Year In Review: 2022

Procrastinated writing this till the last day of the year, but as they say, all is well that ends well.

2022 has been a rollercoaster of a year that went on going up professionally and down personally, but such is life. You win some, you lose some.

🏆 Good things that happened in 2022

🚨 This list has a lot of survivorship bias.

1. Graduated with a Mechatronics (robotics) engineering degree from Manipal.

Feels good to have an engineering degree in a field that is a bit niche. However, I practically don’t remember most of it, thanks to an online college experience.

2. Started a full-time product management job at Razorpay as an APM.

I joined Razorpay full-time on 3rd Jan 2021(the first working day of 2021), and it has been an insanely fulfilling year at work.The amount of learning I have had on PMing and how scaled startups operate is insane, and I am so grateful I decided to go down this route. Thread storm on what it took to get here.

In my second year, I used to tell a friend that there was no way I could get here because they just don’t hire APMs off-campus. From there to today, quite a journey

3. Got promoted to PM - 1 in my first review cycle.

I was fortunate enough to pick up projects, which, combined with a kickass team and outstanding mentorship, resulted in a high impact across the board. A promotion is an outcome but seeing your efforts get recognized gratifying.

4. Moved to Bangalore and started living all by myself.

This is probably up there and more significant than achievements at work, but living alone in a new city was a considerable achievement. It taught me a lot of things (mom, if you are reading this, yes, I miss home, and yes, it’s hard to live alone 🙄)

5. Really understood money management, taxes, and personal finance.

One of the upsides of building a payroll and taxation product in India is that you can recite most taxation laws in your sleep at 2:30 am.

This year I learned about harnessing the power of credit cards(sorry, dad, that one extra card is needed for miles), investing, and spending money. I made my share of splurges (a flight simulator setup is really needed) but did reasonably well overall.

6. Hit 10k followers on Twitter.

It was not something I optimized for, but the milestone did feel good, and it became a big dopamine rush when I was in the late 9 thousand.

📈 Things that I need to do better in 2023

1. Improving my health and fitness

The past year my health has taken a massive toll. I had a neck brace for a month and was on heavy medications for another because of shoulder pain. This needs to change for good.

2. Read more and read better.

Much of the content I consume today combines Twitter and Substack. I don’t have a content routine or cadence that I stick to. Books are rare and often left in half. I need to bring this to an order.

3. Travel more

Go to Vietnam. In all seriousness, I need to go on at least one solo trip, either to the mountains or the beaches in India, this year. Want to watch the cricket world cup final live this year too. Since it is happening in India, hopefully, the Indian team makes it.

Shoutout to everyone who has been a part of 2022, you know who you are. To a better, healthier and prosperous 2023 🥂