Blinded by the Present or Grounded by the Future?

Harshit Sinha
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Small steps. Every day as it comes. Validate, don’t hypothesize. Think of the “now”.

As children we’ve heard the cautionary tale of the poor Brahmin, who got a pot full of flour as alms. He hangs it over his bed and he starts to dream of what the pot could become. He’d sell the flour for a pair of goats, sell their milk, buy a cow, become a wealthy dairy owner, marry the King’s daughter and have children. He’d get tired and angry when his children would bother him, and discipline them like a strict father. In his fanciful fit, he waves his hands thinking of how he’d wield the cane and accidentally knocks the pot of flour to the ground shattering it.

Never build castles in the air.

We’ve received a lot of advice since we started working on Lernr about our future. We’ve pitched our idea and business to every mentor/adviser/peer who’d bother to listen, to build upon the feedback we get. The advice ranges from shutting shop and finding a worthwhile job, to selling our ancestral property (conspicuous by its absence) to raise money; we seem to have covered both ends of the spectrum. Through it all, a common thread emerged.

Small steps. Every day as it comes. Validate, don’t hypothesize. Think of the “now”.

Sound advice, one may think. But it is also a potent deterrent. A weakness of the human psyche that narrows the cognitive focus to our immediate context and scenarios. It has vast benefits, true. But it could also potentially deprive us of the one thing, that could truly set us apart, and be our golden ticket to success; vision.

Every successful person that we’ve read of or heard of, has been pragmatic yet a little crazy. They’ve had the ability to stay grounded in the reality of the now while still being able to see beyond the horizon of time. They’ve managed the delicate balancing act of not letting fantastical “what ifs” impair their judgement, while still letting their vision hold aspirational value.

Sometimes, an adviser’s cautionary note can be a sign that we’re tipping over the precipice of reality. Or it could be the sign of their lack of confidence in our vision and what we are doing. Sometimes, we can get bogged down when this happens, draw ourselves back into fetal positions, and dissect our grand visions into bite sized tasks. Sometimes, this is necessary.

At other times, we get euphoric over the standing ovation our pitch gets. Investors chase us with term sheets, people write to us about how they think your startup is absolutely brilliant. Users love our product, and the feedback is universally positive. We get excited over the scope of where it could go, and how much of a difference we can make. We push ourselves to think more and to think beyond what we’ve made possible till date.

We are learning to balance the two extremes. We don’t want to loose sight of the future, and what we should be doing today to get to it. Neither do we want to end up like the poor brahmin so enamored by our dreams that we lose touch with the reality of our present. However, the quantum of general advice startups receive tends to weigh heavier on the side of not letting our vision take irrational hold of us. It is a tricky situation where we find ourselves struggling between advice from real people we know and the overwhelming evidence mounted by the people we read about.

That is probably the lasting dilemma of everyone who’s ever wanted to chase down their dreams. Which is the best way to go, we can’t say for certain yet. We haven’t gone far enough down our paths to be in a position to decide. Of course we’ll do a lot of things which we’d regret eventually. But would we be able to look back and see all the steps that helped make us better, and be glad that we had sense enough to plan in advance for them?Or would we like to look back on today some time in the future and regret NOT doing something about it?

The last statement seems to be an answer in itself.


Originally published at lernrproject.com on July 25, 2017.

Harshit Sinha
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade