My story of getting comfortable being uncomfortable

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable”. Take risks. Explore new paths. Challenge yourself.

It’s pretty good advice. um… question is how do I put it to practice in real life? It took me quite some time to realize what does this advice even mean to me. This post is my story about me interpreting this advice in my current life.

Read on!

A software engineer

I’m a software engineer by training. I know how to build software products and services. That’s what I’ve done since I graduated from college.

Over the 20 years since then, as an individual contributor or leader of an organization, I took great pride in delivering software, on time, with quality. I celebrated every milestone, congratulated team members on building successful products, and savored all the moments leading up to product delivery.

I became good at it. Whenever I took on brand new product development — from the concept to delivery (and customer support), I had confidence “I have got this”. I worked hard to create a plan of plans, hired teams, managed their career growths, worked through all combinations of possible challenges that may derail the projects, made sure timelines are properly managed, helped colleagues and team members see the big picture, managed their priorities to ensure they remain productive all the time and organization achieves its business goals.

I have rather enjoyed the process of building software — from the highly abstracted block diagrams on the drawing board to a finished product in the customer’s hands.

I like to compare the process of building software with baking a perfect multi-layered cake. The process is complex, one has to be very careful with every step, put in the right ingredients, mix them well, and wait patiently. And you know that the end result is going to be a delicious cake.

I did a fair share of baking software products and I have enjoyed many such fulfilling moments throughout my career so far.

But… okay, you guessed it right, there is a “but” coming in this narrative.

I have built 10 different enterprise software products in my career for startups and upstarts. I have always been happy in my little corner riding on my strengths (as an engineer), finding comfort in my design skills, team-building skills, project management skills, project execution skills among other necessary skills for building software.

One would argue what’s the problem here. It seems pretty accepted wisdom to play to your strengths. But I’ll tell you my perspective.

I found myself very comfortable doing things in the same way I’ve been doing. Follow familiar-looking project plans, and expect a great outcome. I wondered if I‘ll learn anything new when I start baking the cake the next time.

The answer has been “no”.

Essentially, I realized my learning has stopped and that isn’t right. In the software industry, not learning new skills is the quickest way to become obsolete and irrelevant. Generally speaking, this is very true in our lives as well.

The Tech industry moves super fast. One needs constant learning, un-learning, and re-learning. As long as there is learning, you’re making forward progress and staying relevant in changing times.

While climbing up the corporate ladder does require me to learn new ways of the trade and acquire new skills, I felt they are still incremental additions to my existing skills. There may not be dramatic new learning — except I’ll have a larger scope, larger outreach, larger circle of influence, larger teams to support, and so on. That’s a very enticing opportunity for anyone aiming for leadership roles but is that what I want to do right now?

The answer was “no”.

Since my college days, I have thought about building a technology company. I’ve romanticized the idea of designing, building, and selling products customers will love. I never pursued my dream. It’s been sitting on the sidelines as I got busy building my life in other ways. It means if I need to make a decision, it’s now or never. I shouldn’t wait. Pausing on my dreams will only make me miserable. Do I have a chance at entrepreneurship?

The answer was “mild yes”.

In addition to introspecting what do I want to do exactly, there are some more factors that I’ve been thinking about as well.

Work-life balance

I could pursue new ideas as a side gig to my corporate job. But I don’t have time for this. I’m dedicated to my job. I cannot possibly do a full-time leadership role, and pursue a side-gig. Outside of work, I really love to spend time with my family. Kids are growing very fast, and I don’t have much time left with them before they take off to build their lives. and then I need to take care of my own physical and mental health.

COVID-19 Pandemic

It showed us the things we take for granted can no longer be assumed to be so. It completely changed the way we work, live, and play. It brought new meaning to pretty much everything around us. COVID-19 pandemic taught us, the world is very fragile and life is very fragile. You will never know what lies ahead.

Future is unknown

I don’t know what lies ahead in my life. While I make plans, I’ve no idea in which direction my life will go. If I should take a chance on something, it’s now. I don’t know if this can be done tomorrow.

Family support

The last but not the least factor is my wife’s unconditional support. The decision to leave a corporate job to start something from scratch is a family decision. It will affect everyone in the family. This decision comes with some gains and some losses. The family needs to be absolutely sure about being able to absorb the losses but enjoy the gains.

So, I chose a different path — I quit my corporate job (Sr. Director of Engineering at Nutanix) and decided to do something that I wanted to do for a long time. Just never had the courage to take that plunge.

Becoming an entrepreneur

That’s exciting, but for me, it is just a start. I’m putting myself in an extremely uncomfortable situation — No regular paycheck coming my way, no team to rely on to build, no proven product idea to build upon, not knowing what you’re going to do, not knowing a plan. After living a very comfortable, straightforward path in life, this is a big change for me.

At least there is some chance of success (I liked the idea of having some chance of success in the set of possible outcomes.), abundant scope for learning whatever I want to learn, no constraints whatsoever on what I should explore. It just opened a new frontier for me.

That’s very exciting, and something I want to look forward to. I don’t know how exactly it will go but I’m going to take a chance on myself. This is something I want to wake up to every day.

It’s been 10 months since I left my corporate job, and about 4 months I incorporated www.immex.tech. It’s been about a month since I launched my first product DreamzAR App on Apple App Store. I’ll write about my experience launching my first app in a future blog post. But short summary is I’m enjoying the process of building products and my business. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

I’ve shared my thought process here. It may not be perfect and may have flaws but I have shared them exactly how I felt about it.

Do leave your comments about your decision to make major changes in the course of your life and how did you go about that decision-making process. I want to learn from you.

Stay safe and have a good one!