Last week, I decided to switch gears and reduce my focus on Project: Balance and increase my focus on Unshackled.

This was not an easy decision.

If you’ve been part of this newsletter for a while, you know how dearly I hold the idea to my heart.

Working on this book for the past 5 months has made me a much better person.

It made me read about how stress works, where our desires come from, why balance is important, how to think about agency, and a dozen more topics that I would not have explored otherwise. It helped me improve my habits by creating a Sunday Growth Club, working with an accountability buddy, and waking up on time every day. Anytime I found my life going out of balance, it alerted me by saying, Psst, Pooja! You’re writing a book on the importance of balance in life. Let’s practice what we preach.

And, most of all, it gave me a chance to start this newsletter and meet many wonderful people from the newsletter community. <3

Sometimes, the pursuit of something is already reward enough.

This is one of those instances where I realized what that means.

So, to now abandon working on it, even temporarily, makes me feel ashamed.

It’s a decision I resisted for many weeks now, even though all the signs were clear.

But last week, I ended up spending almost 30 hours on Unshackled and made some incredible progress across various fronts. By Saturday, it was clear to me that this book needed me more than Project: Balance now. There was too much to be done, and it was on me to do it.

Abraham Maslow, the inventor of the renowned Maslow’s Hierarchy, did something in the twilight years of his life that only a few people know about.

He added an extra layer on top of his hierarchy.

Most people think Maslow’s Hierarchy looks like the following.

But in reality, it looks more like this.

He added a final layer of self-transcendence.

Ironically, while self-actualization was about realizing your fullest potential, self-transcendence (the last layer) is about going beyond yourself to serve those around you.

The former is inward-looking; the latter is outward-looking.

In a similar way, for me, working on Project: Balance was more of an inward-looking project. While working on Unshackled is more outward-looking. It’s about helping the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in this country who feel stuck in their job, uncertain of how to start their company, and creatively shackled.

It’s all the things I felt for a long time before I quit my job.

So, I feel a calling higher than me to work on this book and project.

In the end, this might just be me rationalizing my decision and learning to overcome the shame I feel.

But, it is what I’m feeling.

I hope you understand and will forgive me for making this change.

In conclusion, I want to make two things clear though:

• I’m not giving up my work with Project: Balance. I’m still planning to continue working on it for a small portion of my time every week and create a proposal to submit to publishers by the end of September.

• I still plan to continue sending my weekly newsletter, with a short essay on an interesting topic, behind-the-scenes of Unshackled’s creation and recommended readings. :)

  
  

When I turned 25 last year, I wrote a letter to my 15-year-old self sharing the 10 lessons I would teach her if I could go back in time. This year, I thought, "Why not look into the future?" So I sat down to pen a short note to my 27-year-old self. Here it goes.

Dear Pooja,

This is a letter from your 26-year-old self.

Happy 27th birthday :)

First off, if you're reading this, it means you survived another year and that's incredible. I hope you still begin your day feeling grateful to have woken up to another day.

I thought I would feel more anxious about turning 26 and stepping into the second half of my 20s, but strangely I am not. A few years ago, a friend shared a quote with me about aging. Sadly, I don't remember it word for word, but here's the essence of it:

"I don't worry about aging because I am not any one age. When I go to the beach, I am 5 years old. When I see an ice cream truck walk past my house, I'm 11 years old. When I am dancing with my friends, I am 20 years old. When I take care of my mom, I am 27 years old. When I am sitting in solace and thinking, I am 50 years old. I am no one age and all ages at the same time."

Every time a birthday comes around, I think about this (albeit poorly worded) quote. Hope you're thinking about it now.

So much changed in one year, since I turned 25. I quit my job to pursue the path of solopreneurship. I'm working on two books that I care deeply about. I moved houses twice and met dozens of new people as a result. I strengthened my relationship with people in my inner circle who I love and cherish. I talk to my family more now. I picked up rock climbing and playing the guitar. I sing more freely now. I dance more fully. I have more compassion, for myself and those around me. And, I realize with each day the importance of cultivating inner peace, investing time into good relationships, and being willing to take more risks.

But, I've also come to accept that all of the above could change at any moment.

The impermanence is both terrifying and reassuring. Reassuring because you know hardships will be impermanent too.

Although you might be wiser than me (I hope!), I want to share a few words of wisdom. Think of these as distilled nuggets of wisdom to ensure you are on the right track, or at least, you steer yourself back to the right track if you're astray.

• Invest in good relationships: It's easy to forget about this area in your life, and begin to take the people you have for granted. But, this is the area that will give you long-term happiness and satisfaction. Like a garden, good relationships require constant nurturing to grow. It should be process-oriented, and not outcome-oriented.

• Your body is your best asset: You've been incredibly lucky so far in being healthy and safe. But your body will only take care of you as long as you take care of it. Pay attention to it. Exercise regularly. Meditate every day. If something feels wrong, don't wait to address it. Too many others have made that mistake.

• Set aside time to read and think every day: You have a high bias to action, which is both a superpower and a weakness. Set aside at least an hour every day to read, think, and write on topics that don't have an immediate result. Consuming good content is how you fuel your mind.

• Define your own threshold for failure: As you venture on this more unconventional path, don't be bogged down by someone else's definition of failure. If the books you're working on now don't pan out, it's okay. Have a curious detachment to the problem to understand what could've been done better rather than being engulfed by social standards.

• Compassion. Curiosity. Confidence: These are your three core values. Continue to nurture them every single day.

I don't know where you will be or what you'll be doing when you read this a year from now.

Perhaps you just had a bad day, or something you really wanted didn't come through.

My advice to you is: take a walk and call a friend. It always helps.

Sincerely,

Your 26-year-old self

About Project Balance

Project Bal is the book I'm currently working on.

The book's goal is to take you from the zone of autopilot to awareness to agency. The book helps you do this by first uncovering the hidden forces (personal, cultural, societal) that influence your attention and keep you on autopilot. Then, it will give you the tools required to re-build your goals with intention and use systems-thinking to help you reach them by carving out a path for yourself.

I got the idea for it on March 17th, 2022 while meditating. Since then it has gone through various pivots (and will go through a few more).

Making Of A Book Newsletter

I publish a weekly newsletter -- titled Making Of A Book -- where I take you through the ideation and creation process of the book itself. Too often, in the knowledge worker era, people only tend to show the end result of their hard work. You don’t get to see why the painter chose that color palette. Or why the designer went with Montserrat over Roboto font type. Or, what questions haunt a writer when she’s writing a book? Making Of A Book is an experiment to test the theory: what if the reader was involved from the beginning of the journey of a book? What if the reader learned what the author is learning every week? And what if the book took shape based on feedback from the reader who it's serving? If you've ever been curious about the behind-the-scenes of a book's creation, come join 1500+ wonderful readers! 

Table of Contents

Below are the topics included in the book (work in progress):

• Prologue: This contains all the topics before the crux of the book begins. Think of it as foreplay for the book.

  • The Making Of This Book

  • You Are Here

  • Who is this for?

  • Who is this NOT for?

• Problem: This part will cover the chapters that expand on the problems I’d like to address.

  • Failings of hustle culture

  • The Autopilot Dilemma

  • Hidden Forces That Keep You On Autopilot (aka The Poison Cocktail)

    • Incentives: Money, Meaning, & Prestige

    • Influences: Parents, friends, social media

    • Institutions: Education system, capitalism

    • What are mimetic desires

  • Paying attention to what you pay attention to

• Solution: This part will cover the chapters that expand on the solutions I’d like to offer.

  • The Balance-Intentionality Framework

    • Redefining Balance

    • Introducing Framework

    • How to move between IB and II

  • The Life Garden Framework

    • A brief history of work

    • Introducing Framework

    • Taking care of yourself

    • Building a lifetime support network

  • Building Systems Mindset

    • Connecting daily actions to goals

    • Knowing your future self

    • Setting up the environment

    • The power of habits

• Epilogue

  • What next?

  • Thinking.

Last updated: June 18th, 2022

Introduction

The last conference that I attended in-person was Women in Product 2019.

I assume for a lot of you reading this your last in-person conference was also sometime in 2019.

Aside from travel and hospitality, one of the biggest industries impacted by the pandemic was the live events and conferences industry.

"The global events industry was valued at $1.1trn in 2019 and, pre-Covid, was expected to reach $1.6trn by 2028, according to Allied Market Research. That was before Covid-19 brought live events to a sudden halt. By March 2020, the industry had already lost $16.5bn, according to UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry. By November 2020, 52% of event professionals said they had lost income as a result of the pandemic, while 11% had been furloughed and 10% laid off."

So you can imagine my excitement as I walked into a conference with ~200 people last week for the first time in 2.5 years.

It was the Creator Economy Expo 2022, or CEX 2022 in short, that took place at the Grand Arizona Parkway in Phoenix, Arizona.

Source: Architectural Digest

About CEX 2022

CEX calls itself a conference by creators for creators, and mentions on its website that its "mission is to bring you the brightest minds and most vibrant voices that help content creators develop into successful entrepreneurs who build profitable digital businesses." This was the first year of the conference, organized by Joe Pulizzi and The Tilt team.

Joe is regarded as a veteran in the content marketing space, having authored 6 books and founded three companies. I didn't know of Joe (or The Tilt) before the conference. But I instantly liked his humor and stage presence when I saw him at the conference.

CEX 2022 happened mainly over May 5th and 6th, with a welcome ceremony on the evening of May 4th.

There were 6 talks on May 5th and 24 workshops on May 6th (that happened in parallel).

I had some surprising/interesting observations, thought of a few ideas, and met some very cool people. I've documented them below.

Surprising & Interesting Observations

• 99% of those who enter the creator economy don't regret it: This was displayed on one of the slides during the welcome ceremony with Joe. I don't remember any of the other slides from that ceremony; only this one. This statistic was shocking, in a good way. Having entered the creator economy a few months ago, I don't for a moment regret my decision to quit my job. It's interesting to see other creators feel similarly.

• The average age of the attendees was ~35 years old. This surprised me since I expected it to be my own age (~25). I expected the attendees would be a blend of young writers, bloggers, podcasters, and YouTubers. Rather, it turned out to be most veterans in the content creation and marketing industry, with a few young aspiring creators. In the end, I was glad for this as I got to talk to those more experienced.

• I thoroughly enjoyed the first day; but much less the second day: The first day consisted of powerful (and witty) talks by Ann Handley, Jeremiah Owyang, Wally Koval, Dan Pink, and the likes. I enjoyed most of them and also wrote down a few ideas I could implement based on the talks. By the time the second day came around, I was already feeling impatient. I wanted to go home and start working on my ideas. Plus, many of the workshops I attended turned out to be speakers presenting content-heavy slides with no engagement from the audience. I zoned out on many of the talks. I felt like I could have left the conference half a day early. This brings me to...

• I tend to tune out when there's information overload or the speaker has an aura of entitlement: This was an interesting observation I made of myself. I tuned out of many sessions on the last day of the conference (as mentioned above), and during one of the sessions on the first day when the speaker (who I will not name) had an air of entitlement. His entire talk from my perspective could have been distilled into two points: (a) Money matters a lot because I made a lot of it, and (b) All of you should start a YouTube channel. I disagreed with both points.

• I was fully comfortable being by myself during networking sessions: As an introvert, I craved some alone time during the conference as otherwise it was packed with people. So during some of the networking sessions, I was standing and eating by myself and felt comfortable with (and even enjoyed) that. This was an interesting observation since a few years ago the Pooja I knew would've felt intensely conscious.

• Finally, Phoenix was really hot and spread out. Let's just say I am so happy to be back in the Bay Area.

New Ideas

• I could create my own "coin" on Rally and reward my newsletter community: Okay, I'll be honest. I still don't intuitively understand the point of creating your own "coin" that people can buy. I kinda understood it in the moment when one of the attendees sitting next to me -- a very generous attendee -- took the time to explain the use of creating one on Rally. It has to do with how as more people buy your coin and join the network, the value of the Rally network increases, which increases the value of the "RLY" coin, and in turn what your community invested. It's kinda like your supporters investing in you, like how they invest in a stock. Obviously, I need to do more research.

  • The bigger idea I had was to build a reward program for the most engaged members of my newsletter community. Btw, are you part of it? Now would be a good time for you to join!

• Taking in inspiration from how Dan Pink structured his book "The Power of Regret": All attendees got a copy of Dan's latest book, The Power of Regret. While reading it during and after the conference, I got an idea of how I can structure a book that I'm currently working on. Especially around sprinkling quotes from my interviews throughout the book to create a connection to the reader. A connection of, "Oh! It almost feels like I said this."

• Participate in a writing marathon over the weekend: I don't remember exactly when I got this idea. It was sometime during the first day. As I was swimming in a sea of people, and wishing I could spend some time reading and writing amidst the chaos, I felt, "Perhaps I could engage in a writing marathon once I'm home." This also gave me the permission to not feel guilty about not working on my book.

  • In the end, it was less of a writing marathon and more of a brainstorming-researching-writing marathon. In fact, the weekend helped me go through a major pivot for my upcoming book! Read more here.

• Build an analytics dashboard on Notion for the newsletters and website: One of the workshops on building a killer newsletter talked about how they have a google sheet to track all analytics. Now that I've begun sending not one, but two newsletters every week, it's high time I begin tracking to see the trend.

Also, I really liked CEX's idea of printing the entire agenda on the back of our ID cards. :D

The Real Value: People Met

There were a sea of blurry faces I met during the networking events who I'm most probably not going to remember, which is okay because I'm glad to have met a few who I hope to keep in touch moving forward. Below are their names along with what I cherish and remember about the interaction.

• Dan Pink, NYT best-selling author of 5 books: His astuteness, and openness, to sitting down and having a chat with me although he was in a rush to go somewhere. I'm really proud of myself for not having let go of the moment to meet with Dan.

• Wally Koval, the co-creator of Accidentally Wes Anderson: His humor, for sure. I cherish how engaging and honest he was in sharing about the struggles he and Amanda went through to create AWA.

• Jordan Harbinger, creator of the famous The Jordan Harbinger Show: His honesty in sharing what worked and what didn't in his career of podcasting. Although he was quite distracted due to finding luggage + leaving for the airport, I appreciated him asking me questions and trying to help out.

• Pamela Slim, business coach, speaker, and author: Her warmth and openness to having lunch with me. I also enjoyed her talk (probably one of the more engaging ones.)

• Dave Hertig, a "super-connector" of CEOs: His calm, yet sometimes animated, demeanor. I also enjoyed his questions, and how we both could joke around easily. Definitely someone I plan on keeping in touch with.

• Todd Smith, singer and founding member of the band Selah: His generosity in taking time to help me understand how social coins work, and how I can use this for my newsletter/book community. Especially, given how he was leaving the conference in 2 hours, but still chose to sit down and help, unprompted.

Closing Thoughts

Doing some quick evaluations...

Am I happy that I attended the conference? Yes.

Did I get some ideas worth implementing? Yes.

Did I meet interesting people who I'd like to connect with moving forward? Yes!

Did I enjoy all the sessions? Not really.

Did I enjoy visiting Phoenix? Yes-ish, but would not want to live there.

So overall, I'd say that was a pretty good experience. :)