The year that went by...
A reflection of 2022
It is that time of the year when creators have already written a viral thread about how their year went by and what they plan to accomplish in next year. This breed of super humans have already listed down top 10 productivity hacks you need to incorporate in 2023, top 5 ways to avoid procrastination & 8 ways in which you can own your destiny. Number of Naval’s on my Twitter timeline are multiplying faster than algae. If there is one takeaway that I’m taking from last year, it is ‘‘apna time aayega’’. I like this because it gives a ray of hope but also relieves you from the pressure of becoming a super human (read creator!)
In the era where we are wired to put filters on reality, one might feel under constant pressure to show up with the best version of themselves - for all of you who are reeling under this pressure, Chill Maadi. This impairs authenticity. Our biggest strength and differentiator as human beings is authenticity, without this - we would all look like a herd of sheep heading to the meadows with no real purpose in mind.
No one is alluding to normalising mediocrity. As humans, we must strive to excel what we do but chasing vanity metrics like number of likes, amount of engagement, number of comments is like an E-Commerce startup chasing Gross Merchandise Value over Unit Economics. It’s futile and meaningless if you’ve a crazy engagement and followers but you can’t even get 8 hours of sleep!
Before you feel this is turning into a one of those self help articles, I’m going to jump right into summarising my 2022 and areas that I plan to focus on 2023 because I strongly believe this world needs one more self obsessed and a narcissist write up that no one really cares about.
Analysis/Paralysis - 2022
Apart from teaching mediocre grammar, my English teacher taught me one thing that really stuck with me ‘‘In English, you can never get full marks no matter how great your essay is’’ - similarly in life, you can never be fully satisfied and content no matter how your year went by. Learning from her, I love to cut marks before I review anything, so the best I would rate a flawless application (like Headspace or Strava) would be 4/5.
I’d rate the year as 3/5 as I could not accomplish my fitness goals. I was really hoping that buying new dry fit clothes, a pair of new running shoes and an Apple Watch would solve this but someone told me that you actually needs to get up and go out for a run or a workout. While this sounds totally unreasonable to me, I’m just going to take it with a pinch of salt. I plan to reach out to Mr Tim Apple asking for a refund.
However, there are a few things that really stood out!
We (finally) renovated our apartment in Mumbai - Dealing with contractors is no fun & the best way to avoid this is to run away from them. We moved to Rajkot for a couple of months (which got extended to 4 months) while this renovation was taking place. It was mentally taxing & we are still grappling with a few issues here and there but overall it turned out to be decent for the budget that we had carved out.
Booked an apartment in Mumbai - Like habit stacking, expenditures come in packages. Though we plan to get our hands on this new place only in 2025, it is definitely something that we are looking forward to.
Work in progress :) Traveling - This is something which has always been close to my heart. Must admit that I haven’t been able to travel as often as I wanted to (personal travel) but I do plan to change this next year.
We did our customary 2021 end of year trip to the hills. So technically we started 2022 with our first week being in Uttarakhand. Mesmerising would be an understatement. Uttarakhand is truly the ‘‘Devbhoomi’’ where you can find inner peace; momentarily. Some of the nicest people on earth, finest landscapes and the weather gives a tough competition to Bangalore. (I hope you get the drift now)
An evening in Mussoorie In May I travelled for work to Tel Aviv, Israel. It was a short trip and I was meeting most of my colleagues in person after a LONG time. Having been to Jerusalem & dead sea during my previous trip in 2018, I decided to skip sight seeing this time around (not a wise decision in hindsight)
Tel Aviv, from Jaffa In June, we travelled to Tahiti & Moorea Islands. This was a fully sponsored trip by my company as a part of making it to the President’s Club. For the uninitiated, President’s club is that imaginary club which you get to join on achieving your yearly targets provided you are in Sales. We were in two minds because reaching Tahiti from Mumbai would take us ~40 hours with 3 layovers. However, when we landed there we realised what we could’ve missed if we didn’t take the pain of taking this long flight. This place is definitely worthy of a separate blog but for now, just check out the beautiful natural landscape this island has to offer.
Moorea, as seen from Tahit 
Mt. Opunohu, Moorea Quarterly Business Review in Dehradun in August - This was our first Indian offsite after a long time. We decided to host the QBR in the beautiful city of Dehradun in the month of August. A 3 day offsite to facilitate team building, peer to peer learning and planning for next Qs was indeed a great experience.
Customer Event in August in Goa - Right after the QBR, we did an industry event in Goa. The schedule was so hectic that I barely got to see the beach, though some of the attendees were barely seen at the event (guess where were they chilling?). Back to back travel can become hectic at times but I can assure you that the kind of discussions we manage to have during an in person event comes nowhere close to Zoom meetings! Definitely worth the time and resources.
Birthday Trip to Varanasi in September - This is a tradition I’ve been following for more than 10 years now. Birthdays are meant to travel. This helps in two ways, you get to reflect deeply & you don’t have to throw a massive party when you’re not in the town.
Trip to Rajkot for Diwali October - Home is where you celebrate Diwali, no matter what part of the world you’re in - you need be back home for Diwali. Period.
Back to back work trips in November - Bangalore, Coorg and then Bangalore - We hosted a flagship event in Bangalore, followed by our QBR in Madikeri, Coorg and then finally ended the trip with another industry event in Bangalore. This was a total of 2 weeks on the road & trust me - explaining this back home to the high command was no easy. Getting Rahul Subramaniam for 45 mins set at our Corporate Event was probably the best decision.
Investing - While I totally missed the bus of becoming a financial influencer, I can vouch for the fact that Gujaratis are stock market natives. I’ve been investing in equities since I was in second year of my college and losing the entire capital before I graduated. That really taught me that there are shortcuts to make money but there are no shortcuts to make wealth. The shorter the way to make money, equally short is the way to lose money.
Equities - 2022 was a blissful year where I just bought a few beautiful stocks to keep them for a lifetime. Continued with the discipline of SIPs in mutual funds though the returns have been below expectations.
Unlisted Equities - Bought a few stocks like Care, STUDDs etc from brokers who deal in unlisted equities. Price discovery can be a challenge so unless you think you have a clear advantage over others - I highly recommend not to invest in unlisted equities. I know people who have bought Pharmeasy at Rs 90 per share which is trading at less than Rs 30 per share. What a colossal loss of capital. Might as well go to Goa and play Roulette with this capital.
Startups - Ended up investing in ~23 startups in 2022. I made as many investments in one year compared to all other years since I started investing. Though I haven’t shared this earlier but investing in startups is NOT as profitable as it sounds. Investing in pre seed and seed stage companies is extremely risky and one needs to find a solid reason beyond diversification, making crazy returns etc in order to invest in startups. This is not to demoralise anyone fro angel investing but there is enough evidence that unless you’ve a solid plan to invest in 20+ companies over next 3 years - don’t get into startup investing. This is back by data and experience of countless early stage VCs. I plan to continue investing in this space because I truly believe this is how the ecosystem will evolve and early stage companies need operator support more than capital.
Health & Fitness - There is no doubt that this 5 letter word is the probably the most important thing today in anyone’s life. I wasn’t as focussed and as regular as I should’ve been in order to hit my fitness goals. Something that I look forward to changing next year. Drastically. Promise. Running comes naturally to me, whether it is running from responsibilities or going for a jog. The plan is to concentrate on latter.
Writing & Reading - Writing has often been a meditative experience for me. I’m the happiest person on this earth when I’m punching in some random words on my keyboard, I’m in the flow. Yes, this is my first blog of the year. I recall being regular at writing a few years back. The content game has indeed surpassed all expectations and one it is becoming increasingly competitive to churn out great content that adds value. I intend to write more often this year. On the front of reading, it hasn’t been a great year either. Allocating 30 mins each day is probably the best way to get started.
Yes, we all know this is just a change of date but some change of dates are more equal than other change of dates. A change of date which nudges you to reflect is a good change of date. We are not the same person that we were yesterday let alone be after a few years. The only constant in life is change and I look forward to an amazing 2023 on ALL fronts.
~Be Happy!