It is to experience
I recently got a nasty flu and it put me to bed rest for 5 days. I was forced to spend my time with too much brain bandwidth but no mental or physical energy to be productive. As I let my mind wander, I started to think about my life. What am I doing, what have I been doing and what will I be doing.
I got to a point where I started wondering if there is any meaning at all to what I do right now, running a software business, going through the hardest part of the startup journey – the 0 to 1 phase where it's gloomy and always uncertain. Why am I not in a comfortable job in a big tech or why am I not taking up a specialisation in research that I am really fond of.
On top of this I have stopped coding daily after becoming a CTO1. As an engineer at heart I love focus work, get into flow and create things hands on.
While I was clouded by these thoughts on meaning of my days, a something Richard Feynman said came to my mind: Life is to experience, not to analyze.
I have read the book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, in that as a theoretical physicist who contributed to the Manhattan project and also won a Nobel prize, he gets to experience life by travelling to different countries, learning new musical instruments, meeting people at Bar. You wouldn't believe that it's life of a noble prize winner.
Running a startup and building a team where I don't get to do one of the things that I love but get to enable others to potentially fall in love in creating something valuable is something that I get to experience.
There is nothing more to life, for each it is to experience it and enjoy doing things that brings us joy and provide some value to others in the journey.
The value and joy is extremely subjective, for people who survived concentration camps, just listening to birds singing brings them joy and helping others brings them value. For a parent, taking care of their child, reading to them gets them joy and makes them feel valuable. For a career oriented person, there are other aspect of values and joy.
Thanks to the flu and idle brain cycles, it reminded me that there is nothing more to life, there is nothing to analyze in depth, it is to find what brings you joy and makes you feel valuable, then get the experience of doing it. It is to experience.
Don't listen to the indie vibe devs on twitter who says CTO needs to code daily, yes they need to know how to code but a good CTO needs to find out where their technical and leadership expertise is most needed in business and focus their energy there.↩