The Pathways & Padlocks Conversation
00:21:40 · Sachin
[00:21:40] S0: Yeah, so in recent memory, one of my favorite ones was with Evan Wong. So he's the founder of a company called Checkbox AI, and he's also started tutoring company in the past. And I think that he's one of the people I've come across recently that's like a true visionary. He spoke about how he wants to take Checkbox to a billion dollar company and how he wants to be along for the whole ride. And I think that that reflects a broader theme that we've seen throughout our podcast, which is it's the antithesis of this whole idea that we should kind of be checkboxing our resumes during two years here, two years here, two years here. A lot of our guests have been saying that to build something meaningful, you need to invest in the long run. It needs to be something you really want to do in the long run. And you need to be able to commit over a decade to really achieve some change, right? And the way our brains are wired right now with our phones getting that instant feedback all the time is towards instant gratification. And I think that's dangerous because we don't want to stay in things for a long period of time. So that's been a big learning thing for me recently is that I'm someone that I want to always be doing different things all the time. And think now I'm more thinking about what I want to be building over twenty, thirty years, because over that period of time, you can make something or build something that really matters. And that really compounds over time. So that I think that's been a really big insight recently.
00:23:05 · Sid Dissanayake
[00:23:05] S1: And I think, you know, while we're on that topic of, you know, twenty, thirty years and having a vision or a purpose in the long term, I suppose that, you know, touches on your bottom up and top down approach, which I definitely wanted to touch on. I came across it in, well firstly on the Driven Young podcast, then on episode 28 of your own podcast, Beers With Sachin and Adam. And I thought that was a really cool strategy, I guess, and approach to your personal and professional life. So, those that aren't aware of your particular approach, can you give our viewers an insight into that particular mindset?
00:23:46 · Sachin
[00:23:46] S0: Yeah, for sure. And Sid, I think you know our podcast better than we do, because I had no idea what episode 28 was. Yes, so the top down, bottom up approach is kind of an analogy I use to the way I live my life. So as I've kind of developed throughout university, something that's been really important to me and has really grounded me is daily habits. And that's where the bottom up comes from. So the daily habits, I think, really make me perform at my best. They make me a pretty happy individual and they make me connect with people around me a lot better than I would if I didn't have them. And I'm also a creature of habit, I need that because there's so much chaos going on inside my head, so many ideas all the time that I need these things to ground me in every day. And also ensures that you're a happy, healthy individual, which I think is more important than a lot of this other stuff we talk about a lot. So those bottom up habits, what they look like for me is every day I wake up, I have a cold shower, I'll do meditation, I exercise every day pretty religiously, I eat healthily, I drink a lot of water, I just kind of make sure and I sleep at least eight hours, check on the blue light blockers. I'm pretty into all that kind of biohacking stuff. But for me, makes sure that I'm performing every day. That makes sure that when someone needs me, when my family needs me, I can show up. And that over time, that I know I'm not deteriorating myself. Because my worst nightmare is to work too hard and just burn out because that's not what I want do. Want to kind of continuously show up every day. So that's a bottom up. And I think that if everyone does those kinds of things, they will I know I keep saying the word exponentially, but I'm going use it again will exponentially improve their life because those things to me have had a profound impact on my mood, etcetera. And then the second part of it is the top down. And the top down is about having a vision. So having a vision of where you wanna go, where you're heading. Because I think that if you do that bottom up stuff without having a vision, that's going to lead to existential angst because you're not going to know why you need be performing well. You're not going to know why that stuff is important, right? So finding a vision and it's so much easier said than done.
00:25:54 · Sachin, Sid Dissanayake
Finding a vision of where you want to go is very difficult. It does help talking to a lot of people. It does help doing some soul searching about what are your intrinsic interests when you strip away all the noise in society. But I think combining those two together, you make sure you can show up and you're a happy person, a present person, etc. But then you're also moving towards something. And I think as humans, we to justify our existence on this earth and we need to try and be moving towards something. [00:26:22] S1: Yeah, you mentioned there like the idea of soul searching. I just wanted to ask, was in developing your own bottom up and top down approaches, did that happen overnight? Or did that happen over months, weeks, years? Yeah. Give us insight into that process.
00:26:40 · Sachin
[00:26:40] S0: Yeah, so it definitely took years and don't think that it's like an official process. As I mentioned before, that it's actually an analogy I came up with just on the spot. For me, those habits are really important and the most happiest people I know have those habits. And I think it's more about the individual habits. It's the fact that you're showing up for yourself every day. It's the fact that you're kind of telling yourself that you matter. And I almost say these habits as an extension of self love. Like, you're showing yourself that you matter and that you're important and you're doing things that make you perform better, which I think that is important for everyone to do because being a student these days can get chaotic. Have all these stimulus around us all the time. It's really hard to find time for yourself. Yeah. And so the way I came up across it is I've always been a macro thinker. I've always believed in having a big vision. But I've also always believed in the small things. Like I think the beauties of life are those little moments you have every day. So it was combining those two things together. And also funnily enough, as a philosophy subject I did at university, which was the philosophy of happiness. And we talked a lot about fulfillment in the long run. And we talked about how a lot of religious people are more happy than non religious people because they have that macro thing, they have that thing that gives them meaning, they have that sense of community that obviously makes them happy and that sense of purpose. So I was like, how can I combine those elements to make religion so good into my own life? I wouldn't really consider myself a religious person.
00:28:10 · Sid Dissanayake, Sachin
[00:28:10] S1: Yeah. I mean, I wanted to transition now, Sachin, just in the interest of time, to one of your passions, which is for social impact and social justice. You mentioned previously that, you know, since a young age, you know, there's have always been, you know, some burning desires of yours. And you've more specifically stated that you're passionate about the intersection between two things, that being business and impact. And you've already touched on previously about how you're interested in quality of opportunity rather than outcome. So I just wanted to get an insight into where exactly that passion has come from. And, you know, how have you expressed that in your, you know, university life or professional capacity in different positions or roles or experiences that you've undertaken? [00:28:58] S0: Yeah, so this would be a pretty long answer, so feel [00:29:01] S1: free to interrupt.