Category: Personal Productivity

Why I overcommit to resolutions

We’re about nine weeks (!) into 2022. Studies show that 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions will have given up on them by now. At first glance, it might look like I’m one of them. I made some ambitious goals, and I’m not on track to meet all of them. I don’t consider that failure. I used to, though. For most of my twenties, I gave up on my resolutions by Valentine’s Day💔. This was really discouraging. Every time I tried to improve myself, I ended up feeling like more of a failure. For a few years, I stopped trying altogether.

Then, when I was 25, I realized how unhappy I was. I didn’t feel professionally fulfilled or challenged, and it was affecting my confidence. I sat at a desk all day and needed something to get me out of the office and out of my head. So, I went for the classic office-worker physical challenge: the half marathon. I found a local trail race and signed up. I love hiking, so this seemed like a way to kill two birds with one stone: get back in shape and spend some time in nature. I figured once I had the date set—and the money down 💸—I would be motivated to train and stick with my goal.

Spoiler alert 🚨: That didn’t happen. I toed the starting line completely unprepared. Running 21 kilometers isn’t easy under any circumstances, but trail running requires even more strength, stability, and endurance to handle the terrain and altitude changes. I was in trouble and I knew it. I started the race with no expectations but simply with the goal to make it as far as I could. Throughout the race, everything that could go wrong did, and I finished as the organizers were loading up the vans. When I crossed the finish line, there technically wasn’t a line there anymore.

But, I did finish! Maybe it was grit. Maybe it was perseverance. Maybe I was just too stubborn to give up. Regardless, I felt amazing. I immediately signed up for another race—that’s how they get you! This time, it was a 70k race six months out.

“Okay,” I thought to myself. “I will definitely train for this one.”

Continue reading “Why I overcommit to resolutions”

User guide > Atin

last updated: 30 April 2021

this guide is republished from an internal document that was hitherto visible only to 27V team members and portfolio founders.

Principles

Run to keep sane
Always curious, always learning
True measure of success is how helpful one is and one’s relationships

Work schedule

  • I work from home, on my own flexible time 🤷‍♂️
  • On my desk 7am-8pm HKT most days; other than a long-ish lunch break when I relax by watching TV 📺 or drumming 🥁

Comms

  • Over-communicate! I find working remotely can be quite isolating so I tend to email/message/talk to people a lot.
  • I believe asking tons of questions ❓ is the mark of someone who’s actively learning, so ask away.
  • Quick acknowledgement (even a simple emoji 👍) goes a long way with me.
  • Prefer not to use IM apps for work, to the exclusion of Slack #️⃣.
    • The reason Slack makes the cut is that it enables siloed work conversations. Never use WhatsApp or Messenger for work conversations – they’re reserved for personal uses. (ofc if you’re a portfolio founder, you do have my phone number and are welcome to call me any time!)
  • For all comms with people outside the team (which is 27V + Portfolio), I use email. I’m very responsive on email 📥, try me.

Meetings

  • I’m a power user of Calendly 📆 and have different links for differently meeting lengths; 95% probability I’ll send you one to schedule a meeting. However, if you don’t find a suitable time, lmk and we’ll play calendar jenga over email.
  • For better or worse, I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls. Default to audio – it’s very draining being on video 5+hrs every single day 📹.
  • I like to have an agenda for every call – if I haven’t sent it in advance, I’ll give you the context at the very start. I set aside an hour every day to prepare for the next day’s meetings.
    • If you’re a founder pitching your startup, you should expect me to have visited your website and read your deck. For more specific information on how I run the pitching process at 27V, read our Operating Manual here.
  • For recurring meetings, I maintain a running note 🗒️ to collate our conversation highlights and enlist action items ☑️ for me to follow up on.

Productivity

  • I obsessively use productivity tools – Superhuman, Slack, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Notability, Calendly, Otter, Command E, Google Drive and even standard OS text replacement ⌨️.
  • Ask me about my favorite hacks and I’ll happily share ✌️.
  • I’m a nerd for great design, and spend hours ⌛ perfecting the last pixel on a deck. A common theme with all the apps I use is that they’re very well-designed. I care about aesthetics – serif over sans serif fonts, usually…

Content consumption

  • I believe to succeed, one must constantly be learning. So, I read voraciously – books, research papers, articles – and I listen to podcasts (10+hrs/week). 📚🎙️
  • Please send me content you found valuable 💎!

Feedback

  • My wife says I’m very harsh with my feedback 🤭; which is probably true. However, as I say to all my colleagues – you should know that it comes from a good heart with the intention to be of help.
  • I try to be thoughtful when communicating feedback but often struggle with phrasing and tone.
  • And I welcome feedback from you. I try to hold myself to very high standards (despite regularly missing them) and would love to hear how you think I can be better both as an investor and as a human (!) 🙌.

Subscriptions I pay for

I recently ran a subscription audit; enlisted are the tools/services I pay for.

I conducted a bit of a subscription-audit this past week. It’s amazing how the SaaS business model has totally consumed our world today. I’ve heard, as I’m sure you have too, from many of friends & family that they often forget they’re still subscribed to an app or service they no longer use – years later!

Hence, the audit.

Entertainment

  1. Spotify – the #2 most used subscription. I do not use it to listen to podcasts though, do you? I use Overcast for that, and it has all of my historical data
  2. Netflix – #1 (cheating a bit here, because actually my father pays for this 😝)
  3. Amazon Prime Video – especially for Indian content, the team’s been churning out some great stuff
Continue reading “Subscriptions I pay for”