Stoa Digest #29: It’s a New Dawn,

It's a new day, it's back to another year around the sun!

Jan 3, 2022

✍🏼 From the Editorial Room ✍🏼

Hello dosto & welcome back!

We finally made it to 2022, together. After two incredibly long, yet surprisingly short (talk about whiplash) years in the pandemic we’ve made it to another year.…… only to be greeted by the pandemic, again.

Speaking of the new year, its usually tradition to reflect on the year gone by and resolve, to newer things ahead.
I think after many failed attempts, most of us have come to detest New Year resolutions. I heard someone say, “when it comes to NY resolutions - our aspirations often are lofty, but our willpower and discipline lay straggling a few steps behind.” (bonus read: Brief origins on New Year Resolutions below)

Resolutions end up being a lot of self-pressure that we subject ourselves to, because we’re chasing goals of lives other than our own. (Thank you reels :P )

If you’re still looking to make a resolution, here’s a Stoa-centric list to pick from, that should be fairly achievable, and maybe you’ll even be lucky to find an Accountabuddy to help you with them!

Have more 1:1 conversations with members of the community.
Learn and absorb more from your teammates & peers.
Help & add value, to other members of the Community, and yourself.
Create threads on Discord 😛

As you make your way back to the virtual gates of the Stoa campus, either as a fellow from an existing cohort, or a fellow from an upcoming cohort or as an alum, we wish you the best for 2022.

Bonus Read

During the Akitu festival in ancient Mesopotamia, the ancient Babylonians would plant crops, crown a new king (or pledge their loyalty to the reigning king), and make promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any borrowed items. They believed that if they kept their word, the gods would look favorably on them for the year ahead. The history of New Year’s resolutions continued after this in ancient Rome.
Emperor Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar in 46 B.C. which declared January 1st as the start of the new year. This new date honored Janus, a two-faced god who symbolically looked back into the previous year and forwards into the new year.

🌟Glow Ups 🌟

While a fair few of us were on Holiday through the last 10 days of the year, there were a few fellows who were busy hustling their way through some very cool doors.

Puneet Birmaan, Amogh Pachpor and Gunavina Mehta all bagged jobs in the Product space in Ultrahuman, Masai School and OneCare respectively.

BIG UPS, GUYS!

🔦 Fellow Spotlight 🔦

How different was what you studied in College to what you do now?

“Well, back when I went to college there were mostly about a sum total of two options for me to go to college for. One being Medical, and the other Engineering. Since Engineering was the lesser of two evils, it’s what I ended up picking.
Once I graduated, I ended up joining Cognizant as a developer , and found that one of my biggest strengths was building Processes.
Eventually, I rose up the ranks, and I couldn't rise any further, so I moved into the Program Management field. If you knew me as a worker back then, I never said no, and I never ever took a break, which meant I definitely did not know I was signing up for the fastest ever subscription to Burnout ever, but neither did I.
The thing about how work works, is that "Good works rewards more good work", so because I was so hard on myself and super ambitious, I achieved things about 3x the speed of others, which only meant more work came my way, and I never said no to it.”

When did you end up taking a break from work?

“I never took breaks. 2008/2009 was the first time in my life I took a break, it was when I also ended up getting married, and then just needed to not be working for a bit, cause I had burnt out.
Coming back to work after about half a decade later was much harder, because people weren’t very open to there being such a large gap in my resume, and also I wasn’t of an IIT pedigree, so jobs were a lot harder to prove your worth for, back then.”

What did you end up doing during your break, cause knowing you I dont think you sat idle and actually just took a break?

”I ended up mentoring a lot of women especially, because I had been exposed to how businesses were run, and women most often weren’t (exposed i.e.).”

What were some of the managerial lessons you hope your mentees took away from you?

Always step out of the situation and look at it, and then come up with a solution. It's very easy to keep talking about the problem, but the real deal is to move on & talk about the solution!
Progress is better than perfection. Keep moving, it’s better to make mistakes and move forward, instead of pining over that one misplaced letter in the paragraph that is your life. Keep writing your stories out.

What are two things that you hold dear to yourself?

”There are two things that are very close to my heart.
When I used to work in Delhi I ended up being able to feed one of these interests. I ended up starting an Upcycling community in Delhi-NCR.
Something many of us have failed to understand is that resources are extremely finite and limited on this planet, and with the way we’re going, we leave a very bleak future behind for future generations.
And the second is abandoned children. It makes me feel inhuman to think that there are people who end up abandoning tiny, small, innocent children. They weren’t asked for permission, or asked to be brought into this world. They were not brought into this world on their own wish, so it is something I hold very dear, and try my hardest to change in whatever small way I can.”

What has the last 2 years of Working from Home ended up teaching you?

Just two extremely simple, but supremely impactful lessons.
Shut yourself in a room and put your head down and work.
Everything doesnt need my attention.

You’ll find Kanchan here: On LinkedIn / On Twitter

and Kanchan’s startup The Cadre here: LinkedIn

📣 📣Announcements📣 📣

We’re back with a Bang in the New Year!

Kicking it off with a famed Gup-Shup session tomorrow, Tuesday, 4th January at 8PM.
And Aum is going to host this year’s first Kaksha session on Experiential Marketing on Thursday, the 6th of January.

Find the link to join in the #Announcements channel on Discord!