Notes from Co-Founder’s Desk!

Friends, Hope you are doing well. I have been meeting a lot of you folks 1:1 and often share my thoughts, which are usually inspired from my very personal journey in life and spiritual quest. Here are some distilled thoughts from these interactions, hope you would find them useful to read through and contemplate.

Consistency

There is a beautiful shloka in Patanjali Yoga Sutras, which says,

“स तु दीर्घकालनैरन्तर्यसत्कारासेवितो दृढभूमिः॥” (Patanjali Yoga Sutra १४)

For getting established( in any field or to achieve excellence), you have to practice for a long time, consistently and with a tinge of honour. This gives a very wonderful perspective of excelling into any field. Honour means, ability to put undivided attention while practicing.

If you feel, you are not growing, check within yourself, are you doing your practice consistently, have you given it enough duration and are you giving it your undivided attention?

Whatever we do in our lives- we are either driven by Greed, Fear or Love. When we are afraid of failures or are greedy about outcomes, our enthusiasm might fade away soon. If we start loving Problem-Solving, which happens if you learn it in a systematic manner or in-depth- then your enthusiasm for solving new problems and software engineering will be very long lasting.

Those who do love software engineering, solving problems and writing code- inevitably become very successful engineers and do not need to put deliberate effort to maintain consistency.

Burnouts

Burnouts can happen when you have too much to do and too little time or energy. When you prepare with your work or student life, it is natural to get tired, feel demotivated or too loaded.

On the top of it, the journey of problem solving is not just hard work, it requires a lot of undivided attention on a mental level. You cannot excel in Problem Solving with a frustrated or a tired mind. What to do?

There are four ways to keep your energy high, redbull is not one of them.

Food: Take care of your food, make sure to have light food in right time.
Sleep: So often, we tend to not sleep in time or for enough time. Low quality sleep or not aligned with the biological clock, causes low levels of energy and distress. Prioritise rest for yourself.
Breath: Deep breaths or breathing techniques can help you achieve higher levels of energy. Go for a run, exercise or take out time to keep breathing deeply. Here are few breathing exercises for you to begin with.
State of mind: When you are low, you will never feel efficient enough at work. It is important to be calm and happy. Regular Practice of meditation helps to keep the headspace calm. Here is a meditation playlist for you to begin with.

Doubt

There are three kinds of doubts that come- one is self-doubt, oh! If I will be able to do it or not? I am not good enough, perhaps others can do it, I cannot? This doubt comes and we might feel so bogged down that we even stop putting efforts — Thus, we make failure inevitable. Whatever efforts we do- it can somewhere change the failure into success else failure happens anyway.

Another doubt that comes is, if this is the right preparation path? Should I rather learn development? Should I rather learn Machine Learning? Tell yourself, let me excel this and then I will move on to something else. Move from excellence to excellence not from half baked knowledge to another thing and so on.

Third doubt which might come is that these teachers who are there, are they the right people to teach me? They look so young, are they having enough experience? Should I explore something else, somewhere else?
Tell yourself, let me spend some time with them and then I will look further.

Worried about results?

Whenever we are too feverish about getting into Top Companies or getting a Job or making a switch, we cannot put quality efforts in learning. Whenever we are driven by the outcome of any effort, we become so fickle-minded and insecure. Outcomes or results of anything in the world, even our own efforts are so indeterministic as there are so many factors which are at work.

Lets say, you have a flight to catch- you book an uber to go, there are so many factors and infinite possibilities of what can happen on the road, to the flight or on the airport. But, do you not get out of your house to catch the flight? Now, extrapolate it to Interview Preparation.

Can you do it all, without being too worried about, what will happen?

Whatever, Be happy! Nature anyway takes care of us, so diligently.

“नित नूतन उत्कर्ष उदय हो |जहाँ पड़े पग, वहां विजय हो||”

My best wishes,

Let me know if you would have any thoughts.

written by Anoop Garg for students at Programming Pathshala!