[Macro Mind] The Rat Race Switch: University to unadulterated real life.

I woke up this Sunday morning with the need for coffee, and the will to write this blog that has been going around my head for quite some time. With this blog, I am starting Mixster’s new Macro Mind series. This series will go on to become an extensive documentation of my mental processes which are actually worth presenting on HTML web pages just like the one you are reading now.

Few months back, I wrote this piece called 4 months of full-time remote: Hits, Misses and Infectious Initiative to share my experience of working at my new endeavour among other things that I already do. Since the world is transitioning to remote around me. This blog was a way for folks to understand the first couple of months of remote and how they can sail through them as a fresher. It usually has lot of room for mistakes people, hence the blog was called “hits and misses”. Folks learn through my misses & make hits of their own. Nonetheless, what was unique about this blog was, I started this thought process at the very beginning that I couldn’t quite finish or conclude till the end. A recent meeting with a friend retriggered those thinking neurons and motivated me to give it its own blog post. So here goes nothing, folks.

In the last 4 months (8 now), I pseudo graduated without a farewell, couldn’t see my friends for the last time, joined a new role at a startup, put on several hats at work, organized meet-ups, mini-confs and now helping out with a major Python conference who’s tickets are selling out crazy fast. Subtle promotion tactic, I know. I experimented, grew out to do new things, built my remote setup, and now here I am writing all about it … Let’s begin.

The Rat Race Origins: Do you feel satisfied?

While all of this has been happening in my life, I have been experiencing a rather strange feeling. It’s a feeling I have never felt before. I confessed the same to many people to subdue or share this, but I thought it is more helpful if I put this into words. It’s the feeling of “being satisfied and calm“. I know, I know this ain’t something you were expecting but hear me out. Friends that know me understand that I rarely am at rest at any one point in life. Life is meant to be experienced; why settle for mediocre and not work towards trying to make it the best possible is the ethos I work with every day. Harvey says it much better than me.

Hence, it has always been about the next new thing I should work with or the next project I am working towards to help further the goals I have set for myself. It might sound unhealthy to you, and you are probably right. But, I govern my mental health very strictly. With brief moments of solitude, introspection and solo trips in my life. Those moments are shared with different people in my life. I follow the ideology of having different people, for different things. I believe humans are capable of being good at multiple things, but they excel above all else in only a rare few emotional traits. Hence, when the time comes I got my back from my ever expanding network of friends that I have built through sound observations and the 37 percent rule of friends. That’s another amazing blog idea.

Coming back to the current blog… Lately as this feeling started creeping into my mind. I was shell shocked on being satisfied for once in my life that I had to find reasons to understand exactly “why do I feel so damn content” while the entire world is burning in 2020. I started observing myself, my actions, slowing down, and trying to find the root cause of my “satisfied mind”. I couldn’t figure it out then and that bothered me quite a lot. More on how to make sure you are really satisfied quantitatively. Spoiler: I did figure it out.

Hence, my hypothesis. I know for a fact that this is something every one of us wants. To be successful, happy, satisfied, content, fulfilled, full of zeal and many more wholesome adjectives that I can pull from my emotional vocabulary. But, these aforementioned adjectives can’t be achieved by just sitting down, feeling calm, accomplished, and at rest. So we all start running towards them. But, also away from them. To gain satisfaction, you have to lose the satisfied state you are in right now and jump from your current goal to the next. We need to run to make that happen. And, we do run. We run the rat race. The rat race of satisfaction.

It’s a strange thing because this feeling started to build up inside me when college officially ended. While I was a student, months used to go by with the usual panic, exhaustion, restlessness (Say, burnout) of assignments and client projects (I started an initiative to write docs in 2018). The environment at college was always competitive, with folks forever working towards getting grades, achievements, excelling at exams, getting a job or basically a good life (Say, satisfaction). I mean, who doesn’t want satisfaction? And, I agree that my fellow peers weren’t working on the right verticals but they all were working towards the same goal. Exams, who cares about that. Satisfaction. Satisfaction is the real MVP here. Introspection towards what you are working on in college or trying to find your place in the world held little value to fellow students. As the Indian education factory produces millions of burned-out students each year effectively killing any aspiration kids had before joining the 4 year odyssey. So when I started talking to quite a few people after college, I used to ask each person if they felt satisfied. “HEY! DO YOU FEEL SATISFIED IN 2020?”. Odd question, yes. But, I was curious to hear all the answers I got. Most of my bunch really were. They worked their asses off trying to get where they are now, I am damn proud off them but talking to each person about their satisfaction helped me realize another observation that. Satisfaction is relative. It’s a moving target of needs and wants. Satisfaction is temporary and ain’t long lasting. Which is fine.

The Rat Race: Satisfaction Menace

Enough context, let’s get some hard definitions going with our hypothesis.

Rat race is a way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle for wealth or power. That’s what the definition is. So it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that life itself is a rat race, which is when you graduate. You are just switching races, and the only real break from the race is when you are satisfied. Which is where our satisfaction menace drops in. What is satisfaction exactly like to each person?

Some people are satisfied with short burts of attention. Some with money. Some with themselves. Some do it with Traveling. Impulse shopping. Being acknowledged. Getting stuff done. Helping other people. There is just so much you can achieve satisfaction from. Life is full of them.

Yet, these days, I feel incredibly satisfied with how things are going on in life. I figured my satisfaction out quantitatively with an exercise at the bottom. We will come to that. I still hustle day in and day out. I am restless, trying to learn, build, and work upwards both personally, professionally, and now financially like everyone else around me. But, why this feeling of satisfaction is still present is something I have been trying to access. That helped me come to another observation.

Rat race is progress, development and growth. It can be positive growth or burnout. The graph can go either way. While satisfaction & being content breaks you out of that rat race you can’t hope to be both satisfied and aspiring. Hence, when you are in this inertial state it’s upto you to determine how you are getting satisfied.

Similar to electrons jumping energy levels when they receive enough energy!

“But, Vipul isn’t satisfaction detrimental to growth asks my friend.”

I think that’s some BS that society has worked hard to teach us while we all were growing up. This was the reason why the feeling felt so incredibly strange to me because I always ran away from conscious satisfaction. Society forced/still forces us to run the rat race. It ain’t all bad either if you are looking after yourself constantly & making radical changes. But, your development can only be affected if your satisfaction is short lived, hollow and without purpose. This a great question, but even the thought now seemes messed up to me. The inner meaning of the blog is find that real, 100% pure satisfaction that binds to you to your cause and doesn’t burn you out as you go along chasing it in your magnanimous little life.

For me, I have mapped it to my work. 2020 would have been a dreadful, misery filled year if I was free all that time and not doing anything constructive. I am not sure if I can even function properly without the support and constant growth I get from my workplace. And, maybe that’s just for me. You (The reader) will need to figure out your own emotions, maybe articulate them better to figure out what constructive, conscious, unadulterated satisfaction looks like to you, really means for you. That’s the only answer to break away from this eternal rat race and start living a little. Find the right satisfaction, find your own break. As the examples can tell, satisfaction can be many things.

Some examples.

Return of the Rat Race: Satisfaction is temporary.

Humans get bored easily. At least, I do. As a species, we have always loved the thrill of the chase, which keeps us growing and aspiring for more. That doesn’t happen if you are satisfied (The same is the case for electrons). Once in a while, you will need to look up and ask yourself the question “What next?“. That’s when you return to the rat race with a better, more healthy mindset holding a clear objective of what you want next from life. You see something. You like something. You figure out if it’s a need or a want. You get after that with all your strength, and you make sure you do it right. Clear goals, better planning, healthy thought process will save you from burning out along the way. Satisfaction can be short term materialistic or long term soul settling. My advice, try both of them because YOLO’ing through life is the real fun. Each type of satisfaction has their place in life.

I finished my previous rat race haphazardly, no thanks to Covid19 and 2020. Even though the stakes are much higher than before. With the new job, my mission to be independent and real life. I feel strangely content these days. That’s what bugged me. For when I look back at young Vipul who was starting all of this up in 2016 with my first day on campus. He didn’t know what he will he do in the coming year, but he knew for sure that he wasn’t satisfied with what he had. And, that dumbass will never be satisfied for all I know.

Hence, I have been writing this draft for quite some time now. Often having trouble trying to map this into words of how the change came about and what exactly led to it. I feel its mostly about this new adventure I have taken on in 2020.

Still plenty of questions in my head…

No, I don’t have life figured out. Satisfaction is relative, and I just had my first real taste. I am enjoying it while it lasts because the race comes for everyone. It will come for me too. But, I am glad with the time I am spending and, I do miss myself running the gauntlet. I guess I will take this peace in my stride as I gave myself a much-needed break to go forward with a clearer mind. This is what I ask of you as well. Graduating out of college to working your first-time job is hectic, stressful, and uncertain. Parents asks us concerned why we are working late nights. Is the work making us do so? but we don’t have an explanation for us chasing our goals!! They don’t understand that easily. And, it’s far easier to burn out. If you are reading this, and you are in the same spot then do reach out for help. Especially when you got conditions like this at Indian startups which Naren (@dudewhocode) pointed out to us quite recently. Naren helped me when I was starting my work off and his tweets do go a long way in helping you realise that. This. Is. Not. Normal.

I had some great mentors that set me right and even better friends in my corner that always looked out for me. I took breaks and mapped out what I had to do, especially what I didn’t want to do in the future. I fiercely map out objectives on weekends and ending up doing nothing. I objectively take care of my mental health and try to sit down with myself once in a while, asking myself questions about life. This is a weird thing I do. Each time I have this discussion with myself, I categorize my life methodically with no place for emotions or sentiment. I make sure to map things going on in my life in this big picture format and how each process currently running affects me. System processes that trigger a better lifestyle are kept in place. Whereas others taking way too many resources are identified, debugged and in the end stripped out. Those resources are then reallocated somewhere else. Machines can teach us so much more than you realise about doing one thing right at a time. That’s where the Notion tracker I came along. Tracking little wins like this go a long way to a more consolidated, mental health.

Bonus Section: Articulating your emotions & quantifying satisfaction!

This is a deeply personal thing that I am sharing. I have made this table in my head countless times to figure out the direction I am going and want to work on next. It really helps when you start to articulate your emotions and try using the full extent of your emotional vocabulary to understand what you think about each column. Here’s some context and hard research about the process of labelling from Harvard Business Review. We are not strictly labeling emotions here to better identify them but instead trying to better articulate our emotions when going through each column listed below.

If I have sent you here, then here’s how you can do this exercise by yourself. Try to get in your comfort spot at your home and look at the table. Try to either visualize the table in your head or write it down if that helps you. One by one, look at each column and try to really think about how you are doing in each category as far as your life is concerned. Emotions and sentiments are irrelevant. People’s expectations of you don’t hold a place here either. In this exercise the only thing that holds any worth is you. What should be or shouldn’t be a part of this table needs to be your decision. But the core reason for this activity is for you to identify where you can do better and what’s stopping you from getting the satisfaction needed in life. This can also be your mind’s positivity board, where you enjoy the little wins you made in each area and add your own columns as you need. When you have successfully finished mapping out your current life, you answer the last two questions and get back to to work with a mind fresh of renewed focus.

Let me help you with my current state of mind. I am doing as well as 2020 let me be mentally, personally, professionally and economically. I am anxious at times of things going around me but that has stopped affecting me long time ago. I like to manage money better and for that I am taking Zerodha’s Varsity stock trading course. I am always at top of my game socially even in a pandemic and I always try to call someone on the weekend which helps loads in the anxiety. I am making plans for buying a 3D printer, a ambient lighting project, a trip up North east and try wheat beer with someone. I have been practising some new short-term satisfaction of “treat yoself” and impulse shopping. Which has landed me a very nice turtle-neck and Calvin & Hobbes collector edition from the Cyber Monday. I like to be fit again physically and waiting for gym’s to be safe. I am feeling content and I have people I reach out for help.

Well, that’s about it for today. I want to thank the person who sparked this conversation around rat races and how satisfaction is so tightly coupled with it. It’s refreshing to see concepts you read being actually applied and helping out in real life. Do give the HBR post a read, and I hope you subscribe for more such short posts of Macro Mind. Till then, live in the mix, folks.