This is the first issue of Stack & Stakes, my newsletter. It took a while for me to write this piece (~ 6 months!) but I promise to be more consistent.
The past few months have been really hectic. I moved to the US, started a new job, dealt with a bunch of family problems, and I’m slowly figuring out what I should be doing with my life.
why am I writing a newsletter? Good question. As you’ll read in the following weeks, I’m doing a lot of experiments and I want to document & analyze my actions. Hopefully, this will help people who are going through a similar journey to avoid my mistakes and (fingers crossed) learn from the things that I do well.
So, without further ado, let’s get into this week’s topic:
You can grow so much by changing your environment
It’s true. Leaving Toronto was very difficult for me. I had to leave my dog, my partner, and my family behind in the hopes of pursuing a better future for all of us.
My job at Affirm gave me the flexibility to pick any location in the US and work remotely from it. I ended up deciding to go with San Francisco because:
- I’ve been getting more and more into startups and sf is known to be the hub for people like me
- I became allergic to the cold (I know it’s weird!) after I got Covid back in 2022 and I really wanted to try a warmer city
- My friend Navid Pour had also started a new job at Cursor, the AI-powered code editor, in sf and was looking for an apartment
Everything kind of came together and I ended up making my decision to go to sf in the first week of January.
Although I’ve been on my own since 2020, I always had my partner to rely on. This experience however, was very different. I had to take care of everything myself: starting my job, furnishing the apartment (which we’re still doing lol), getting bank accounts etc., and just getting used to the new city.
After I took care of most of the above, I felt like my days were very monotonous. I had so many other tasks and parameters to take care of in Toronto that just doing my job and “living” in sf seemed like a breeze — I felt like I was not doing enough.
This however gave me enough time to think about my actions. I realized that I’ve been sprinting for so long and just “doing things” for the sake of making money, that I’m often not making the best decisions.
In order to improve, I had to slow down and really understand that progress usually follows an exponential path.
Always optimizing for the fastest increase in revenue/income was not only impacting my well being, but also sabotaging my growth!
How have I changed my approach now?
Well, I read an essay by Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y-Combinator, on how to do great work. Since then I’ve been rethinking & modifying the way I look at what I do.
Instead of letting money dictate my actions, I’m allowing myself to explore, experiment, and follow my curiosity. Here’s a quote from the essay that I think of often:
Curiosity is the key to all four steps in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them. The whole process is a kind of dance with curiosity.
I really recommend you take the time and go over the article — it’s 100% worth the read.
It is important to note that I’m still very much a realist. If you are at stage where you literally can’t follow your curiosity without being worried about your rent, food, and other basic needs, then, for lack of a better word, f_ck the curiosity. Focus on getting your money up (I will be writing more on how I did this in the following weeks) first, the rest can come later.
As a reminder (for myself as well), following your curiosity/passion is not always fun. It probably isn’t as fast either. You might end putting in years of work before seeing any resemblance of true success. However, this is the case for most things that are great. You have to work really hard and long for them (and it makes sense… otherwise everyone would have had them, and they wouldn’t have been great — they would have been mediocre).
So, if you have the chance to choose what you’re working on, and you want to do great work, I recommend listening to Mr. Graham and following where your heart is taking you. I’m trying to do this myself and although some times I still feel lost, something deep inside is telling me that I’m on the right path.
Oh and also, something else that I’ve changed (or at least I’m trying to get better at!) is: not overcomplicating things.
So far this has helped me land two new clients in the short span of 14 days! But more on this & Bloorsoft related updates next week 🕺
Thank you so much for taking the time and reading this issue. If you want to chat hit me up on X or send me an email at: parsa.tajik@bloorsoft.com
Much love,
Parsa
P.S. If you enjoyed this issue, I’d really appreciate if you could send it to your friends ❤️ Link if your not subscribed.