on scarcity of time

I do more when I have less time. It’s a weird, counter-intuitive behavior that I’ve observed in my day to day during this new phase of life.

Time is an equalizer. No one has more time than others and everyone has different ways of valuing it. We all have the same amount of time yet we all live different amounts. As I find myself with less time than ever, I find myself with more impetus than ever to do things I want to do because I value it way more.

I feel left with very few books these days. Mishaps that waste my time annoy me a smidge more than usual. Saying no to commitments that don’t light a fire in me has felt easier. Abandoning hobbies that don’t align with my goals has been bittersweet. It’s brightened the bright lights in my life and muted the darker ones.

I haven’t found the impetus to hike Mt. Everest, rocket into space or anything near those ambitions (yet). But I’ve very much appreciated the surge of intentionality that’s come with the reduction of my time. It’s given me a deeper appreciation for the feeling of intentionality. In an extreme hypothetical case, I’d rather be sad yet intentional than happy with no intentionality.

These revelations feel important to me as a struggling people pleaser. I want to be thoughtful of other people’s feelings yet easily compromise my own. As someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, it doesn’t take much perception to notice I’m not enthused. It’s easier to fall into this trap when I had much more free time because my spare time was as good as a sitting duck. As spare time became harder to find, it’s been easier to establish boundaries to ensure that I can make the most of my time.

There was another important question. What’s fun for me? What really energizes me? A close friend of mine once remarked that I had a noticeably different energy in select situations. This year’s been all about doubling down into those environments that spark joy.

It ties back to an important philosophy of mine to find and create win-wins1. People around me are happy if I want to be there and I’m also happy if I want to be there. No one’s going to force me to drink alcohol but no one’s going to stop me from wanting to drink either. Hang out with people where the joy of hanging out together is mutual.

Being people pleasing and win-wins aren’t mutually exclusive, but they have less overlap than not. Something I admire about friends who may seem people pleasing is that they know the line between the overlap and pure people pleasing and they’re great at exercising self-awareness of what they want. As I start finding more ways to spend free time, I hope to be better about knowing what I want and avoiding what I don’t want so that I can keep the best parts of a people pleaser.

One of the great things about work is that there’s significantly less ambiguity on how time can be spent. Work is an unambiguous win-win: I get to work for a company and the company gets to grow its business. Speaking of work…

Codeium, the startup I started working at two months ago, has been fantastic! The days fly by and the work has been energizing. Since I started, I redesigned and implemented a new onboarding flow and chat in the extension and many little to big tasks in between and around those features. The state of flow has been easy to find and the joy of collaboration is a seat rotation away from my desk neighbors.

One of my favorite parts about my work is the ability to apply many of my past experiences in one role. The beauty of a startup is that the skills demanded will always be a superset of the breadth of skills you have, no matter how many past experiences you have, leading to undeniable personal growth. On any given day, I might be designing assets, deploying features, sharing social media posts and talking to customers. It’s been incredible.

Outside of work, there’s very little variance in my life. In fact, this is probably the least variance I’ve had across my day to day which ties back to my goals around consistency for the year. I run around 25mi every week, make every 9:12am Caltrain by leaving at 8:40am, and best part is the peanut butter toast every weekday morning.

The routine feels great and I feel like I’m constantly progressing but I’ve found myself losing track of time more than ever. In the past, losing track of time meant that the hours flew by. Today, losing track of time feels like I occasionally forget which day of the week it is.

Luckily, I’ve been intentional about sprinkling my weeks with moments of joy. Some highlights in the month of February include:

• Team offsite in Carmel

• Celebrating Chinese New Year with old roommates

• Attending the Warriors vs Lakers basketball game

• Watching Sabrina Ionescu vs Steph Curry’s 3pt contest with a childhood friend

• Learning how to play Mah Jong

• Weekly group runs

Thanks for tuning in for the month of February. Catch you all in the next one.