TLDR 📋

• Overall, 2021 has been an eventful year of success. Unlike any of the recent years, this year has been full of a lot more ups than downs.
• I graduated in the first half of the year, had a short-sweet vacation and started working in the next half, in June. I moved to California in August and have been embracing the inflection point in income, lifestyle, perspective and many other aspects of life.
• Personally, physically and mentally, I have been adapting quite well. Priorities have changed to help focus more on long term gains in terms of physique, emotional stability, sustainability and optimizing the routine.
• Socially, I am still transitioning, since there was never enough time to attain stability until now. I had been quite poor at prioritizing friendships and relationships as a student, but now is another opportunity to recalibrate.
• Professionally, I think I could not have been at a better place at this point. Work is great, I love it. KeyFrame, my first production project as the lead engineer, is now released to the consumers. I feel fortunate to be working with a team of such wonderful folks, some of the best in the field. A lot to learn from everyone, and a long way to go!
• This has been a fortunate and a very rewarding milestone, yet, this is only the beginning. With so much to look forward to, I am very excited for what 2022 shall bring!

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2021 was a very consequential year, concluding the student phase and plunging into the professional phase of life, it has been quite a turn around. Time has come to finally bear fruits of all the hardwork, sincerity and patience of the past 15 years, and they sure are sweet. Some of the highlights from last year:

Graduating and later 👨🏽‍🎓

• As a lot of you may know, I graduated with Master’s in Robotics, in May 2021. Most of my thoughts and updates until this point were already expressed here, so the rest of this post shall mostly cover how life has been post May 2021.
• Ever since 2012, all of the breaks had me occupied with preparations, internships, or projects. This was hence, the much-needed real vacation that I had to make the best of. I spent a lot of time lazing at home, with no commitments, played Cricket after a long long time, binge-watched movies and a couple TV series with no guilt and travelled to some pleasant places in and around lush green states of Pennsylvania and New York.
• Since 2020 Covid outbreak, I had missed out on many travel opportunities and had mostly been confined to Philadelphia, either due to high workload and commitments or due to covid concerns. Fortunately, the break in May gave a chance to change that. I finally visited New York City, had my first star gazing experience at Cherry Springs State Park, which was unfortunately blemished due to our underprepared venture of for the freezing 2^oC in middle of the forest. Arnav has done a great job of capturing the story here. I also visited Niagara Falls again, from the USA this time which was quite a different experience than last time from Canada. Other exquisite places checked off from the list during the time were Allegany State Park, Kinzua bridge, Lake Erie, Watkins Glen and Ricketts Glen State Parks.

Joining Skydio 🚀

• The biggest of the recent life events was starting work at Skydio. This was my first time in corporate world, where real consumers would be using what I’d be creating. I cannot express this strongly enough, but the team is brilliant beyond words, comprising of folks from best of the research labs across the world, with a ton of experience. There’s just so much to learn from each one of them. When I started, the on-boarding tasks were helpful, but generally it was quite overwhelming to be interacting with the huge codebase, working along-side some of these smartest people. But having said that, each of them is incredibly grounded and humble, that the hesitation to approach someone evanesced quickly. Overtime, I got more comfortable with the team and the codebase, and the challenging tasks have now gone from daunting and exciting, to just exciting.
• Another reason I love the work is the culture, everyone is given ownership at the very early stages and everyone is encouraged to take accountability. Accountability is a prime factor at work and in life, as also pointed out by Naval Ravikant, who I have been influenced by quite a lot recently. People have a very optimistic attitude towards everything in general, which is necessary as a researcher where you are constantly pushing the boundaries of existing tech, wandering in uncertainty with a likely result of failure. Pessimism would just prevent you from doing anything in such situations so it is extremely important to be optimistic. This, along with intelligence, accountability and high integrity is what makes a team successful, and I am very fortunate to have joined a team like this so early in my career.
• As I mentioned, responsibilities and ownership is very much encouraged and I started working on one of the important features KeyFrame, as the lead autonomy engineer right after my 4 days of on-boarding. To give an idea on the pace of development, I had a working prototype in a month, 3 months in, we were already had a polished prototype for beta-testing and in January 2022, this was released to the public. Also, I have my first (pending) patent already! Even though it’s not really the outcome and possibilities with cinematography that excite me about this, it’s more about the techinical challenges and possibilities of these projects that motivates me and keeps me going.
• There are also some downsides, as there is a serious possibility of burn out due to which you need to constantly calibrate and know when you need a break. Along with KeyFrame, I also work on the amazing, unbeaten subject tracking tech that Skydio has developed over the years. Working on and owning these consumer facing features exposes one to a lot to the public opinion. Even though I am behind a curtain of the Skydio brand, I am only partly accountable for all the praises these features we develop, shall receive as this was a huge team effort overall. But more importantly, I am primarily and individually accountable for a lot of the criticism that these features receive. This has taught me how important it is to be consciously receptive, yet robust to external components to maintain sanity, which applies in a lot of other aspects of life that I shall talk more about in the later sections.

Life in California 🌉

• The first train from SF airport to my house was a surprising one, and not in a pleasant way. I had heard a lot about the Silicon Valley, but hadn’t seen much of it virtually. During the journey, much of the view was of small houses with satellite dishes over some, calm traffic, parallel railtracks and overhanging light and telephone cables. It wasn’t what I expected from a high-tech Silicon Valley. The excitment and optimism for it to get better gradually faded as I got close to destination in this urban village. The only positive thing was clear skies, peace and perfect temperature, which soon overpowered all the negatives.
• I soon got used to it, and developed understanding that it’s the atmosphere, people and lifestyle that provides the upsides. Just the high concentration of smart people, where every 9 out of 10 people you meet is an engineer, this fact alone makes it all worth for me. Also the community I stay with helps me be restful, with the swimming pool, spa, a gym and some other perks. It just feels comfortable to have these luxuries not be a luxury anymore, and having spots to chill during the weekends or a quick evening walk as an excuse to be off-screen or even just spending some lone time for reading by the pool.
• There are also a lot of people from Penn around to hangout with, which is fun. I have also been proactively going out for social and family events, playing basketball, etc. to meet new people and make new friends, although not as much as I would like, due to my immobility for the lack of a car, which soon should not be the case.
• I have developed a pretty stable routine set for myself for the weekdays, and get enough time to focus on other personal endeavours during the weekends. Notion and google calendar have still served me as the best tools to be organized and to optimize my routine better, but it can definitely use some more changes as I dynamically learn to prioritize my activities.

Financial overturns 💸

• As this is my first real full-time job, life has changed a lot from a financial standpoint, which I still struggle to adapt with. A bit of a background: Since we moved from Gujarat to Mumbai, we had been at a backfoot financially. We had debts and my hard working family had done their best to keep things really cozy, but saving wherever we could came as a second nature. I am extremely fortunate to have such supportive parents who would not think twice for educational expenses, and so I had all the advantages I needed to get ahead. Their confidence helped me take a leap of faith to spend a whole lot more than we had ever seen, towards my Master’s degree, inspite of the already existing debt.
• After graduating and starting work, things turned around way faster than I could fathom. Along with this amazing job, all the part-time income during university, co-op, savings from the frugal life I have lived for a couple of decades, and contributions from my hard working family, we entered 2022, free of all the debt we ever accumulated. 🎉 This has been quite a proud moment for me, and hopefully this note will be a constant reminder and motivator of my humble beginnings as I begin climbing up from here.
• Now, all of a sudden, the outflow has diminished to a miniscule amount, while the inflow has been at an all time high. But 2 decades of frugal living cannot be overturned in 2 weeks. I am still a very poor spender, there is hence a huge imbalance between what I can afford and what I spend. I still spend considerable time optimizing the value of my money, finding the best deal between Amazon, Walmart, etc. to save maybe $5-50. My google maps should still default to transit routes because my brain refuses to take an Uber and trade-off 30 mins for $20.
• One of the goals for upcoming months is to address this better. My family and I are no longer earning for sustenance, and I need to train myself to understand that it’s no longer about savings which makes sense if you have debts and need to secure your future. Rather, it’s about creating wealth from here, not to secure the future, but to buy ourselves time and freedom to live a super comfortable life, and do more of what we love. I need to deeply engrave that there’s nothing to lose anymore and everything to gain, I have earned the opportunity to take risks.
• What am I going to do about it? I think I try to spend time saving money because I don’t value my time enough. If I self-valued my off-working hour at say $200, I would rather not be spending any time thinking about spending time or going through inconvenience to save some money, but rather I would spend money to save myself some time and add to my peace of mind. And in the process, I would strive to utilize that time doing/exploring things that I am good at and am interested in, creating value and wealth, and making it worth the high value I have assigned to it. This would also mean that spending an hour on cooking each day isn’t worth it, and eventually it will not be, but hope to keep some things out of it at this point. This would be one of the primary shift I aim to make in 2022 and years to come.

Miscellaneous: 🤷‍♂️

Quick rundown through the rest, because this post has to end.

• Everyone has a story that I don’t know, just like most of the people don’t know my whole story. Be respectful, and be careful in making assumptions.
• I am still a kid, immature and amateur at a lot of things. I have no reason to hold on to and protect my ego, and I need to be much more open to learning.
• I am still learning, but have gotten better at prioritizing work, my physical and mental well being, social and societal responsibilities, relationships and time.
• This is just the beginning, and I am immensely encouraged to make to most out of these most potential upcoming years of my life.
• I have gotten better at striving emotional balance, I constantly and consciously try to be more resilient to all the external factors. This includes not getting too elated on praises and approvals, but still know to celebrate and take all the positivity I need to move forward as well as not let criticism affect my mental peace, but take all the constructive feedback from it to be able to do better.
• Exploring and learning new things in free time, this is currently limited to learning Ukulele, learning to drive in the US, building up on my specific knowledge and technical expertise, reading more, etc.
• Focusing more on health and fitness. We have been now cooking almost everyday and eating better, and I have been hitting the gym, almost everyday since October(?) with maybe 10 days missing. It’s not much but has been amazing to track the results over long term since college as I have gained about 6 kgs of healthy mass since university.
• Being a better listener. I naturally hate it when people want to whine, and do not like to hear a solution. This has infact helped be not to be so, and I have been very proactive at solving my problems independently if I can or seeking the right help when I need to. It’s tough to understand personally, but I see that people sometimes just need an ear to vent out, and so I think I need to be a better listner, and fight my instict to blurt solutions.
• I haven’t seen my family since about 2.5 years now, but I also feel that I have adapted to my routine and for some reason, am not bothered by that fact. I sure shall be happy when I get a chance to see them and other relatives.
• Socially, I have been making efforts to meet new people and make friends. I am very grateful for all the ones that I have made since school who are still in touch, and the new ones I am making now. Having said that, I realize that I seriously lack strong friendships and relationships in my life. Some of the bonds are rusty, many are just stagnant and a lot are in their infancy. I have a lot of people to chill, spend time and have fun with, but the ones who I can be comfortably vulnerable around, when time shall come, are very very few. I don’t have clarity in what to do about it and it probably needs more of my time and attention to build, but it’ll be something to think about.

What I look forward to 👀

Probably resolutions is the right word but these are just some of the (ambitious?) goals that I really look forward to achieving.

• Get my driving license and a car by March.
• Be decently good at Ukulele to be able to perform in front of a group comfortably.
• Gain 8 more kgs of healthy mass and not miss more than 20 days at gym this year.
• Refine and further optimize my routine to add more time for top priorities.
• Start investing more seriously, finally!
• Be more consistent at reading, goal is to read at least 12 books this year. I have recently been consuming most of my content in audio/video form, hope to seriously get back to reading with this.
• Try and learn at least 2 new activities [Skiing, Surfing, Mountain biking, Scuba diving, etc.]
• Make proactive attempt to create something of value. This needs some more defining in weeks to come, but I would definitely love to explore some of the creative fields in the journey towards finding more of what I love to do. Maybe it’s investing, finance, blogging, content creation on youtube, outdoor sports, music, or something else. I have a lot of freedom right and have already been exploring some of the avenues, hope to make more progress on these.
• Gain more “specific knowledge” in the field I am working in, develop expertise. I believe I have the necessary intellect, but without experience it isn’t much as intellect gives me the force to drive things ahead but experience is required to guide the force in the right direction with better judgement. I hope to nurture exactly that over the coming years, gradually making myself more and more irreplaceable.
• Do better socially, be more extroverted. I still feel the introverted nature deep within prevents me from talking much, and hence making new friends faster. Although this isn’t a priority at the moment, I hope to make more attempts at doing better at it.
• Contribute. I have been trying my best to help with what I can to juniors who reach out so far as an attempt to contribute. Hoping to expand the scope of my contributions to society.

P.S.
I didn’t spend much time polishing it, feel free to let me know about any corrections there may be.