You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
In my last post , we went into a lot of detail about choosing what you should work on. But finding your calling takes time. In the meanwhile, you just have to trust you will find it and try lots of things. Make lots of “dots”. That “dot” doesn’t come easy though.
The story usually goes like this - you find something you feel really passionately about. You put your heart and soul into that thing and create something new. It’s a product of your blood and tears. You are just so proud of it. You put it out in the world and then….
Nothing happens.
Your friends and family tell you they love it. They even try to share it. But that’s it. The world barely pauses to look at your work. And then eventually, the flame just dies out.
Would you call this a “dot”? Did you learn anything from it? Was your idea good? Was your creation promising?
You just don’t know.
Most people resort to one of the following 2 things when this happens to them -
Pessimism / self-pity - everything sucks. Nothing will ever get done. I was cheated.
I didn’t want this anyway.
Both can take away time from you; time that could have been spent chasing the truth1.
My silliness in this regard knows no bounds. I built the stupidest things2 and expected everyone to go gaga over it. When it didn’t work out, I pitied myself endlessly. You are too good for this world, I told myself.
This world is a reluctant teacher and insights have to be drawn out. Luckily, I stumbled onto a powerful idea that helped me get around this issue. It’s only recently that I was able to articulate it - give without any expectation of getting.
Let me explain.
Three years out of college, I wanted to take technical projects from NGOs and get students from engineering colleges to do it. Idea was - NGOs would get their work done, students would learn from real projects. It felt like a win-win.
The trouble was, I didn’t know anybody who worked in an NGO and by that time, I had lost touch with my college too.
One day, I picked up my two-wheeler and drove 30kms to the local office of one of the largest NGOs in India. I went up to the person in-charge and just blurted this out to him - “I want to build software for your operations. I am a good engineer. I won’t charge anything. Tell me what I can do.”
This person was super kind. He told me he had something for me and asked me to contact him by email. I did. I didn’t hear back. Days passed by. I was upset. Here I was, telling this person that I will build software for him FOR FREE and yet he doesn’t want to talk to me? What the hell!
So I drove to his office again and told him the same thing. He wasn’t as kind this time but he got me in touch with someone in their central office in Delhi who looked into such things.
And there began my year-long email chain with one of the core members of the NGO. I started with an understanding of what the NGO did, then about how they did it, the people involved, the systems involved. Then we spoke about software that I could build to make their life easier. I built prototypes. They offered feedback, I iterated. This went on for six months. Once I had something to show, I was invited to their head office in Delhi. I got a full tour of how they did things, I spoke to all of their team members and even met their founder, someone I respected and looked up to deeply.
Now, all of this had no exchange of money. They didn’t pay me anything. I even paid for the travel and accommodation.
Most people start thinking what’s in it for them way too soon. When you are looking to learn, giving without any expectation for getting anything back is the best way to get people to pay attention to you. Do you think this NGO would have given me this detailed tour if I had just emailed them asking for a tour? No way. It only happened because I gave everything I could.
And that’s my trick. I am irrationally giving. I can’t say it is some genius idea that I hatched. I was just a bit too naive for most of my 20s. I have been able to understand the impact of this on my growth only recently.
I learned everything I know about how non-technical people think about software from this experience. It sparked ideas and insights that I use till date.
I repeated this time and time again - I offered to do workshops in colleges for free just to understand where students are coming from, what their priorities are. I built apps and websites for startups for free to understand how their needs evolve as they grow bigger. I joined a 4-person startup very early in my career that paid mostly in equity just because I thought I would learn how to run a startup there.
Of course, I had my dear wife, my family and friends who kept this naivete in check. Too much of it and you end up being taken advantage of. Had plenty of that happen to me as well.
In the right dosage though, naivete is one of the best tools to learn from the world.
So folks, stay hungry, stay naive.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t react emotionally. It still feels awful when no one cares about something I built. I wallow in it for a bit and eventually get over it.
In 2014, I wrote an email to a total stranger on the internet about my path-breaking ideas and expected him to fund me. My ideas were - create an unbiased newspaper, build a better tap that won’t waste as much water, create an app to organise domestic help, create 3D public places on the internet so that we can put 3D ads in it and an idea to improve railways efficiency. All of them show a striking disconnect from reality or a lack of understanding of the domain when I read them today.