The beginning of the new year pushed me into a retrospection phase, a lot of things changed last year and I thought it was a good moment to take a step back and analyze the good and the bad. It’s during that process that I really became aware that over the last few years my life did change drastically, for the better. It’s when diving more deeply into what got accomplished over that period of time that I realized there was one starting point to everything that is part of my world today.
It all started a little bit over 3 years ago, before that and for as long as I can remember I always have been a heavy sleeper. I mean isn’t being in bed, warm and cozy, the best feeling in the world? Even younger, I can’t remember the number of times I’ve woken up, furious, yelling at my parents for being too noisy in the house past 11AM; not to mention all the hours spent in bed with what was my girlfriend at the time. Sleeping for me was the thing I needed to have in my life, I simply couldn’t function without a good night of rest. I needed at least 9 hours, every day during the week, often way more on the weekends.
Fast forward 7 years later, I have been sleeping on a 4–5 hours schedule during the week days and maxing out at 7–8 on some weekends, pretty much consistently for over a year now. The secret? Well, I rely on 3C’s: Caffeine, Cocaine and Crack… Actually not. More seriously, I don’t even get any caffeine in my body on a regular basis.
Looking back, I’ve discovered that there was one main trigger which provoked a change in my personality and progressively, I was able to push the fatigue limit my body could handle. If it was a gradual operation that occurred overtime, there was indeed one starting point. Pretty quickly it became the cornerstone of my life, to the point that often it is driving me through the days and refueling me with energy.
Excitement. That’s the key. I use the constant flow of challenges crossing my life as a source of adrenaline. But excitement is not a why, it’s not a reason; it’s simply the cause.
To be completely honest it’s by pure chance (some may call it destiny) that I gained exposure to something that deeply resonated with me and changed who I am. Back then, I was pretty frustrated with my life, specially professionally. I needed a deep change and decided to start looking for a new career opportunity. I did a bit of research, found a company that I thought I may like working for and got the job without really knowing what I was putting myself into. It’s only when my employment started that I realized: despite the research and the time spent to understand what the company was about I was wrong about the mission and I had no clue what the actual vision was. Thinking about it more, I may or may not have started a job there with wrong reasons and bogus motivations. But really that’s irrelevant today. What matters is what I found after, the life lesson it taught me and it is what I want to share. As I mentioned, to reduce my sleep schedule and be more effective was a gradual process, I actually went through distinct phases: curiosity, comprehension, construction and consideration.
As I started my new job I got quickly exposed to the mission and the vision of the company: It’s main purpose is to find solutions to address one of the five biggest problem impacting humanity a global scale. While I truly think it’s very noble objective I didn’t really believe that was an actual purpose. I was more thinking it was a smoke screen backed with some good public relation — yes, I’m a bit of a skeptical person; it usually takes a bit of effort to convince me of something. However, my doubts vanished pretty quickly. I saw that the only thing that mattered not only for the company but also for a vast majority of the people working there was making progress on the solution they believed in. Everything was made to accelerate the transition to viable solutions whereas they would be coming from us, competitors or a joined venture.
I was intrigued. Could that be a problem we can contribute to solve? I started to document myself on the subject, to deep dive into the alternative proposals we were building, their feasibility at scale and what needed to be done to greatly reduce the issue’s importance. As I started to master the problem and understand what could be done to resolve it I got really excited to be able to contribute to such a massive project. One of goals was to enhance the user experience of our products, so that it would be a no brainer for consumers to use them. By making the switch, customers would be fully part of solution and in return they would experience a big improvement in their life style. That’s when I started to get extra motivated, to work harder, smarter and I got involved in more and more projects.
Finally, it’s only sometime last year as I was reviewing my professional achievements that I realized: some pieces of my work were directly affecting hundreds of thousands of people, pretty much on a daily basis. I, myself, a small individual in the thousands employed by the company, was directly influencing another life. I was contributing toward moving the needle forward into a direction will certainly change the world in a positive way. Then it appeared to me, surely the biggest lesson of that all adventure: If I am able to have an impact on other people’s life, without even knowing them, then I should have the power to influence pretty much every aspect of my life, at any given time. I know my life and myself better than anyone, there is no reason to not be in control of what I do or where I’m going. And this is that exact thought which transforms all the difficulties lying ahead of me into small challenges I’m eager to overcome, every day.