Make your life interesting & here is how to do it

If you enjoy watching other people’s lives on YouTube and are entertained by it then that probably means that you don’t have enough zing in your own life. People like Bill Gates and Musk ain’t watching XYZ vlogs on YouTube, their life is a lot more interesting than that. If your life ain’t interesting then you are doing it the wrong way. And no, you don’t need to live in a mansion and have fancy cars to live an interesting life, you can be a struggling poor person who gives everything he’s/she’s got to make his/her dreams come true. That is also a way to live an interesting life. To live an interesting life, you must have a long-term goal and must be obsessed about it. Watching TV and YouTube vlogs is for regular people who want to stay all the same for their entire life. If you want to be on the path of constant improvement, you do need to make your own life interesting.

-Saurav Sharma

Hear me out

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind.

There is no written rule anywhere which says that if you are a student from a tier 3 or tier 4 college means you cannot make it big in life.

The only people who fail are the ones which impose themselves with false beliefs like a being from a particular college limits you from achieving your full potential.

Why IITians are successful:

Talking about percentage, there are a lot more successful people from IITs who work at top companies.

On the contrary, the percentage of successful people from tier-3 and tier-4 colleges is very less.

However, the students from IITs and NITs are not successful because they belong to IITs or NITs but because they are extremely hard working people.

If you had prepared for JEE in the past, you would know how much work it takes to crack JEE.

If you did not crack JEE does not mean you were lazy, you might have worked hard but the truth is that the ones who cracked JEE had outworked you.

The same is likely to happen in careers as well, there is a high chance that when it comes to career opportunities these people will outwork you as well.

The earlier you accept this fact the better it would be for you.

IITs are definitely better at providing education which also makes them better engineers but that’s not the crucial factor. I have some senior friends who were at IITs and yet they are not as successful in their careers just because they stoped working as hard after a while.

If IIT was the only determining factor, then everyone at IITs would have been a huge success in their careers which is not true.

How can tier-3 tier-4 students get on par with students from IITs:

1. First and foremost, get rid of the belief that being from IITs would limit your potential it does not.
2. Outwork them, this is the best way you can get ahead of them, compensate your lack of good education with a solid amount of hard work.
3. With the internet, you have access to lectures from top universities like Harvard for free on YouTube , so with that you no longer have the excuse to say you don’t have access to good education.
4. Time is your most important asset, using it wisely can make a lot of difference in what you can achieve.

Being from a tier 3 or tier 4 college wont stop you from achieving success, but the mentality that makes you believe that tier-3 or tier-4 college has the power to decide your fate will definitely do so.

-Saurav Sharma

Completely ignore what others think of you ?

Logic Improvement in Coding

Freelancing

Before you even know how to start working as a freelancer, you need to get rid of the most common myths across freelancing.

The term freelancer is widely misunderstood

Lets bust a few myths first!

Myth #1: Freelancing is all about software development.

Freelancing does not have to just be about programming, there are a lot of other domains as well.

Here are a few freelancing roles:

1. Content writer.
2. Digital marketer.
3. Logo designer.
4. Graphic designer.
5. Web developer.
6. Software developer.
7. Ghost writer.
8. Business consultant.
9. Copyrighter.
10. Social media manager.

and a lot more roles come under freelancing.

Freelancer just means you are an independent contractor, who works independently on projects. You may be a content writer at a company and be a full time employee there or you can be a freelancer content writer who may work for the same company but on a project basis rather than being fully employed over there.

Myth #2: A freelancer just has to work online.

While it is true that it is much easier to find freelance jobs online, that is not the only way to find work as a freelancer.

You may also network with potential businesses and find clients offline as well.

Although finding a gig offline might sound a bit difficult but for a beginner it is much easier to find work offline as there is a lot less competition.

You may reach out to businesses, local shops and see if you can help them with their expertise.

If you are a graphic designer you can help them design brochures.

If you are a logo designer you can help design a great logo for their business.

If you are a digital marketer you can help them establish an online presence.

If you are a web developer you can help them setup an e-commerce site.

Whatever it be, just think in terms of how your skillset can help the other party.

Myth #3: Freelancing pays loads of money.

Just as with any job as some people get paid less while some get paid more, freelancing is no different.

If you are average at what you do you will be paid average, if you are highly skilled at what you do you will be paid highly.

While it is true that online jobs pay you in dollars which translates to a larger amount in developing countries, however if you work for clients from developed countries you also need to deliver a product of equal quality.

If you are under the false impression that freelancing pays a ton for a lot less amount of work then please get out of that bubble.

Myth #4: You need tons of experience to be a freelancer.

Everyone starts from scratch and you are no different.

Freelancers who are experts now are the ones who were in exactly the same place as you are now. They just eventually built their expertise by working on more projects and learning along the way, continually upgrading their skills.

It is true that you wont get expert level projects as a beginner and even if you get one you should simply not take it. Start with simpler projects at first which you think you can handle and gradually move ahead.

Yes you do need to have experience to work on decent projects but how else are you going to get experience if you don’t get started at some point?

While starting off as a beginner all your focus should be on learning, work on projects but work for the knowledge and experience you get. Money is simply the byproduct. This same knowledge and experience in coming years will make you 10X of what you are making right now.

Myth #5: Freelancing marketplaces are full of competition.

When people start off as a freelancer and bid on a project, they see that about 20 more people have already placed a bid on the same project.

Assume 20 people bid on a project, all of the 20 are not your competition.

Your only competition are the people who are better than you and not the ones who are worse than you.

For example, if out of these 20 people, you are ranked 5th as per your skillset then you barely need to worry about the 15 people below you.

The only people you should be worry about are the ones who are better than you.

The quickest and the most direct way to not worry about competition is to outrank them, if you move up the skill ladder you hardly have to bother about the competition. Unless of course someone offers a cheaper price.

Now coming to the main question, how should you start off as a freelancer?

1. See what value you can provide to different people depending on your skillset.
2. Think freelancing as being an independent contractor, try to devote equal amount of time to working on projects and finding clients as well.
3. Finding clients is another skill you would need to learn apart from your core skillset, because no clients would mean no work.
4. Be creative, don’t just get stuck in finding jobs online. Try some creative techniques to land local clients as well.
5. Getting your first client is always the hardest, getting the second client is a bit easier and so on. Hence make sure to not give up too soon. I know people who didn’t get their first client for months and yet they now are doing great.
6. If you chose the path of being a freelancer you need to be a learner for life, because freelance marketplaces are highly competitive and not being up-to-date on skills will throw you out of the market.
7. Look at learning as the process of sharpening a saw, and freelancing as chopping down trees. The better you sharpen your saw on a regular basis the easier it would be for you to chop down trees.
8. Don’t do it for the sake of money. The most successful freelancers I know are the ones who love to do what they do, be them graphic designers or programmers. If you are in it for the money, you will be soon outworked and outperformed by people who are passionate for their work.
9. Don’t get stuck reading blog posts and articles about how to become a freelancer. Instead take action right away. Gathering information and reading blogpost is an endless loop and its easy to get sucked into it. The only people who should read such blogpost are the ones who have no idea about what freelancing is. But if you are someone who has been collecting information since months, you probably need to stop reading and get to the actual work instead.

A few tips on how to find and get work offline:

1. Ask for referrals from friends and families, ask if they know business owners or an individuals who would need your services.
2. Contact and keep in touch with local shops and businesses you personally know. Don’t pitch your services but instead show them how you can help them in their business.
3. Network with more people in your circle and make new connections, you never know who can be your next potential client.
4. Keep an intent of genuinely helping business, don’t simply pitch your services to make money off them, pitch only if you know that your service would be of value to the customer. If it doesn’t help the client, simply don’t sell them.
5. Offer money back guarantee. If you fail to deliver results simply return back their money. If you are so confident about your services you should also be willing to return back clients money if you don’t deliver. This not only makes your proposal solid but will also make your client’s experience stress free.

-Saurav Sharma

Karma's Role In Unemployment

Write a journal to document your progress

Write a journal to document your progress: You do have a passbook to keep track at transactions of your money at the bank. What would happen if the bank stops keeping a track of your money and expenses? Wont that be a terrible idea? So why not keep track of where you are in life right now, what are you doing to improve and how much have you improved over a period of time ? To actually improve yourself, you do need a tracking system in place to track your progress on a daily basis. This system does not need to be complex, you just need to maintain a journal which records things you have done today to improve yourself. For example, you may write things down like “1. Reduced social media usage by 2 hours”, “2. Started learning XYZ skill, completed 1 topic” “3. Walked for 1Km ”. At the end of every week or every month, you can now do a self-review to see how much you have accomplished for the entire month. You can calculate the total hours you have put into learning a new skill, total kilo meters you walked, or total time saved for the entire month which you would otherwise have spent on social media. You can use the same journal for comparing your month-to-month progress as well. For example, in the past month if you had walked 30km then in the next month walking even 35km would be considered as a good progress.

-Saurav Sharma

Be very stingy with your time and energy

Be very stingy with your time and energy

A simple question?

Would you pay INR 500(USD 8) per month to use the social media site which you browse regularly which provides no value but instead wastes your time?

Heck no, you would rather stop using it instead of wasting your money.

So why would you want to waste your time and energy on the same site which are worth a lot more than INR500 per month ?

If the site starts charging that subscription amount you would rather quit using it.

It’s funny how we panic when we loose some money, we are very wise with our money even though we know that it can be earned.

However, our time and energy is something which can never be earned back.

Hence be very cautious before spending energy on some dumb stuff, like watching that YouTube video which provides no value.

Stop spending time on social media which brings in no value, would you have paid a monthly fee for using the same social media site?

-Saurav Sharma

Optimize your energy

6 Games you play in life

Read, read, read and read

Read, read, read and read

I cant emphasize how important it is to read. Read whatever you can get your hands on, if you have the money then buy every book you can on the areas which you want to improve, be it business, marketing, programming etc.

If you cant afford books, then read all that you can get your hands on. Just make sure that the quality of content you read is good.

-Saurav Sharma

Be stingy with....

Does not cracking the IITJEE make me smaller than those who actually did it?

Does not cracking the IITJEE make me smaller than those who actually did it?

There are a lot of occasions in life where you can feel absolutely worthless.

1. You cracked JEE and joined the best IIT but got 5–6 CGPA.
2. You managed 9+ CGPA but didn’t get a high paying job.
3. You got a high paying job but the work is absolutely boring.
4. You got challenging work but the manager is a tyrant.
5. You got a great manager but the company is laying off.
6. You escaped the layoff but you are unable to find a partner.
7. You found a partner but they can’t stop comparing you with their ex.
8. You found a partner without ex but they don’t love you for what you are.
9. You found a loving partner but have a hard time conceiving.
10. You have a child but they are not healthy.
11. You have a healthy child but they won’t listen to you.
12. You have a lovely, obedient child but you get laid off.
13. You escaped layoff again but your child couldn’t crack JEE.

Life is a giant cycle of ups and downs. The lows teach you humility. The highs teach you thankfulness.

Can my future be brighter than those IITians?

My mother isn’t very educated. She has been a house wife throughout. She managed the limited household budget very well. She nurtured and took care of her children to the best of her abilities. She monitored them during their teenage. As a result, she produced 3 (three) IITians. I think she is more successful today than all 3 of us IITians put together.

Be THAT parent if you want to beat IITians. You will literally become the “mother/father of IITians” :-)

For now, love, respect and obey your parents who have been there for you all along. Their prayers and blessings can take you far far higher than what you and I can imagine.

-Imtiaz Mohammad

Changing the World

Lock in Brain

Optimise your energy

Optimise your energy

Is there something which is draining your energy.

Are you engaging in some activities which are a huge drain on your physical and mental energy.

Activities like these include, engaging in hate conversations on social-media, consuming irrelevant content for hours, mindlessly browsing social media etc.

You can always analyse your day and list out the activities you did today that drained your energy but were not a good investment.

You can stop doing these and find a drastic increment in your energy levels.

On the other hand, you can also work on enhancing your energy as well.

Activities like running, working out , meeting up with friends in real life are the activities which energise you.

You may also make some tweaks to your diet for being more energetic such as including vitamin-c and a consuming a lot of water.

-Saurav Sharma

Cab Driver Makes More Money Than IT Graduates then why to study ?

I had the same question about......

I had the same question about more than a decade ago when I wondered what separates the class toppers from an average student like me.

Luckily I had the chance to be around a topper and observe him and his actions.

What I learned from a class topper.

While I was in school I was an average student. I studied enough to score well but never topped the class.

However when I was in std 8th, I had a chance to sit besides a class topper.

Here is what I observed and learned from him.

1. He had a tremendous zeal to score well, the intensity with which he studied showed up on his face.
2. The amount of enthusiasm this guy had to tackle the exam was mind blowing. If you ever see him revising before an exam, you would think that he was a maniac. Compared to him I was like Meh… its just an exam, let’s write the paper and get over with it.
3. He honestly prepared till the last moment, he made sure that no answer is left unrevised. He genuinely immersed himself into books. Not like others who study before exam just to show off.
4. His enthusiasm was contagious, you wont believe that after sitting besides him for an exam even I started studying with more zeal and more passion. I became genuinely interested in studies. This is the very reason you should surround yourself with great people, we end up becoming a bit like them.
5. As soon as the exam ended, the very next moment he would start preparing for the next one. He knew the value of every minute and utilised well.
6. Most importantly he didn’t consider this as work or something he has to do but he genuinely enjoyed studying and being a class topper.
7. Was he talented and had more IQ than others? I have no idea, but I can assure you one thing that he put a lot more effort to study the same topic than others did. If he was really talented and had a god gifted photographic memory then he wouldn’t have had to put so much effort into learning/memorising things.
8. Was he lucky? He had the same set of Questions to answer as others did. Although he might have had other advantages like a favourable and conducive study environment at home, better coaching however there were plenty others who had much more advantages than him.

These were my key takeaways form him which I follow to this day:

1. It’s all about how bad you want it. If you are competing with someone else for a thing then the one who gets it is the one who wants it the most.
2. There is no substitute to hard work, even if you are super talented.
3. Enthusiasm matters a lot, if you are not enthusiastic or excited about something it will be much harder to succeed at it,
4. Being genuine always pays, always be genuine to you work and it will reward you back.
5. Enthusiasm and positive energy is contagious and it shows up in your work. So is negative energy. Hence one must do all the possible things to surround yourself with positive and energetic people and cut out all the people from your life who are inherently negative.
6. Value time, it is your most precious resource and hence put it to good use.
7. Luck is definitely a factor, however not as much as you think it is. It does have an impact but the effect of ones luck only amplifies when you put in the hard work.

-Saurav Sharma

Don’t be a slave to your smartphone, instead make it your slave

Don’t be a slave to your smartphone, instead make it your slave

Most people in todays world have become a slave to their smartphones.

Notification bell rings, they pick up their phone saying that “Ill watch this one video and then I’ll get to work”. Even before they know it, they have spent an entire hour watching other recommended videos.

Remember, it’s now machines vs humans. Social media algorithms have gotten so good that they know what exactly you like. In fact they know more about you than yourself and hence they know how to keep you hooked.

Instead of being a slave your your phone, make it your slave.

Don’t let it suck value out of you, instead you suck the value out of it.

Use apps like reminders to remind you of the important stuff you need to do, use the phone to talk and network with people.

Download apps like Kindle, Audible read and listen to a ton of books.

Use apps to remind you to drink water and take a walk every hour so that you stay healthy.

There are hundreds of ways you can use your smartphone to optimize your life and to your own advantage, but only when you actually stop being a slave to it.

You have paid a hefty price for your device, extract every drop of value out of it.

-Saurav Sharma

I was in a colony function the other day, when an uncle came to me and asked .....

I was in a colony function the other day, when an uncle came to me and asked me a similar question, though with a different profession in mind. “You have an amazing profile, why don’t you prepare for UPSC and become an IAS officer?”

A few days back, another person had asked me, “You have an amazing academic background, why don’t you opt for a research career and try for a top-notch Ph.D from Harvard?”

Quite a few people have also asked me why I don’t try to become an entrepreneur.

The thing is - everybody has different goals in life, and what might work for one person might not work for another.

For the time being, I am very happy in management consulting because it keeps me on my toes. There is something new to learn every single day, an extremely smart peer group, and fast-changing industry dynamics.

The day I get bored of management consulting, I might try something else. But for now, I am happy with my career. We don’t have to always go by the norms of society. I would rather focus my energy towards exploring different facets of life these days.

-Rohan Jain

Optimal.......