Birthday-Reflections On My Life
So I’m 22 years old today. I don’t know how I feel and or should feel. To be honest, I thought I would have done way more at this point. I have set such a high ideal to aim for but most times I fall short of it. I think the closest I’ve ever come to this was the 7th to 9th grade. At that time in high-school, I felt so high off of getting so much done in academia and extra-curricular activities. I was so hyper focused and I think I felt like that scene in the movie Limitless where he takes the pill for the first time and it begins to kick in but imagine that feeling for about 2–3 years straight.
However, I realize I could have done much more but didn’t because of indiscipline. Robert Greene’s book named Mastery outlines the feats and achievements of masters in various disciplines was a function of discipline that borders on the delusional.
Looking back on my short life, I wished I was like these masters. I know this may sound very dramatic and over the top because someone would say:
you have your whole life ahead of you
or
you need to relax
But I know that a long life is a privilege rather than a guarantee.
However I don’t operate strictly under that realization in all instances.I remember wasting the entire summer of my 1st year in university. It was like 3+ months and I said I wanted to learn programming and go over my accounts textbook since the only thing I got in such courses were high and low seas.
I am way better now than I was a few years ago but I wish I could have been at this level at let’s say 16. I finished my last set of university courses last year (August 2017) and from then till now, I have been learning to code. I initially gave myself September to December to prototype this app I am working on and I am writing this in May 2018 and I’m still not done. Oh boy. It would have gone better I believe if I didn’t seek shortcuts like trying to make use of Google Sign-in API when I was like a super beginner with programming and things like APIs.
I violated a principle in Robert Green’s Mastery which is there are no shortcuts.As he says in the book, societies always seek the Philosopher’s Stone, an attempt to shortcut the process however that doesn’t work. As you can see in the gif above, the only was those fictional characters, Rock Lee and Naruto Uzumaki can fight like that and to go beyond that is because of hard-work. We must labor, toil and suffer.
So I spent lots of time just trying to figure it out (Google Sign-In API) when I could just have been reading a programming book from beginning to end like what I am doing now. I am focusing on a book by Robert Nixon and even though it was published in 2015 (3 years ago) I understand a lot from it and test the code which works and I could have reached much further along if I took that route instead of watching a lot of YouTube videos on coding many of which are of low quality and or outdated.
Also, I found things in the book which could help with a major technical issue I am having with the app. If only I did that originally. As we say in Jamaica while texting ‘kmt’ which means kiss mi teeth or kiss my teeth.
I also lost a lot of time with meaningless conversations and relations with people who really don’t deserve it. If I was Drake, I would have tons of songs ,music videos and dances I could make from such experiences.
Today also marks a month at my first full time job ever. I started officially on April 16 but only started to do serious work on April 18 since the 16th and 17th were spent sorting out documents and getting things together, being introduced to the staff, etc. So I am working in HR and I am basically the assistant to the HR assistant and the HR Director’s assistant. I find it to be the best functional area to be in since many of the videos I have watched from founders, CEOs, board members,investors and or employees from Silicon Valley companies always speak on the same commercial function, HR, more specifically, recruiting,selecting, training and or compensating the best engineers. So I am grateful that I can get some practical experience in that quintessential function and I can leverage that for my start-up/app. There are some processes that need to be improved and or digitized so hopefully I can help bring that into effect.
I am really thankful for my friend/co-founder from my first start-up/business. He’s a really great guy and admired his work ethic and aimed to reach that level. I knew I was always lagging behind as if I had ‘mental asthma’. I think though one of the primary issues in those months I was at home trying to learn programming and build the app was that I was by myself?
I remember going to a hackathon in June of 2017 with some friends and we worked hella hard. It was a 36 hour hackathon and I think we stayed up for like 19 hours straight.
The primary realization I had from that is that I couldn’t stop working because my friends didn’t stop and I felt compelled to continue. Additionally, there were a few other teams going full super saiyan and it pushed me much harder. Don’t get me wrong fam, I was tired but I felt good. I always thought it was a cliche when I watched interviews where the founder of company X in the Bay Area says you want to really work with great people and I think that experience really showed me that. As for my friend/business partner, I wished we lived like right next door to each other or in the same neighborhood so we could have worked like in the same place. The whole idea of working in different places and or virtual teams didn’t work out all that well at least for me, especially because I was such a mess discipline wise. I realize that on this new start-up/app we are working on that I need to be in the same place as him like how I was right beside my friends at the hackathon for like 19 hours straight.
I was watching this interview with Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and he was saying that his first start-up/company failed, SocialNet.
I was like wow, he became so successful after that with Paypal and LinkedIn. My first start-up also failed so maybe I’ll be succesful with the second? I take the blame for the failure of the first start-up. I wasn’t the best leader. As said earlier, I was indisciplined and that can’t work especially if your are a leader and or one of the leaders of a business or a group of people. I realized with the pain of that experience that professional life is built atop personal life. If you are burning up precious time in your personal life , then what time will you have to do in your professional endeavors or pursuits? I really lacked routine and structure and rituals. I noticed this started to happen during the months last year while at home while working on the app.
^I kind of feel like I am more focused now like how I recently got the job because I have no choice now?^ Like, I can’t go to bed at any hour now because if I do I’ll be super tired at work or be late and the few hours I do get to read my coding book. I think I am more focused because that’s all the time I have now instead of like hours on end at home with no supervision and or at least one team member with me.Furthermore, I don’t think I can work well at home because home is where you relax? If I start to get a little sleepy while coding or reading code my bed is right there sooooo I just lay in it. As my cousin would say “mess”.
Anyway, I think that’s about it. I finished off today watching Avengers Infinity War with my mother. It was surreal, go watch it.
So,