Do not compare. Unless it is with yourself.

“A picture is (sure) worth a thousand words”.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHNeJpO9JG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I cannot remember the last time I tried to compare my skills, and achievements (or lack thereof :)), with anyone, anywhere.

• When in high school, everyone I knew applied to a variety of colleges, and had plenty of plans. I had none. I just completed my board exams (as we used to call them back in India), and applied to a couple of colleges one of which was a school I didn’t even know existed (BITS, Pilani) till I actually applied for it.
• In college, everyone worked hard to get a GPA higher than everyone they ran into, walked with, ate with, or socialized with. I did what I could (and it wasn’t necessarily very pretty).
• Back in college, when everyone applied to do Engineering or MBA in the US, I chose Hospitality Management. And there was more than 1 person who asked, “Are you sure?”, to which my response was, “Not really but let’s see how goes”.
• When in Houston, TX, everyone said, “Switch to Computer Science if you want to find work”. To which I thought to myself, “Maybe, but not till I find my calling. It has to happen organically”.
• When I applied for jobs, most people said, “If you want to do something interesting, go to the Bay Area”. My first job was in North Canton, OH. And if I had to go back 2 decades and start all over again, I would pick the same company and same team.
• A few years into my career, I was advised on how to plan my career so I could grow. Grow into a Manager, then a Director, then someone higher than that (sorry, my knowledge of management hierarchy ends there :)). I didn’t feel the urge to do any of that so didn’t.
• One day, we ran into a business problem that we had an interest in solving. So, we incorporated Snowpal. We had 1 idea. It took us many attempts to get it out the door. But eventually we did. And we couldn’t be happier that we managed to do that.
• We didn’t expect to have the breadth of features we actually do have now. And it’s growing everyday. We didn’t expect to have 5 other ideas. We didn’t expect to be in a situation where we sometimes catch ourselves wondering why the day didn’t have 48 hours so we could do more.

None of any of the above is right, or wrong, or perfect, or otherwise. But it’s one thing for sure. It’s original. And we are happy for that. Being yourself is the hardest thing to be in this world. Let’s work hard on that one thing.

#projectmanagement #snowpal

Do what you love. Do it on https://snowpal.com.