Practicing consistency and discipline is pushing me more and more towards starting up. I’m able to see the big picture.

In 2018, when I first started being consistent with waking up at 6:30 am every day, the only reason behind it was that I want one hour every day in my life to work on my own thing. Initially, I just wasted time on social media, then completing video games, then learning new software development frameworks, and by 2019, I started waking up even earlier and, started working out in the gym.

While commuting to work I started restricting myself to either only reading books or listening to podcasts. Soon, I started to realise, that “I don’t have time” is not really true. It is just my lack of ability to block time for my priorities.

Pandemic

Just two weeks before lockdown in March of 2020, I lost my job. I stayed composed, and made job search my new job, but everything else went haywire. Due to lockdown, gyms were closed, and now that the commute was over, I didn’t really know when to read, especially when I was reading hundreds of job descriptions in a day. In less than a month of job loss, I got a new job. This job was totally remote and I had the flexibility to work anywhere in the world, at any time. But now because of absolute isolation from the world, it started to get depressing. To maintain discipline and consistency I started learning to play guitar from youtube. I started religiously using calendar app in my iPhone, blocking time for everything I wanted to do in the day. Home workout? Yes, 6am-7am. Breakfast? Yes, 7am- 7:30am. Work? Absolutely, 8am - 2pm. Yes, if I can focus on my work in longer but undivided time slot, then I can get way more work done in 5 hours than 8-12 hours of staggered work. And then guitar time, and reading time as well.

Cooking and Golf

By November of 2020, I was progressing really well at playing guitar, but I realised that I don’t really know how to cook a wholesome meal, if I ever needed. So, I started learning to cook, and when I noticed that I could stay consistent with this as well, and progressed so fast that I was being able to bake delicious baklava and chicken kiev in just a month. Then I thought, well, consistence and discipline works really well. But I just wanted to try one last thing to see if it works in every domain or not.

Well, I started playing golf on 30th January 2021, and in just two month my swing got really close to ben hogan's swing. I could make the ball travel 140+ yards with just 8 iron, and I was able to be on par on some of the holes in my local golf course. Just to let you know, in those two months, I only practiced and played on Saturdays, 3 wednesdays. And I know for the fact that, I will continue to progress rapidly because of the way I try to learn new things.

While learning to cook, play guitar or play golf, I didn't just randomly started learning things. I've gotten pretty good with implementing Pareto's principle in every aspect of my life.

What about business?

Well, even though I'm progressing rapidly in playing golf, the fact that I started playing it in the age of 24, makes it absolutely impossible for me to even think of playing competitvely at PGA level. But, I enjoy playing golf, and will continue practicing to play in amateur tournaments.

I'm really enjoying progressing in all of these activites with almost no skill ceilling. But the one activity which is not dependant on age, and can be highly rewarding even in an average case scenario is starting up your own business. I absolutely love the remote job, as I'm almost in control of my time. But in jobs, the amount of grind you'll eventually have to perform to get to the top of the ladder is not worth it in my opinion. And if that much of grind is put into your own business ideas, then it can reap way more reward, and the process will be more fulfilling as well. But if I don't end up getting any reward, then I always have the option to go back to getting a remote job.

No, I'm not going to quit anytime soon. It'll be slow start and I'll transition once I think business is ready for sustaining my basic livelihood. Now, I really believe in disciplined and consistent effort. I'm aware that running my own business could be the most challenging thing that I've ever tried, but now, I've proved to myself that I can stick with doing stuff, even on days when it feels frustrating to do, but because of discipline, I just have to do it.

That's it for this blog post and if you feel that you've something to add to this or you have a different perspective then share it and discuss it on r/StoicHuman or go to the Reddit discussion post for this blog post linked down below.

Stay healthy, Stay safe!

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