Nomad - The Spirit

What we hope to accomplish, and how we are implementing it

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Nomad, this hiatus that Sesh and I are on, is a reset from life as we knew it, so we can deliberately construct a new one. There is, of course, no absolute clean slate from life, and I am grateful for that. I can rely on having my loved ones, experiences, memories and fundamental values unchanged through this. The reset then, is along a few specific dimensions: profession, health, and lifestyle.

Profession

We spend inordinate amounts of time, mental and physical, at our jobs. It demands at least half our life, once we start working. After being employed for a while, Sesh and I were dissatisfied with a few aspects of working in big tech.

Real impact on real people is hard to drive, as a small cog in a big machine. Even in a startup, where you might be an early stage employee, there is a machinery of your investors, founders and their exit interests etc, that can make it hard to accomplish what you may think is right. No surprises here. This can be partially mitigated by finding a founder team who shares your values and mission, or by starting something of your own. Either of these approaches need time, both to identify what it is we want to give half our life to, and to then search or build that environment we want.

The argument around impact is often made at a macro level as of course everything we do in big tech touches lives. But I feel the need to think long and hard about whether those interactions are making people’s lives better. A lot gets written on this topic already, and I tend to agree with the school of thought that engagement and activity metrics are not in the best interest of the consumer, and quality and value based metrics need to be front and center in how we build products with technology. [Quality] I am now exploring to see how I can work on something that has high potency for real world impact, not just ability to scale, and is aligned with my values.

In my work so far, I estimate that less than 10% of what I did on a day to day basis made my user’s lives better. The rest of the time went toward activities required by organizational systems, tech culture, and to prove impact along dimensions that you are evaluated on as an employee. While these activities are necessary, the distribution of time became unacceptable to me. [Efficiency] I am now exploring to see if I can be in an environment where I can increase the efficiency of my time.

Health

Maintaining our health is an eternal, continuous process, now that we have crossed our 30s. We both also have some unique health challenges that require attention and care. We want to use this time to prioritize health goals, to accelerate reaching some milestones we’ve set for ourselves, and to build long lasting habits. We have incurred a debt toward our bodies and well being over the last decade, as these inevitably fall outside the sphere of attention for most folk in their 20s. We are hoping that focusing on healing and building up our health will help pay down some of that debt in these upcoming months, and allow us to pursue whatever comes next with more vigor.

Lifestyle

Growing up in cities, Sesh and I both have developed an attraction toward nature. Part of this attraction is the desire to live in a house that lets us be close to nature, particularly greenery and tall trees, which were scarce in our urban childhoods. We also wish to grow some of our own food given how important fresh produce is in our vegetarian, low-carb diets. Lastly, it’s possible we no longer need to work in big tech, and do not need to stay near the tech hubs, which opens up possibilities for where we can live in the US (really in the world, but we are starting to narrow our options). We are also thinking about the opportunities that were afforded to us by the lifestyle of our childhood, and the ones we missed out on, and trying to identify what we want to try our best to make available for our baby as he grows up. This is probably the most complex of decisions we need to make. Ironically, once we wrap up “Nomad”, we no longer wish to be nomadic, and are looking forward to settling into a home we can grow in for the next several years.

Our Day to Day

We have ambitious goals for this time, and we have to provide around the clock childcare for our little one. Our goals require us to do some work in isolation - a lot of our professional explorations and most of the work on our health are individual pursuits. Lifestyle discussions on the other hand are a completely joint effort. We both want to spend quality time with our baby, and also with each other to deeply share things as they come up for each of us. To accommodate these varied goals, we’ve created a day schedule that looks like this:

• We each take one continuous 3-4 hour slot in the day, typically morning and afternoon. In this slot, we work on our individual goals, heads down, no distractions.

• In these slots, the other person provides childcare and does activities with the baby. We discuss his meals and activities together the previous night, so we know what his day looks like.

• We have lunch together when possible, and dinner together everyday.

• Once the baby sleeps around 8-9pm, we take 1-2 hours to either spontaneously share thoughts, or are talking about something we have put on the calendar as a topic of discussion. When there is nothing to discuss, we use this as heads down individual time, or on the rare occasion watch a movie together.

• We follow this day schedule 4-5 days in the week. The rest of the time, we do family days where we go on a day trip or plan some outings around chores like groceries. We schedule our family days on weekdays whenever possible to avoid weekend crowds.

So far we’ve found that we are able to blend individual work, family time, and play time with the baby really well with this schedule. We keep a flexible attitude, which has allowed us to accommodate sick days for ourselves and the baby, as well as some “I just want to bum around” days.

We try to remember that we are here to rejuvenate, and stress about anything will get in the way of that. We also frequently express gratitude that we are able to take this time, and in a beautiful place like Hawaii, which helps us keep the right perspective even when the days stray from our plans.

This is my last post on introductions and context for Nomad. Hereon, I will be writing about specific events, discoveries and revelations coming to us as we spend the rest of the year in Hawaii.