What I learnt in 2021

Life is short. Period.

Habits are anchors in changing environments.

Routine is important for your life. Routine gives stability and allows you to be consistent to make long term progress. Chaos is important for you to grow in life. Routine and chaos are important to balance out each other. Chaos is easy to achieve. Routine is difficult to maintain.

Imagine you travel for a vacation. Is it really easy for you to focus on work when you are back? The best you to get back to your routine is to place habits as anchors. For example, going to the gym in the morning is a habit I am trying to develop and it acts as an anchor for me. Every time I come back from somewhere and am not able to focus on work I just need to go to the gym in the morning to get back to the focus and align my day to the schedule.

Facing the fears is the true way to grow.

All of us are afraid of something, at least momentarily. The true way to conquer the fear is to face it. Sounds little ironic but works.

If you are afraid of talking to strangers, start with fewer stranger people (for ex- your neighbour whom you seldom talk to). If you are afraid of sales calls, do the bloody same thing to conquer the fear. If you are afraid to speak in public speak to the group to not so known friends of yours. Then to more not so known people. Then to maybe small gathering of 15–20 people.

Imagine the worst outcome. If it’s not the end of you probably it’s not that worse.

When you are the next candidate for the interview and your heartbeats are pumping through your chest, your palms are sweaty, you are forgetting things. Close your eyes take and imagine the worst outcome, you will probably not get that job, you screw up the interview, you go on to looking for the next job that’s it it’s not the end of the world. In the end, you are just talking to a human being across the table.

You are at the club you want to approach the girl and tell her that she’s beautiful. But you are thinking what she will respond. What your friends are going to do if you end up being a joke? Imagine the worst outcome. You say something stupid she laughs in a mocking way. Your friends laugh while you come back. She’s probably never gonna see you again in her life, until it’s a Bollywood movie (We are 7 billion people on this planet). Your friends will get a story to crack a joke on you which will probably last for few months. But that's it. Not the end. Next time you might be more confident.

Writing is the most effective way to communicate with yourself.

You have a thought in your mind. Which is slowly becoming your mental model. Don’t just think. Write it down. Writing helps you bridge the gap in your thoughts, make them concise and precise. You can see flaws in your own thinking. Writing is the easiest way to counter the consumption of content across the day.