Today: three years of financial independence!

I woke up this morning feeling energized and decided to have a great day today. Instantly felt the need to over plan my “great day”.….Should I vibe code something? ….should I cook something nice? ….may be I check out a new coffee shop? …oh should I just learn something new?

The pressure to make a decision and make it quickly was so overwhelming and then I thought, I could just stay in bed! After all I just spent 3 years being employed, growing, staying fit, not gambling my money, staying out of trouble…just breathing.

After 1 hour of classic overthinking in the bed and not having to rush to a meeting, I decided the “great day” can only happen once I start the day. I made it to Thorough bread and pastry (I love this place and love working from my lil corner) and decided to reflect a lil bit on last 3 years and today and may be some of it can make it to a LinkedIn? So here are my top 3 reflections:

Why am I motivated to do my job?

Someone had recently asked me, “…..don’t you want the stock prices to go up?, not sure what is your motivation to do the job?” and that had me thinking.. “ya what is my motivation to work?” Of course after overthinking on this question for 2 months, I can finally pen down my thoughts. Work has been really exciting lately! Everyday there’s a new thing in the market, new set of capabilities, new startups and atleast some of them are building something new and cool, new market research and I am grateful to witness all of it first hand. Average attention span of a GenZ is ~8 secs (I am on the cusp so mine might be more like ~10 secs) I think I am really enjoying this era of tech! The newness in the tech market has made this oversaturated bubble entertaining and spicy!

What is it that I should do differently?

Last 3 years both in my personal and professional life, I have spent a lot of time meeting new people and learning something from them. While some lessons were good and others were…. let’s just call it ‘life’, what I wanna do differently is invest more time in building ME. I am type ENTJ and I gain energy and motivation from social interactions. I don’t think this need of mine is gonna go away, so I am gonna embrace it more and more. One thing I wanna do differently is pair these social interactions with physical or regular activities! like CrossFit, hiking, running, taking trips, cooking, solving puzzles… the list goes on. The shared experience of doing things together creates a special bond, such as the trauma bonding from doing a very long hike, shin splints from running, sense of fulfillment from solving a puzzle etc. I wanna do more of this in the next phase.

What should the rest of my day look like?

Even though morning wasn’t as smooth as I had thought, I am happy that I am writing down a plan for the rest of the day. I am close to finishing my ginger twist tea, so I am gonna finish writing my thoughts here? may be make a post on LinkedIn. Definitely gonna look into a couple links that I bookmarked on AI resources and prepare a plan for 100 days of learning AI (yes I am over commit and sometimes under deliver). I will head back home and then make myself fried rice with Tofu. Post lunch I am gonna take a nap (yes, I need a 7 min power nap after lunch) and head to gym for deadlift 1 rep max at the gym. I am aiming for 230lbs (last one was 215 lbs) and its okay even if I fail cause I told my partner I am only gonna aim for 220lbs so 10lbs buffer is good (it is a big buffer, I know). Finally end the day by making an old-fashioned cocktail and a Manhattan! and watch ‘In the mood for love’ - a movie that I have been waiting to watch for the last 2 months!

I am gonna come back and share whether my day went as planned or not! Stay tuned :)