- Read Write Run
- Posts
- 02 - You need to quit to be successful.
02 - You need to quit to be successful.
Don't quit is a bad advice. Hear me out.
Rajesh Raghavan
October 02, 2022
Hey friends 👋
As I said in last week's issue, this Friday was my final working day. It's been exactly 15 months since I joined this company as the 4th employee, and now it's a team of 60+ people. It has been an incredible journey to see myself & the company grow together. So I had to say goodbye to amazing people there.
It's crazy to think back and see how it all started. This was my first full-time job right out of college. I was desperate to work at a startup & used to cold DM people I admire on Twitter. And that's precisely how I got this job as well. I messaged a guy named Dharmesh on Twitter which led me to get this job. Here's the exact message:
I strongly believe in this quote - "If you don't ask, the answer is no.". It took me time to put this into action, but I had the results show up whenever I did it. So I'm happy that I went ahead and sent these cold DMs which resulted in an opportunity to build a fantastic community for creators.
End of a great chapter, & onto the next one!
This was a super eventful week for me. I finished a book, watched 2 fantastic movies, and achieved my weekly running goal! Let's go!
📚 Read - being deeply curious
📖 The Dip by Seth Godin
I recommend reading this very small book that talks about the importance of quitting. It just takes 3-4 hrs to complete this book & it conveys a simple & effective concept. I'll try to write the summary of the book this week but here are a few quotes I found fascinating:
Don't quit is bad advice. “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” Now that’s good advice.
The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed.
If you enter a market that’s too big or too loud for the amount of resources you have available, your message is going to get lost. Your marketing disappears, your message fails to spread. Think twice before launching a mass-market brand of chewing gum. Like adding just a few pounds of air to a flat tire, launching a product into too big of a market has little effect. You can’t create pressure and you never reach the Dip.
🎥 Ponniyin Selvan - 1 by Mani Ratnam
I watched this marvellous epic that I have been waiting for years now. This is a historical fiction movie based on a book named Ponniyin Selvan. I'm truly speechless after watching the movie. This film is about a period from the Chola dynasty & it made me feel so close to a story that happened 1000 years back.
Every single frame from the movie is so well crafted & conveys so much about the characters, & their emotions. I haven’t seen a film that exploits every craft of filmmaking to its fullest from dialogue, cinematography, editing, costumes etc to make the audience feel something. Mindblown. Go watch it if you can!
✍️ Write - having a bias for action
I haven’t written anything this week other than this newsletter. Also, I haven’t worked on anything that's interesting enough to share with you folks! So let's move on to the next section :P
🏃 Run - keep going
I completed a total of 21 km run this week!
I'm super happy and feeling great about this. I ran for 5 days straight from Monday to Friday. I couldn’t do well on Monday, so completed just 2 km that day. My longest run was on Friday with 5.6 km in 40 mins.
Felt great running after a long time, hope I continue to achieve my weekly goal of 21 km from now. I'm recording my runs on Strava, join me there if you are interested.
So that's about it for this week's issue. Thank you so much for reading till the end. If you have anything interesting to share, do reply to this email & let's chat! See you next week, bye-bye 👋
To infinity & beyond,