Tasty Morsels from Groovy Hubs #12 - After a five-month break
Discover more from Adi Patil
Tasty Morsels from Groovy Hubs #12 - After a five-month break
Good evening!
I am writing this email after five months of hiatus. I attempted to resume the newsletter twice but failed. In the month of May, I moved out of Chennai, my work city, to go and stay with my folks near Hyderabad. The last five months have been eventful; driving hundreds of kilometres every other weekend to get my father checked at a hospital (Diabetic Foot Ulcers), living in guest houses (SBI) during the peak of Covid-19, driving to the city of Gulbarga (thrice) for legal & bank work and visiting my wife at her place in Bidar. The only thing that has remained constant throughout all of this is my work and I am grateful for that.
Amidst all the chaos my stress level peaked and it was affecting my health.
I realised there was no movement in my life and that’s when I made a conscious choice to move in the form of cycling and walking. 40 minutes of cycling or 8000 steps of walking.
Picked up meditation by signing up for Waking Up app by Sam Harris. I have been able to meditate 20 minutes every day for the last 75 days now. This has been a life-changing experience. I would strongly recommend trying out the app. It is nothing like Headspace or Calm; it is better.
Started therapy with the wonderful folks at Kaha Mind. I Learnt a few more coping mechanisms such as identifying emotions and journaling. These activities have been helping.
A lot of us prefer to go through life on our own without talking about it to others. By doing so you tend to do the heavy lifting on your own. However, the road to good mental health does not need to be a lonely one. Practising vulnerability, even without accountability, is okay in the beginning.
Enough about me. Let’s look at a few tasty morsels from groovy hubs, shall we?
Podcasts
I heard a lot of podcasts while doing all the driving in the past few months. Here are a few of them with reasons as to why you should listen to them:
Calendly’s founder Tope Awotona on How I Built This - Tope worked as an Account Manager at a Software firm for more than 10 years before creating Calendly. He failed at two businesses before starting Calendly. He hired an agency to do the development work for Calendly and made the same agency work for free when he did not have funds. He did not raise VC money instead he took a loan to fund the growth. Calendly is estimated to make $60 million in 2020.
Jammie Fox on the Time Ferriss Show - I am a huge fan of Tim’s style of podcasting. This is a 154-minute episode and every minute is worth it. There are many life lessons packed in the conversation. Jammie Fox talks about his grandmother’s influence on his young mind, principles of networking, what is on the other side of fear, parenting and so much more.
The two most important skills for the rest of your life by Yuval Noah Harari - I haven’t read Sapiens or any other book by YNH but I am intrigued by his thoughts. In this interview, he talks about emotional intelligence and mental balance as the two most important skills for the rest of our life.
Reading
Zishaan Hayath: Riding the Hockey-Stick Curve (Paywall)- A lot is written and said about edtech in India. But quality insights are rare to find amidst the frenzy. Toppr, Mumbai based edtech startup, has a very different take on the pace of the ed-tech’s growth in India; Zishaan talks about high margin (85%), solving the tough problem of learning outcomes and where the industry is headed.
The origin story of Mailchimp - Read this delightful story of Mailchimp’s origin. It has all the ingredients of a great startup story; Grit, Patience, Perseverance and of course monkey and chimpanzee iconography.
Tweet to remember
Cold emails are a gateway to the world of possibilities. Here’s an example of a cold email that is amazingly succinct and one that worked.
Before I end this week’s edition; I do want to share one more post I wrote recently on my site:
Daniel Kahneman calls this idea the best Psychology idea ever
Until next time, which I hope is earlier than five months, take care!
Regards