I would like to say the past year has given me a lot of time to reflect on myself, and that I have come out stronger from this unfortunate pandemic, with very clear goals for the upcoming year. Won’t be farther from the truth. What follows is an honest assessment of how I spent my time these last twelve months, what I experienced, what I thought went well, and what was disastrous.
- Starting Up
As I stated in an earlier post, I left my job last November to explore starting up. Tried working on a bunch of ideas with a bunch of people, but turns out an important element in starting up was absent – an idea I feel passionately about. In hindsight it appears increasingly obvious that I won’t have been able to continue with any of the ideas we came up with (we explored Ed-Tech/Influencer Marketing, SaaS). And there are people out there who would perhaps say that an idea is barely important, what matters is the execution etc, but to them I would say people are different. Some start up for the experience, some for the impact, most for the money, but in my case it is also about how much passion I feel for what I am working on. And the money. Obviously.
I feel I will eventually go back to entrepreneurship sooner than later, but with a far better approach next time.
Key learning (I am an ex-consultant so there has to be some learning even if it exists only on paper :s) – Quitting your job to start-up is not the most advisable approach. Find something you are passionate about, work on the side (as it is most jobs don’t really eat up that much time) and quit when you have reached some level of success (paying customers, initial funding, go-to-market fit). Also, have crystal clear communication with your co-founders (I sucked at this big time!).
2. Online Poker
This is something that went extremely well for me this year, albeit with its own variance (currently going through a 25K USD downswing for example). The pandemic brought in a lot of volume of recreational players, I was able to ship some really big tournaments, and on the whole poker helped me have my best financial year since I started earning in 2016. Best part – we have not even begun!
Looking back, the last nine months is when I approached poker as a student of the game, instead of masquerading as a ‘player’. I purchased a few excellent courses, put in some decent time in getting better and the results just followed. What is fascinating to me is how beautiful this world is in itself, replete with its own podcasts, streamers, courses, coaches, interviews, challenges, leaderboards, news and so on. That some people would look at this as gambling is beyond me, but as we know well, society is hardly the best judge when it comes to nuanced decisions.
Key learning – Always go ‘all-in’ with whatever you do. Success will only come when you are fully and deeply involved in what you do, any half-heartedness, any lack of commitment and you are bound to fail, simply because the level of competition in any activity is very very high, and there are others who are getting better when you are having your internal dilemmas. Personally, I plan to study/play very seriously for at least the next 12-18 months, and become the absolute be(a)st I know I can be.
3. Relationships
Ah, absolutely failed at this. Never been my strong point for a while now, but this year was a personal low.
So the fact of the matter is that most of my close friends are happily (or otherwise) married, and therefore a lot of social time I spent hanging out with friends has been cut-short (with Covid only partially to blame). I’ve spent most of my time alone studying poker or reading something, and there have been limited opportunities to interact with people outside. Towards the end of the year, just when I thought things are looking up and I met a fantastic person with whom I was really happy to spend non-work time with (imagine referring to poker as ‘work’, the balls on this guy!) – I fucked that up too. A story for another time.
I confess I also tried dating apps, and they just don’t work for me. Initially the problem was not finding suitable matches, but then that evolved to having zero interest in communicating with those I did end up matching with. Since meeting people organically has reduced drastically, I forecast a very lonely 2021. I obviously don’t see myself getting involved in the popular Indian scam called arranged marriage, so that’s not an option for sure.
Key learning – I mean, I don’t know. Probably build a time machine, go back in time and repair some relationships.
4. Physical Health
Happy to report this went far better than relationships. Feel like I am currently at a 6-7 year peak when it comes to fitness. As Covid set in, I stocked my room with some medium weights, and began lifting regularly. Then when things opened up, began playing football about twice a week, and now I have added running to the roster as well.
I used to absolutely dislike running, but have realized that for me, it is absolutely therapeutic. Sure, the first few days weren’t too exciting, but gradually as I built stamina, it was absolutely shocking how healing the experience of running is. It clears all the mental toxins we accumulate during the course of the day, slows down the breathing rate allowing much better focus, and my mind is blank during the latter part of the run (sometimes I even review poker hands mentally while running). My biggest recommendation to anyone going through a tough time – start running.
To top things up, I did a four day trek in October (Dayara Bugyal) and this did more to help me mentally than anything else.
Key learning – No job is worth half as much as a fit body. Always take out time to do some sort of exercise for an hour a day (preferably out in the nature), and everything else will seem much better. For next year, want to explore a few more treks and possibly do a skiing course!
Looking ahead, 2021 promises to be an exciting year. One thing 2020 has taught us is the futility of making predictions when so much is governed by chaos/randomness, but I do hope I get to travel a lot more with more and more people getting vaccinated. A three month poker trip to the US looks very likely, but to make that profitable I need to put in a lot of study and become a far better player than I currently am. And hopefully along the way, I will meet some interesting people and get better at relationships 🙂
Signing off,
Sanat ‘mehro2511’ Mehrotra
P.S : The title of this post is a reference to how a poker player evaluates a decision, with EV being expected value. If a decision is net positive EV, then we are supposed to go for it, irrespective of the variance involved. 2020, for me was net positive EV, but the variance was pretty crazy.
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