Although I wouldn’t blame my parents, the way I was raised had an influential role in forming counter-productive habits that precluded success in any goal I set out to achieve. The overarching theme of these habits might be succinctly described as “endure instead of ameliorate.” I should not spend financial resources or look for mentorship, and any failure was because I did not work hard enough. I think a lot of children of South Asian immigrant parents can recall anecdotes of their parents telling them apocryphal stories of some child who studied under street lights because there was no light at home who eventually ended up going to MIT or something. Growing up, I was rightfully taught that education is the most important thing for life success that can raise the poorest citizens out of poverty, and that it is achievable for anyone in any circumstances given hard work. But implicitly, I was also taught to just “tough things out” and “make do” with whatever I was given. While American culture also has a “pull-your-self-up-by-your-own-bootstraps” ethos of hard-work, it is slightly different insofar as it stresses creativity, entrepreneurship and taking risk, whereas the South Asian culture is about doing more with less and gratefulness for what is provided. These aren’t bad ideals, but a child can easily misconstrue the message and develop bad habits right into adulthood. I won’t speak for my fellow Canadians of South Asian heritage, but at least for me, it instilled a mentality of pacifism, and I ended up putting up with a lot of discomforts that by themselves look endurable, but altogether created a tremendous drag on productivity.

Recently I came across some advice. Essentially, the advice is to make one’s work space as comfortable as possible, because you are going to spend 8 hours a day there, and making it more enjoyable will reduce stress and make you more productive. An upfront and seemingly selfish investment actually results in benefits for both you and your employer. It was hard for me to make the switch to this mentality because of the childhood conditioning I received that a) made me feel guilty for spending time to make my life easier and b) made me believe that, on principle, I should be able to output just as much without a comfortable environment. Recently however, I finally took half a day off to properly configure my development environment, and it has resulted in huge productivity gains. I then decided to take an entire day off to fix a whole host of other small nuisances in my dev environment and in my physical workspace and it resulted in less stress and a happier work life. I then sat back and thought about how this rule could be generalized to my entire life. As a software engineer, I’ve been trained to sniff out opportunities for automation and reducing friction that, on balance, result in less work in the long run. Even from a business perspective, high upfront costs can be justified by recurring lower operating costs or higher revenue in the future. I think the same model can be applied to problems in life. In particular, I purposefully chose accommodations and furniture that were more modest than I could afford, with less sunshine, a bad kitchen that makes cooking healthy a chore, and a terrible desk that causes my back to be curved awkwardly for hours. Another example is my reluctance to pay a personal trainer once a week. I’ve spent hours on the internet and on youtube researching lifting techniques and forms and routines, and many hours more actually in the gym, but the size of my chest is still a far cry from where I want it to be, say like that of my friend Jessime’s. I believe the core reason is because I don’t actually know the proper forms. I would never presume to be able to medically diagnose myself; I would spend money to go see an expert—a doctor. So why not go to a professional in this case? Again, on balance, I get to spend more time doing things I enjoy or making money by building software rather than researching and fretting over my workout routine and progress, and in the end, I’m richer for it.

I don’t regret that I realized all of this at 25 years old for three reasons. First, regret is a destructive mindset. Second, there were financial and other restrictions that prevented living a “comfortable” life, so to a large extent, knowing all of this earlier would not have made a large difference, so I would rather spend my time reflecting on avoidable mistakes I have made. Third and finally, the other extreme—spending money I don’t have to fix problems that aren’t real and not developing an ounce of work ethic—would’ve been even more destructive. Instead, I will take this lesson and try to notice where I am being unreasonably thrifty or complacent with regards to recurring problems and aim to root-cause and fix them.