Summarising 2024

What is the intent of a summary?

Is it to relive all the pleasure and pain and draw lessons from it before bidding goodbye?

It sounds a little like death, but we tend to do it at the end of each project, performance appraisal period, financial year and calendar year.

Self-appraisals were challenging, as they often differed from my superiors’ views. However, I learned a valuable lesson: self-deprecation does not help. Others will use it to undermine me further.

All of it applies to life in general.

RECAP OF 2024

It has primarily been a year of coping with things I did not plan. The struggle is real, and I find myself incapable of romanticising it.

With due respect to numbers, I scan the dashboards of my websites, and the stats are not encouraging. The previous years have been better, but I spent more time on the sites then.

WORK SMART

Yet, I do not think spending more time is the answer. Instead, I believe in concentrating effort in fewer directions and learning to work smart. By ‘working smart ‘, I mean identifying and focusing on the most impactful tasks rather than spreading myself too thin. It’s about efficiency and effectiveness, not just sheer volume of work.

I’ve enrolled in Dan Koe’s course, “The 2-Hour Writer.” Let’s see where I emerge at the end of 2025.

INCREMENTAL EFFORT

The lesson learnt is that taking stock of a lifetime’s work and achievements is not the right approach. What matters is the effort you put in during the last week, month, or year. Continual effort contributes to the repertoire of work in which we take so much pride.

THE ETERNAL DILEMMA

Passion or profession?

Why can’t passion become a profession and fetch money?

My work is in banking and finance, whereas my heart is in poetry. I’ve not succeeded in marrying the two (there wouldn’t be any takers for it).

The answer to my dilemma lies in the art of storytelling—fiction and nonfiction. While poetry allows me to distil the essence of an experience, storytelling demands that I elaborate. I believe this practice will keep my mind sharp and prevent decay.

At heart, I will always be a student. Sadly, universities don’t encourage people in my age group to formally enrol in courses of my choice. If literature, psychology, or philosophy interests me, why insist that I have an academic background in the subjects at the undergraduate level?

I turn to Amazon University, which hosts many books and allows me to pick and choose without asking for credentials.

I’d keep reading and writing until the end of my life, and I hope 2025 gives me a direction for it.