The greatest fruits of life are nonlinear. You put in a few years of perseverance and even long after you are done, you keep getting the benefits of your work. Like Naval Ravikant said, "Forty-hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess." Or let's take a look at Virat Kohli. The run machine had its career peak in the years 2016-18. He was at his A-Game and had made a name for himself. And from like 2020 to hopefully mid-2022, he was on a relatively low streak. People were worried about his form but he still had his hard-earned respect intact. He was still feared when he walked into the ground. People were still glued on their TV screens, hoping for him to make his next long-due century. Even compounding in investing is a nonlinear game. You put your money in the right assets and wait for them to grow for some time. Once they blossom, you end up with a good amount of wealth. All of this describes the nonlinear nature of life with respect to hard work. Does this mean that a linear approach toward life is not as good as this? Not really. You could be aiming to achieve a sense of balance and still be doing great in your life. Does this mean busting your ass is a guaranteed method to a fairly large amount of success? Not really. You could try really hard and not end up where you want to be. There's no globally optimal method for doing great at life. It probably depends on your core motivations or inner drive. If you have the drive to stay invested in something good for long hours, you should most likely be doing it. On both sides of the coin, you will always have an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of working hard nonlinearly is staying away from your family and friends. The opportunity cost of spending too much time with your family and friends is ending up in a local maxima when you could have the global maxima. It comes down to choosing what matters more to you. The interesting thing is that this choice does not have to be permanent. You could adopt different approaches at different phases of life. Life is hence probably about having this ability to change gears.

Vivek