Thread by @sahil_vi

My life was divided into 3 phases: School, college & job.

With the benefit of hindsight, I wanted to share some key life-lessons from the "school" part of life.

Could end up benefitting everyone regardless of profession, so do read on. 🙏

🧵🧵👇

Plz RT if you find it useful

I mean for this 3-part series of threads to be a definitive answer to "How can I get a Job at Google?"

or in general:

"How can I excel at X" for some X.

For a large part of my school life, I felt I was quite average. I say that in a neutral way. I was neither too good nor too bad at my studies. But mathematics always drew my fascination.

My curious young mind had found an infinite fountain of logical deductions and each subsequent "why is that" could be answered with some logical depth.

One could ask the question, "why is the area of a circle pi*r^2" and expect a logical answer. Maths was my 1st professional love.

Only by accident in 10th class while searching for "tough maths problems India" I found out about Regional Maths Olympiad (olympiads.hbcse.tifr.res.in/about-olympiad…)

Around this time I also found out about AoPS (artofproblemsolving.com) which enabled me to interact with like minded folks and learn from them.

I gave RMO (Regional Maths Olympiad), just about made it through to second round, INMO (Indian National Maths olympiad).

Was unsuccessful at INMO. Was woefully underprepared.

I tried again, in 11th class. Juggling between my duty (IITJEE preps) and my professional love (maths). Randomly solving difficult problems from Russian, American, Chinese Olympiads. I built my problem solving skills.

Side note: Those that ask me how i juggle between Job and Investing: the answer lies in one word:

Practice.
I've been doing this since School. There's the stuff i really loved, and the stuff i needed to do. Striking a balance between the two is possible if we do time management.

Back to the story:

Slowly, over weeks, months, years. Some problems took weeks to solve. I'd try today, not be able to solve, come back after months.

However, I was unsuccessful a second time (in 11th class) as well.

Couldn't qualify INMO. This one hit me hard, because I knew that it's almost impossible to qualify in 12th (only 6 people from 12th class qualify all over India. This reverse quota ensures that young minds which can be nurtured are prioritized).

I gave up all hope of making it through INMO in 12th class. Started solving problems for the heck of it (For the fun).

I stopped chasing after a target, and started enjoying the process.

I now had literally 0 expectations from myself
(unknown to me, life was teaching me about importance of expectations and dependence of outcomes on expectations. See the parallel between BAAP investing and having high expectations from yourself. You can only go down from there)

At one point I even stopped studying for JEE, only solving maths problems in all my time.

And then, something unexpected happened. In an exam with 6 questions, I had already seen 2. I ended up getting the highest marks 71/100 (or so) and did very well for myself.

When @ishmohit1 says in @soicfinance videos that
"luck is when a prepared mind meets opportunity", I cannot help but reflect on my own experiences which tell me the exact same thing.

I just did not know the quote for it.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance This (INMO exam I gave in 12th class), i consider to be my most important 1st professional event in my life. Because I learned the importance of perseverance and not giving up. Summarising my key takeaways from "school" life now.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance 1⃣ Setbacks

In any endeavour which is ambitious enough, setbacks are the norm, not the exception. Dont expect to be successful immediately or within a short duration of time.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance 2⃣ Power of collaboration: If I can see far it is coz I stand on the shoulders of Giants. Look for like minded learning machines & grow together.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance Look for alignment of incentives. artofproblemsolving.com was the best thing that happened to me. I realised there are a limitless number of people and instances from which I can learn.

I learned the power of collaborative problem solving in 10th class. Biggest gift ever.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance 3⃣ Power of 10,000 hours

There is immense power in repetition/practice with increasing level of difficulty. I give you a personal guarantee that if you spend 10,000 hours practicing something with increasing level of difficulty, you WILL become world class at it.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance The reason most people cant do that, is because either they get bored after k < 10000 hours, or the 10000 hours are spent solving problems of the same difficulty level (problems need to be incrementally harder to achieve world class status after 10k hours).

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance 4⃣ Focus on the journey, not the destination

Funnily enough, in my understanding, we get our best rewards when we are not looking for them, but only focussing on the process/journey & deriving pleasure from the process. There is poetic irony in this one.

@ishmohit1 @soicfinance 5⃣ Power of Curiosity

In my understanding only way one can do point 3 & 4 above is if they are curious about what they do, want to learn & improve (& compound their knowledge, understanding)

<end of thread>

Please do give your honest feedback if you found this thread to be useful. 🙏🙏

If many of you did, I will create ones for college and professional life as well. Otherwise why waste everyone's time 😅