Annual Review 2023

The goal of this annual review is to reflect on the journey of a year. To look for patterns in the things that went right, and the things that went wrong. To use it as an instructional guide to make changes for the year ahead.

I turned 29 in January, and I have a most of my life in front of me. I plan to do this review every year. It will be fun to read it 10 years from today.

Before we dive in. This is a relatively long post because I have tried to condense a year on this page. It was supposed to go out in 2023 but I kept convincing myself that it was not ready to be published. In reality, my procrastination was masked behind this ‘perfection’. So to beat the procrastination and preventing myself from making this post ‘perfect’. I’m publishing this imperfect piece today.

I started 2023 with my 12 favourite problems. A set of twelve open-ended questions that acted as a compass for what to focus on for the year. It only seems fitting that for my annual review I go back to those questions and reflect on the progress. But instead of going through each question one by one, I have clubbed the questions into 4 categories: Health, Experiences, Relationships, Work.

Health

Q1: What does it look like to develop a daily routine for improved fitness?

Q2: How do I enjoy the process of cooking healthy meals daily?

Q3: How do I improve my posture?

Routine for me was dictated by my work. I have to go to work at 8, so I woke up accordingly, cooked accordingly and structured my life around work times. I didn’t really have a healthy routine, slept at odd times, ate whatever the heart and wallet permitted, exercise was minimal. It was frustrating. Which is why I added health related questions to my list of 12. I focused on 3 things – sleep, diet, exercise.

Sleep

2023 has taught me a lot bout my sleep. I had a very unpredictable sleeping pattern. I would doom scroll on my phone late into the night, and it was Mt. Everest level difficult to leave the soft comfy bed in the morning. I tried a 100 different alarms, from alarms with mellow wake up tones, to those with military barracks band, to the smart LEDs that mimic the rising sun by slowly brightening the room. Even on days that I managed to wake up early, I was so tired by the time I came from work, that I would take a nap in the evening and sleep late at night and the cycle would repeat.

Sleeping at 1 or 2 am at night, there was no way to was to have a healthy sleep routine. I wanted to wake up early. I worked on it. I got black out curtains, subscription to the Headspace app, and exercising in the evening to get my body tired and ready for bed.

There are still several weeks when I’ll come home and doom scroll till late at night, just so that I have that false sense of control on my life. I don’t force myself to go to sleep on those days. I allow myself to scroll on my phone. But then after I’m done messing up my sleep and I want to fix my sleep routine in the next few days. I don’t have to start from square one, I now know what works for me.

Diet

“What to make for dinner?” is a question that haunts me every day.

That was mostly because the there were only a few dishes that I know how to cook properly each time- chicken curry et al, but I can’t eat them everyday. On some days, I would mess the spice ratios, or add more or less salt than needed, or burn my onions. It was about experimentation and there was a 50/50 chance of the meal having good taste. Whenever someone asked me if I cooked food. My answer was that, “I make edible food.”

I would resort to take out food a lot of days when my cooking experimentation failed. I even tried the meal prep options of Hello Fresh, Cumin Club etc. They feel nice for a week but the taste gets old, and it is more expensive than making the food myself.

By the end of the year, I got some handle on my cooking process. Learnt to control the heat, got basic understanding of spice ratios, don’t burn my food as often. But the ‘mom-level’ taste still evades me.

I learned to finally make tea the way I like it. Earlier it was hit and miss. No matter what recipe I followed, it would. After months of experimentation, I finally realized the secret is to boil the tea more, until the liquid turns a slightly thick muddy brown colour. Adding dried lemon grass or ginger is the other secret to a great tea.

There is still a lot of work that needs to go in order to make cooking an enjoyable process.

Exercise

If I slept in a weird position, my back, my shoulder, or my neck would hurt. After I helped my friend move apartment, my body was sore for a week. It took me a while to figure out that I basically had minimal muscles. This had resulted in bad posture. I read that exercising results in improved posture.

But I just hate going to the gym. I would instead veg on my couch after work and on the weekends. I tried like really basic exercises at home for most of the year, but nothing serious. I wasn’t seeing any difference.

I even paid $80 monthly membership of my YMCA membership for a couple months. But I went there for zero days. However, on a hot day in August, I took the leap and I jumped into the cold pool. Once I did my laps, it felt great afterwards. That dopamine hit was so nice that it kicked off a swimming habit. Part of the motivation was to recover the cost of membership of the YMCA. But the majority of the motivation came from the feeling of broadened shoulders and the initial muscle gain in the first few weeks. I could feel the improved posture.

Also, I journaled after every swim session. I would write about how many laps I did (usually 40 laps of the 25m pool), and write about how I felt during and after the swim. Writing about the good feeling everyday helped me reflect on the emotions and helped me continue my swimming routine. I loved the routine so much, that I didn’t skip weekends. But then life happened and I had to travel and it broke my habit.

Again, I am glad that in 2023 I figured out what exercise works for me and how to keep a habit. So it is not a difficult to pick it back up.

Sleep – Diet – Exercise. It was like a cycle. Improving my sleep broke my evening naps, it gave me energy and time to cook food for myself in the evenings, that gave me enough energy for exercising, the tiredness from the exercise was crucial for a good nights sleep.

Of course, I am not going to claim that I maintain this routine each and everyday. Life happens and I have to move things around, so I skip on those days. 2023 for health has been about understanding what works for me and minimizing the struggle to get back into it when I want to.

Experiences

Q4: How do I nurture my hobby of snowboarding and become a better snowboarder?

Q5: How do I improve my writing skills and build a writing habit while adding value to my readers?

Snowboarding

Snowboarding was a big part of my year. What started as something to do in the winter, ended up being a new hobby. I went to a nearby resort with my friends almost every winter weekend. Winter outdoor activity was on the bucket list for this year. We started the year strong with going to the resorts every weekend. There were days when I would spend all the day on the easy bunny slopes. There were weekends of progress, there were weekends when I chickened out on the steeper black diamond slopes. By the end of the season, I was really happy with going from learning to balance the snowboard on day 1 to doing my S-shaped turns on the steeper slopes.

Among friends, we joke about how we got schemed into buying passes by a friend. But grateful that it lead to ski-resort trips, memories, and a winter hobby.

Writing

2023 was such a tough year for my writing. I had a pretty consistent writing habit from January to July. I was publishing one edition of my newsletter every Sunday. It was such a struggle. Looking back at those first few editions evokes a strong sense of cringe inside me. I’m sure 10 years from now, this post will feel the same. but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. I strongly believed in the writing philosophy that ‘quality comes from quantity‘. That a consistent writing habit will improve my writing. Cohort 10 of the Write of Passage in May was a great experience. I have done a few writing courses in the last couple years but nothing has changed my life the way Write of Passage did.

But I struggled during the next Cohort 11. I did not like the way I was writing. Publishing a shitty newsletter every weekend wasn’t bringing me any joy and I was pushing out newsletters just for the sake of it. I eventually stopped publishing because I wasn’t happy with what I was publishing. It lead me down a spiral of trying to find the answer to the question “Why do I want to write?”. Pages of journaling ensued that will probably never see the light of the day.

But the quest for learning about ‘good writing’ jump started my reading habit. Because good reading leads to good writing. Then at one point it felt like I was just procrastinating thinking, “Once I read enough books, I’ll start writing.” I was pushing the actual writing part to ‘after I do this, or after I do that’. I know fully well that until I do the ‘writing’ part, I won’t improve. My biggest struggle is finding that line between publishing shitty essays for the sake of consistency and improving my writing by publishing essays. 2024 is going to be about finding that balance.

In 2023, I published 30 posts – a combination of newsletters and essays. This was an improvement from 12 posts that I did in 2022. So I did make progress with 18 more posts. But I was out seeking answers to my writing questions like, “what do I write about?”, ” what will connect with my audience?”, “what should my writing niche be?”, “how do I add value to the readers?”. However, one line by Mark Manson on David Perell’s podcast really impacted me,

“Until you’ve written 100 posts, you generally have no clue what you enjoy writing about or what people enjoy reading from you“.

That is when it hit me that the answers to my questions are further down along my writing journey. At least till I reach a 100 posts. So the goal with my writing is to publish to a 100 posts about things that I find interesting. And possibly connect the dots to guide me in the future.

Relationships

Q6: How can I enjoy more quality time with friends and family as an introvert?

Q7: What would it look like to be married by the end of 2023?

Ever since I moved to the East Coast I was the tour guide for my friends and family showing them around New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia. I’ve been to the touristy spots – Empire State building, Statue of Liberty, White House, Liberty Bell etc. like a million times. But each time it was with different set of friend or a family members, so each trip was cherished.

Some of my family in India came to visit to the USA. I got to visit them at my cousin’s place every weekend while they were here. It was so tough to come back to my apartment on those weekends after enjoying the good food and company. I wanted to spend more time with them than come back to an empty apartment.

Marriage was a topic I had on my mind for this year. I had signed up on apps and in talking to prospective partners, I realized I didn’t really know what I was looking for in a partner. I went from, “I have this check list” to “Here are my core values that I expect to be aligned on, the rest is all good vibes.” The process is more mentally draining that I had imagined, asking the same set of questions, answering the same set of questions. As they say, the stars have to be aligned. For now, the search continues and all I ask is for in a partner is kindness, and the will to face challenges together, someone to share moments of joys, moments of despair.

In December, I went to India after 4 years. During this trip, I realized how much I missed family back home. Visiting home reminded me of the things I miss in the USA. There was love, laughter, drama, emotions. Everything that I had missed in the last 4 years was packed in that one month. I also met up with my friends from college. We don’t usually talk that much except the occasional news in the WhatsApp group because of the time difference and life happens. But we had a great time catching up.

My 2023 started with friends, ringing in the new year in New York. There were birthday party get togethers, trips to national parks, days on the beaches, Broadway shows, ski resort shenanigans and so much more. Every opportunity I got to spend time with my near and dear ones, I took it. Even if it meant me having to drive for hours after a hectic day at work, or taking time off of work to go on a trip with them. Every day that I spent with friends and family on trips or weekend outings was great. For 2024, I want to do more of this.

Work

Q8: How do I navigate a slow-paced work environment and become a better engineer?

Q9: How do I pursue and keep up with the advancements of Industry 4.0?

Work has been a rollercoaster. Some days were packed with activities. Some days are easy and calm. Our team functions like a SWAT team, go and help in areas that need the help. So even though we are Industrial Engineers by title, we are Operational Excellence. We work on yields, throughput improvements, project support and everything in between. 2023 was year 2 in the role and I feel slightly settled in what I’m doing. I pursued a project that interests me, it is related to Industry 4.0 and digital transformation. I had a lot on enthusiasm when the project was kicked off. Got to work with multiple suppliers, learned the basics of how to setup an IIoT platform, the electronics behind a PLC, etc. I now lead the project to roll it across the plant.

Of my 12 favourite problems, there were a few that I did not work as much as others. I had added them to my list back in January but as the year progressed, I lost the enthusiasm to pursue them. Life happened and I focused on other things than these 3 questions.

Q 10: How can I use the advancements in generative AI to ease my life?

ChatGPT was the craze in 2023. I dabbled in using it to edit some of my essays. On days when I was struggling to come up with ideas or how to expand on a topic or I had nothing to write, I used ChatGPT. It feels surreal to ask questions to a program and it spits out a text block. But then as I used ChatGPT for more posts, it lost all the fun. It didn’t feel authentic. Even though I am bullish on using AI in our day-to day life but there isn’t useful application for me just yet.

Q 11: What is my personal monopoly? What is my unique intersection of skills, interests and personality traits where I can be known as the best thinker on a topic?

This was a question I copied from a person I really admire. This was flawed, because I can’t use someone else’s favourite problem to determine the trajectory for my life. This question seemed so unique and impressive in the beginning, but then I did not know what it actually meant or what am I to do for finding the answer to this question. So I did not pursue it.

Q 12: What does it look like to overcome the visa bottleneck in this Land of Dreams?

Being in the USA – the land of the dreams, I was too focused on the visa being a bottleneck for me. But there isn’t really anything in my control to change it. So instead of focusing my efforts on this. I need to focus my efforts that are in my control- like not worrying about it.

Looking back, my interests changed over the year and I wasn’t pursuing some questions anymore. But it was my first iteration and I was trying to start somewhere so I had taken inspiration from questions of other people and tried to apply it to my life. So this year’s questions will be more relevant to the things I’m curious about.

Life in 2023 wasn’t ALL about the 12 favourite problems.

Manchester United

2023 was a tough year for supporting Manchester United football club. The form has been terrible, the scores have been terrible. We are languishing in the middle of the table, no trophies in sight. Got knocked out of the Champions league. Although the new manager ETH has had an okay season last year, this season is terrible. You just don’t know if the after every match you should send disappointing memes to your friends or discuss how well everyone played. I wish watching the Man U games were as enjoyable as watching Taylor Tomlinson perform standup. But as a fan, I am loyal to the club and think there is light at the end of the tunnel. GGMU.

Notion

I love Notion. It is my home base for my personal knowledge management. To-do lists, book lists, journals, writing drafts, daily check-in, all goes into Notion. I have built a system where everything goes into a specific database – that I can recall anytime I want. Because I have a very bad memory, Notion helps me not rely on my memory. So now, if I go to a bookstore, I don’t need to stress my brain to remember what books I want to buy, I already have my list and the reasons.

It is google docs meets excel, on steroids. But I don’t have to worry about a 100 different excel files to open up. Everything is available at the click of a button. I can link up different files, build database that talk to each other. The best part is that I find it very easy to use and setup.

I was really inspired by Jim Collins’ daily habit to journal every day and give each day a score – A plus two is just a great day, plus one is another positive day, zero is meh, Minus one is kind of a net tone negative, and minus two are bad days. The idea is that over long periods of time when you look back and try to understand patterns of say what days were ‘plus two’, you can take actions for doing more of the things that create the plus twos, and less of the things that create the minus twos. To track my daily, I created that system in Notion.

Although I had my 12 fav problems, I chased shiny objects. For a month or so I was super into learning French again, I got the annual Duolingo membership, but even the passive aggressive Duolingo owl couldn’t get me to come back on the app. When I started, I thought I had a goal. But I did not and it just felt right for the moment, I went on a good 44 day streak but lost all interest after that. I was dedicated for those 44 days to the point that in December 2023 I was top 5% of the learners. Not bad huh. My goals had changed and learning French was no longer on the agenda. I got a Duolingo premium annual membership that went to waste after those 44 days.

Then I was open to being a noob and tried to start learning to coding this year, thinking, “This is the year when I become a mechanical engineer who can code.” I took an online python course, completed it. But lost interest in pursuing it. I did all the exercises and even got a certificate.

The other shiny object for me this year was Industry 4.0. I have been working on a project at work. I was excited to work on it. I wanted to start a newsletter about that topic. But I was put on other projects, the fervor died down. My motivation isn’t the same as it was on day 1.

There is nothing wrong is chasing your curiosities. But I feel bad if I am not able to follow through on things. I didn’t have a strong reasoning of why I was learning French, or why I wanted to learn coding, I thought I had a why, but it was so superficial that I was interested as long as it felt “nice”. Once it didn’t. There was no internal motivation.

I still want to chase my curiosities, but not every passing curiosity. I don’t want to be the crazy cat that will chase any laser pointer coming in my way. I want to be like the bee that curiously goes from flower to flower but ends up making honey.

Final Reflections

‘Go with the flow’ isn’t the guiding principle anymore. I don’t have a solid blog worthy principle but it is something along the lines of “Pulling on the threads of curiosities and taking actions to weave a tapestry of experiences”, what is life but a collection of these tapestries. So I’m still chasing my curiosities, but also reflecting on where those curiosities are leading me. I have learned that if I don’t have use in my daily life, there is a high possibility than I am not going to be sold on it. I’ve realized I need to commit to things and then claim victory or failures. I’ve started too many things went on a streak lost my motivation and gave up or moved onto the next thing. Streaks are easy to start the initial motivation gets me through a month, then the next things comes on and I forget about the first thing.

I am 29 years old and majority of my life lies ahead of me. My life has changed significantly since the 25 year-old Shubham who was struck by Quarter life Crisis. In the last few years, there was so much uncertainty and lack of clarity about life and career. Life experiences, reflections, writing, people have cleared some of the uncertainty. I don’t feel aimlessly floating in the sea of uncertainty anymore. I don’t have all the answers. But I feel confident that I have some of the skills and tools to sail through. Will those be enough? I’m sure I’ll pick some more skills along the way. But I have learnt more things about me than I knew before. I feel like the last few years have been about laying the groundwork for the life ahead. In no way is it complete, but some work for sure.

For posterity.

PS: Here are a few incomplete lists that I enjoyed in 2023.

Books:

On Writing – Steven King
Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene
Same as Ever – Morgan Housel
The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Podcasts:

Tim Ferris Show – Tim Ferriss

How I write – David Perell

Colin and Samir

Video

Restaurants

Lolitas – Boston, MA
Woodrow’s Sandwich Shop – Philadelphia, PA
Nagpuri Saoji – Voorhees, NJ
Kid Shelleen’s – Wilmington, PA
Taverna – Newark, DE
Ramen Kumamoto – Newark, DE
Taco Master – Elkton, MD
Steak and Main – North East, MD
Canoe – Atlanta, GA
Founding Farmers – Washington, DC
Firebirds Wood Fired Grill – Miamisburg, OH

PPS:

I love Tim Urban’s reminder that you took a unique path to reach today – a beautiful moment in time. The decisions you took to reach here closed a million paths for you. Don’t worry about those closed paths. Instead focus on the green paths that are open to you. Choose wisely.