Take Some of Your Own Time for Yourself Too
Or, don’t live just in the future, enjoy the present as well
👋 Hey there! My name is Abhishek. Welcome to a new edition of The Sunday Wisdom! This is the best way to learn new things with the least amount of effort.
It’s a collection of weekly explorations and inquiries into many curiosities, such as business, human nature, society, and life’s big questions. My primary goal is to give you some new perspective to think about things.
A very Happy Diwali to you all! Diwali is the festival of lights, and it’s one of the most popular festivals in India. Diwali symbolises the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. However, instead of staying home, this time I took and impromptu trip to Goa.
Q: What is a good way to balance working hard while also taking care of yourself?
When I was building my first business I was of the opinion that one must forgo all kinds of pleasure and work 24/7. I did it for a year. I slept 4-5 hrs a day, didn’t go out much, and took pleasure in nothing other than work. Work wasn’t pleasurable per se. It was a constant grind. But it was necessary. So I did my duty.
We often get more engrossed in the balance-sheet of a business than that of our own life. We convince ourselves that we’ll live for ourselves later, after we have accomplished what we have set out to do.
My business didn’t turn out well. I closed shop. Then I moved on to something else. Something that had more work. Had my business been successful, more work would have come anyway. My schedule didn’t change much. I was constantly working towards a better future. I ignored my present. I started living in the future.
Back then it sounded logical. But now it retrospect, it sounds foolish. I was like a dog chasing cars. I didn’t have a viable plan. Other than to work myself to death. I was inspired by the “narratives” of rockstar entrepreneurs I grew up reading.
Working 24/7, living like a pauper sounds good in a story with a happy ending, but it is a bad strategy in real life. Stories are written in retrospect. The businesses that don’t survive the struggle are left out of them. Stories distort our thinking.
Part of living a good life is a balance of saving and savouring. You have to wake up and work hard to save the world. Building a business is part of it. But you also have to find time to savour your life as well. As Seneca said, “Take some of your own time for yourself too.”
It is important to sleep, take rest, go out, and be with friends and family. 25 years from now, when you look back, you shouldn’t see lack of sleep, all work, and no play. You should see a life well lived. Work accordingly. Find some time for yourself.
Don’t just live in the future. Enjoy the present as well.
Worth Your Time
Buffet Lines Are Terrible, But Let’s Try to Improve Them Using Computer Simulations — My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I’ve suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I’m stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Fear is boring, and other tips for living a creative life — We’re all creative souls already, we just need to figure out how to harness inspiration and unleash the creative spirit within.
Cached Thoughts — It’s a good guess that the actual majority of human cognition consists of cache lookups. This thought does tend to go through my mind at certain times.
Tiny Thought
Rather than saying, “I cannot do that,” try asking, “How can I do that?” Rather than accepting a statement, ask yourself a question you can answer.
“How can I get wealthy?” over “I cannot get wealth”.
“How can I run 10 km?” over “I cannot run 10 km.”
“How can I start a business?” over “I cannot start a business.”
This is small change in language, but a great shift in perspective.
Quote to Ponder
If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.
— Jonathan Haidt
Before You Go…
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I’ll see you next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋