Hey friends,

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve tried to write down what exactly I want to achieve by the end of this year.

In three words, this is hard.

When I thought about why it was as hard, I realized it’s easy to set goals prospectively, but hard to envision them retroactively. When you write this ‘document,’ you’re setting up conditions for failure. You’re making it explicitly clear that you want XYZ things, and that if you don’t get them, you will have failed.

You’re also making it explicitly clear that each time you prioritize something (and it doesn’t fit with the goals you’ve written in this document), you’re signing up for ‘failure’.

At a level deeper then, it’s this subtle resistance to failure that prevents us from writing down our goals.

My coach calls it a ‘Forward CV’. The idea is this: Imagine if you were applying for your dream program or your dream company. What would be the absolute necessities for you to even be considered in that program or company? This is the question that this doc helps you answer.

And this is precisely the question we’re naturally afraid to face.

But as Marie Curie says:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Of course, you may choose to write this doc; you may choose not to write this doc; or you may even choose to write a mini version of this doc.

The idea is that we understand this tendency, this fear, this subtle reluctance to face the question: What would be the absolute necessities for you to even be considered in that program or company?

The rest will readjust.

Until next time,

Abhinav

Podcast

Working Flexibly: What makes things work together? Why is it that code blocks must be made to work in sequence with each other or why making your FIFA team to have high chemistry is important? Because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But how is it that the parts work together to make something better? Through coding for weeks straight, Ali found the answer is ‘flexibility.’ Tune in to this episode on Spotify, Google, Apple, or the website.

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