2020 – A Glass Half Full & Half Empty
A year that started with optimism turned into cancelled travel plans (I was supposed to go to Bangkok for WordCamp Asia) in Feb, a sneaky feeling that something was going to happen in March, panic buying of home supplies in April and May while witnessing the horrifying scenes of migrants walking back home while we sat in the comfort of our homes complaining about not being able to buy from BigBasket. June to August went by with the constant visuals of graphs that only seemed to go up. And then we all forgot about the numbers.
The disruption of the lockdowns and the pandemic had its 2nd and 3rd order impact on us. The house help stopped and I bought a vacuum robot to clean the house while we did dishes. Our nanny had to go back in July and that caused the biggest disruption in our lives and we’re still struggling without one.
The initial lockdown period was a surprisingly productive time with the launch of the new Pixelmattic website that was in the works for a long time and also the publishing of a massive WordPress playbook for marketers. When the market is good, you sell. And when the market is bad, you build.
Build is what we did, working on positioning our agency as more than just a WordPress development firm. The second half of the year was a continuation of building new things after the website and the guide went live. We beta launched our most premium service and it is now public with 3 customers signed up.
While 2020 was a miserable year, it is easy to forget some of the positive things that happened, albeit reflecting from a place of privilege which I was reminded of almost every other day.
So here are my lessons from 2020.
The planning fallacy
Plans are pretty, structured, and organized. Life is beautiful at this stage. But when it comes into the real world, it’s a chaotic mess and your plans are shredded to tatters. Most often we don’t have a fall back option or a plan B.
I’ve been guilty to dwelling too long in the planning stage. It’s mentally stimulating and exciting to make these well thought and detailed plans, but what I’m actually is postponing the inevitability of having to take action.
Why do we avoid something through procrastination? The CTBD book proposes a theory that this is borne out of our underlying fear and insecurities. In some cases, the detailed plans also mean a lot of work, which can seem like an insurmountable mountain even before you begin.
I’m now veering to experimenting with planning only for the short term, 2 weeks at most. Not even 3 months as I initially thought with the 12-week framework which I really liked. Long term planning is going to be binned for sure as it is pointless to think that far ahead, specially since what we’ve been through in 2020.
Long term goals if anything should be directions and not specific instructions to oneself of what to do. For me, my long term goal is to build Pixelmattic into a self-sustained business that runs without my daily involvement. On the personal front, I want to create a system to capture, process and express my thoughts on a consistent basis, whether that is through a blog or maybe even a YouTube channel.
Information collection to actionable insights
I’ve been an information hoarder for a long time. I like to collect what I think are great pieces of information and knowledge, but I never get around to reading and internalising a majority of this catalogued information. I started using Roam this year, one of my best discoveries of 2020, and I’ve been collecting information, thoughts and everything in between on one single tool.
My next step is to organise the tool and learn the ins and outs of this powerful app. Personal knowledge management is an interesting space and I find it to an extremely valuable asset that one can build for themselves. This system would be capable of capturing, storing, surfacing and help you connect the dots.
What use is it of you have all this information you’ve hoarded but can’t take advantage of it. A system to mine your own thoughts and insights is a powerful way to take better decisions. It’s like building a version of yourself and being able to query it for insights when you need it.
On the topic of information collection, there was a period where I used Feedly to curate the best sources of information and would regularly read information. But what I’ve realized after spending time on Twitter in 2020 where I was inactive for a long period is that you follow people now and not blogs. Curating people you can follow and their well-articulated and concise thoughts on Twitter is the best source of new information and learning. Here are some amazing people I’ve discovered on Twitter in 2020:
State of mind
An area I’ve neglected for a long time because I assumed it didn’t affect me and that I was a “mentally strong person”. Acknowledging that you are as vulnerable and susceptible as any other person is a good place to start. When you do that, you start considering options that can help you prevent, manage and deal with times when you feel down.
2020 made you relook at things in life you had taken for granted. Self-care was one of them. Spending time on yourself, looking at the hard truths, and prioritising on what really matters.
As a result of this exploration, I was led down the path of writing down my thoughts. While the 100 days of writing failed, I did consistently write in my journal. It’s a practice I still follow most mornings. I shift from a physical journal to my note-taking app depending on how I feel that day.
This journey also nudged me to explore meditation which I must confess I looked down upon. I didn’t think it was a worthwhile activity and wouldn’t add much value to my life. Of course, my preconceived association of meditation with spirituality and fake gurus didn’t help. But I gave it a try with the Calm app on iOS. I haven’t done it consistently enough, but there was a period where it was a part of my morning routine. I look back on it and realize that the post-meditation feeling was always a positive one. It was self-therapy. I would come out of a 10-minute meditating session feeling good. What helped was looking at meditation from the perspective of neuroscience. It was a brain exercise. The overstimulation and information overload that the brain suffers and goes through in a day need rest, relaxation and stillness. Words like stillness and balance were woo-woo words for me, but I realize I was wrong.
With a child at home under lockdown and working full-time, the interruptions and distractions are non-stop. I’ve never been an early morning person, but in 2020 I decided to try it. I wanted a block of undistracted and quiet time. The only logical time slot was early morning or late night. But working late into the night would lead to snacking, watching TV, waking up late the next day and being unproductive during the day. So I decided to switch my routine and wake up early.
Whenever I’ve woken up early, the morning routine has generally followed this pattern:
- Wake up
- Make coffee (another new habit I developed in 2020, more on this later)
- Journal/Write/Doodle
- Meditate
- Read/Make notes
- Plan for the day
Connecting the dots
We had most of the pieces of the puzzle that we’d built over the years through projects and lessons learned. We now discovered a structure and all the pieces fell into place to create the Digital Growth System. This was a culmination of everything we had done up to this point, distilled into a focused approach to deliver maximum value to clients and build a long-term sustainable revenue-generating service for ourselves.
The process of eliminating and reducing the noise around what you do brings focus and clarity. We chipped away at our service offerings to find where the real value was. We also discovered that this was what we really enjoyed doing and not the kind of projects we ended up taking on or the kind of clients we ended up working with since we didn’t have a well-defined filter to say no. It wasn’t just price as a filter which we have used over the years, but clarity in the kind of business that would be a natural fit for our service. It is tempting when you are looking for growth to say yes to many different kinds of business opportunities that bring you short-term benefits.
We’re now working towards the goal of running the agency that does not take up our time on the execution and day to day operations, but instead allows us the freedom to work with clients at a strategic level, solving hard marketing problems, designing sustainable solutions and spending time working on new growth opportunities. To do this our approach is to delegate, automate and document the processes and workflows in a way that they can be managed and executed without our involvement.
Things I tried in 2020
☕Coffees I tried (and listed in order of preference)
- Nescafe Gold Instant Coffee
- Davidoff Cafe Rich Aroma Instant Coffee
- Expresso Instant Coffee Decoction
- Blue Tokai Pour Over Coffee Starter Kit
- Kothas Filter Coffee (with the traditional filter and Preethi Drip Coffee Maker)
- iD Filter Coffee Decoction
✏️Experimented with doodling, sketch notes, and lettering.
👩🏫Courses I discovered that I would like to learn from
- Write of passage
- The Marketing Seminar
- The Second Brain
- Ness Labs
- Roam Tutorial
I’m currently doing the course from Seth Godin called The Marketing Seminar.
✍️What I wrote in 2020
- Worldviews: How we see the world
- What no one tells you about building websites on WordPress
- Procrastinator’s favourite ruse is perfection
- Support Indian brands, but not mediocrity
- Productivity Fails
- Can the practice of note-taking make you smarter?
- How we built a remote agency without realizing it
- What’s holding you back from achieving your true potential
- How Analogies Can Simplify Your Message and Paint a Picture in the Readers’ Minds
- Doodles – Book Highlights: Atomic Habits
📚Books I read in 2020
1. RSS: A View to the Inside by Walter K. Andersen
An academic view of the organization and its inner workings.
Interesting fact: RSS runs the largest private educational school n/w in India.
My rating: 4/5
2. Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by @bakadesuyo
My rating: 3/5
3. The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling by @TheStoryFactor
Quick take: Not a tactical book with frameworks, but one that will inspire you to dig deeper into the world of storytelling
My rating: 5/5
4. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by @DrDaronAcemoglu
Quick take: Nations fail because of extractive political and economic institutions. Not bad leaders or geographic locations.
My rating: 4/5
5. Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by @LisaCron
Quick take: Story (Focus) = Protaganist’s (internal) issue + theme (human nature) + plot (events)
My rating: 4/5
6. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Quick take: Actionable steps for how to “Flourish in depth and not wallow in shallowness”
My rating: 4/5
7. All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by @SethGodinBlog
Quick take: Marketers tell “lies”. Lies are stories framed to match the worldview of the customer.
My rating: 3/5
8. The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by @DalrympleWill
My rating: 4/5
9. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business @cduhigg
Quick take: Keystone habits, the habit that can have the biggest impact and cascading effects on other habits, like waking up early and exercising.
My rating: 4/5
10. Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets @playbigger
Quick take: A silicon valley take on positioning for startups today with what they call “category design”
My rating: 3/5
11. The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
Quick take: A mindset based on Adlerian Psychology where you look at life as a series of moments and focus on the moment, not looking at the past or the future.
My rating: 4/5
12. Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. A Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
Quick take: A good introductory book to the world of advertising with tips on copywriting, generating ideas, managing clients, and creating great ads.
My Rating: 3/5
Originally tweeted by Sandeep Kelvadi (@teknicsand) on July 17, 2020.
WFH Situation
I’ve done the WFH for many years and it was never a problem. I had my space and setup. It worked. But now that we have two people WFH at the same time, we needed two comfortable spaces to work full days. I gave up my space and shifted 4 times trying to find the right spot in the house.
I designed and had a custom sit-stand desk made at the farm. The link in the tweet below is a very useful calculator to find the right ergonomic measurements based on your height.
I was done playing musical chairs with my WFH desk, so I decided to convert a spare room into a dedicated home office.
Product Reviews
Here’s a review of the 2020 product purchases.
2 replies on “2020 Lessons”
About time we introduced to the joys of a Bialetti!
Next on my list 🙂
I read this delightful piece on brewing coffee recently
https://www.thehindu.com/thread/arts-culture-society/article9169240.ece