I turned 28 today

18th July, 2022

Today, I turned 28. Still processing how to feel about this one.

I treat this day like a date with myself. Remind myself how far I’ve come. Revaluate priorities, notice things that have changed, what made them change and all that kind of stuff.

This year, I took a step further and jotted things down. A plan to work on for the following year.

The first question I asked myself - Where am I looking to be before my next birthday?

Here’s what I ended up scribbling -

Joy is how I spend my time

My time is something I’ve been very protective of in the last 2 years. I have preferred to have it free than participate in things that do not add up moderately enough to my goals. It’s been helpful and has kept me sane.

This is quite the opposite of what I used to be. I was the default YES person once. When presented with an opportunity, I was always keen to jump on them. It served me well till a point in time. I was working 12-14 hours a day. When I was not working, I used to think about work. It was a mess, to be honest.

It was then, but I grew more and more protective of my time. Treating it like the most important asset I own. Even above money. Money spent, I can make again. Time wasted, hard to get back.

So, that’s about the past. What am I doing this year about it?

I want to have and build more meaningful relationships

I won’t lie; I’ve struggled with this one as far back as I can remember. The person who’s been kind of bad at keeping in touch. Someone who’d not be the first to call someone just to chat. This year, I wish to get better at this.

This is not to just spend lots of time with people who are close to me. This is more about being more open and involved in the lives of people I care about.

It is somewhat selfish of me not to be perceived as an emotionally unavailable person. Hard fact.

Learn and write about things that interest me

I started this blog to do that and never kept up with it. The idea was simple; I sometimes get very curious about things, and next thing you know, I have 50 tabs open reading on those. A few months down, I’d not remember the specifics and would curse myself for not summarising what I took out of it.

This year, I will change that. I promise. Look at this blog post; consider this the first one in this endeavor. Good progress, I’d say.

I also thought of the areas that interest me the most, and I can tell you what to expect from my coming posts - Ideas and ways to build financial freedom, Product Engineering, and my new favorite WEB3. Well-researched meaningful, and actionable content to help people unlock their potential. Some bits of my personal journey every now and then that I promise to make less boring.

Get better at financial freedom

The western culture has sold us financial freedom as a state you need to achieve. I like to think of it more as a journey. What I need out of life is evolving. So is the wealth it demands. Every year around this time I readjust what financial freedom means to me. Downsizing where I can, upgrading where I need to.

To give you an example, this year, I decided to not mind when I spend a little extra on travel and experiences. I am drastically downsizing my spend on going out drinking and partying.

I should have brought this up before; I run a bootstrapped tech company. Most of the money I make comes from this. I work with 10-12 founders every year to help them go from 0 to 1 in their early-stage product journey. If you’d like to know more, go here.

Today, most of my take-home is tied to how well Webloom does in a financial year. Say somewhere north of 20% of net revenue. Another 50-60% of revenue is reinvested back in the business or our developer community initiatives (much recent). With my current projection Webloom will have to 1.8x it’s revenue this year for me to call myself financially free to do other things I enjoy. Wish me luck! :crossed_fingers:

Create more meaningful impact

I quite often help companies and products graduating from Webloom to in-house teams hire engineering talent. When a good talent applies to Webloom and we cannot hire them, I get them in touch with other founders who are hiring for similar roles.

Personally, I love doing this. It’s my way of feeling involved and being a small part of multiple stories. It also allows me to meet and work with some very talented people.

This year, I want to take it a step further. It’s a WIP, but here’s the gist of it. I am working on the first draft for a new initiative at Webloom - a collaborative engineering community.

Think of it as a platform for people starting their career in engineering, curious to learn and interact with others and the experienced ones who have already walked the path they are on. A place to explore better engineering practices, tools for engineering productivity, and level up their engineering skillsets. This I understand to not be easy. I am nevertheless optimistic.

I think I’ll call it DevStash. No? Suggest me a better name?

That’ll all for today. Ciao.