Don’t Be Alarmed, I’m Still Alive

It’s been six weeks since I quit my day job (and wrote a blog post over here!).

If you’ve been wondering whether I’m still alive or not, I hope this post will reassure you that I am. And I certainly hope you’re not disappointed! 😛

The past six weeks have been full of lessons for me that I can’t possibly share with you in a single blog post, but will be covering in many posts in the days ahead.

I would like to begin posting weekly updates of my progress, as well (thanks to my friend Gavin for the suggestion to post personal updates!).

The biggest challenge so far has been deciding what to commit myself to. I have many interests and I’m surrounded by many opportunities. Since this is the first time I get to decide what to do with my life, it’s been difficult for me to find something to focus on (side note: my last job was actually my first job out of university, and it was the first job I applied for in Kuwait. Besides, I wasn’t really conscious of the possibilities I can pursue in life when I first applied, so didn’t get to explore the many, many options available).

From personal experience, and from my study of balance and productivity, I’ve come to realize that you cannot make the most use of your time and energy if you lack clarity about what you are doing, both in the long-term and in the moment. Therefore, for the past six weeks I have been out of balance and unproductive. Whenever I sit down to get some work done, I begin to question whether the task at hand is the best use of my time at the moment. Since I wasn’t clear on what I wanted to do in the first place, I couldn’t answer the question, and would end up rethinking my plans for the future.

I managed to boil my options down to a short list, but the question of whether I’ve made the right choice or not haunted me.

What I realized from this experience is that I’ve spent more time and energy worrying about what I should be doing, and whether my choice is right, than on making progress with any of the options open to me. This seems like a massive waste of time and energy. Besides, clarity doesn’t mean you can predict the future. It means you’re clear about what you want to do now and in the future. The future might very well throw at me a fact I am not currently aware of, which will get me to change course. But for now, given the choices available to me and what I feel passionate about, I will stick to my short list and commit my time and energy to moving these projects forward, rather than worry about how correct my choice is.

So what is my short list, I hear you ask?

I’ll leave that for next week’s update… 😉