In this post, I’m going to jot down a few facts about “financial freedom”.

As Dave Ramsey, repeats his golden steps of ending financial miseries:

1. Clear all your debts first.
2. Save up for emergency funds.
3. Save by paying yourself first.

The world of financial freedom awaits!

How to grow your assets even further?

Invest your money, wisely! Understand the meaning of compounding.

Note:

Avoid online/offline impulsive buying.

Understand the true meaning of assets and liabilities.

That’s it! simple, isn’t it?​

Start planning for a better future of yourself and for your loved ones. Feel free to share your experience or wisdom, if I forgot to add something you already know to make it simple in the comments.

I have been working professionally on and off between corporate and start-ups. Then I got an opportunity to work remotely for 2 years. In my opinion, I found remote work to be the sweet spot between working for a company and working for self.

Let me explain.

I’m 27 years old, a curious soul and seeking meaning in my own process of work-life balance.

At my first company, I got to learn how to speak with clients, the art of writing emails addressing to juniors till chief executives. The moment I was kept on a bench I realized it wasn’t me.

Without giving it much of a thought I moved into a very small company of hardly 5–10 people, where I got in touch with a start-up which eventually offered me a role full-time. Where I impressed the hell out of the founders with my work and then somehow my resume floated in the tech market and got a generous offer to work with smarter people with higher potential to mentor me.

Avoiding the maintenance work I moved back into corporate where my speed of progress slowed down. However, I came to realize I began writing scalable and efficient code.

Looking at which my bosses who started their own company eventually hired me to work remotely in their start-up where I became interdisciplinary with programming skills. I saw myself moving back and forth the backend (platform), frontend (website), cross-platform mobile applications, and QA automation. Also, got to mentor/lead a successful global team of 4 forward with empathy, kindness, challenging and a humble outlook.

Now, I will be moving back into corporate, working remotely to solve problems in the field of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Looking at the pattern of my career I realized that currently, remote work is where I found my sweet spot. These days it is easier to find remote jobs where the company trusts its employees with their work instead of micro-managing their employees.

Just like working for yourself:​

Remote work becomes a similar “workstyle” where you are self-motivated, aware of the dos and don’ts. Responsible for your actions and just know, how to get things done. Basically, taking ownership of your work.

Realize the importance of communication and how it is the blood for working remotely. I do not agree with people who are suggesting one has to be around their employees physically to grow into a leadership role. While working remotely, how Jeff Bezos said: “why it’s always Day 1 at Amazon” makes a lot of sense.

These days most of my friends work remotely so I hardly feel left alone. Rather, I get to talk with others about various problems they are trying to solve lately.

I believe in minimalism so I hardly ever wanted to wear cool new fashionable clothes for society or coworkers.

Despite working remotely I hardly find time for myself which is something I am constantly working on. I enjoy my work so much that weekend goes by slowly.

Just recently I wrote this to understand recursive functions and multi parentheses after a function call.

Application?

Can be useful if we use multiple tags on something.

Want to learn more about Dynamic programming?

Recommendations: VisualGo, GeeksForGeeks.

The **filter()** method creates a new array with all elements that pass the test implemented by the provided function. — Source

I grew up in New Delhi, India where I spent 25 years. I’ll be honest, I miss my city a lot. However, due to many reasons, I left my convenient, easy lifestyle and somehow the need for simplicity brought me down here in a small city Vadodara, Gujarat. I believe to some extent I’m following the geo-arbitrage concept.

Honestly, in the time span of three and a half months, I have noticed a lot of little things we fast-paced city guys never give a deep thought over.

To list a few:

Mystical bond kids have with their parents.

I’ve noticed kids are closer to their parents, and likewise. Parents tend to give freedom when the environment for their kids appear to be more on a safer side. Leads to a healthier upbringing in my opinion.

New languages.

I come across people who prefer talking in Gujarati and Marathi languages other than Hindi. At first, I used to feel like bonkers! what the hell are they talking about? These days I just tend to get an idea where the conversation is heading. Never the less, most of the times I just ask. Funny, one can best judge a new place on basis of how the natives react when you ask for some translations.

People are slow and relaxed.

Small city people have a simple lifestyle. Most of them aren’t really in the “rat race”. Talking about fulfilment, I believe they know what they are doing.

For a newcomer, it takes a little while to appreciate especially if you are coming from a fast-paced big city. It’s actually as simple as a litmus test, you can either bear it(adjust) or just end up packing your bags and leave the very next moment.

Dry state effect: the good, the bad, and, the ugly.

Apparently, I chose a limited edition dry state out of the remaining 28 states of India. I know right? At first, I was like no way! I’m a Punjabi guy I cannot live without alcohol running down my gut every weekend.

Now, I embrace the fact that I’m not. There’s always one addiction though, talking about addictions I tried smoking for a while and realised quite early on that it’s just not my thing. When I run the numbers I save some bucks on such recreational methods.

I miss my favourite economical clothing brand though i.e. H&M.

Weekends are horrible. Weekdays are fun! you guessed it right this is the ugly part. I’m trying to do what others over here do for leisure and entertainment. Watching movies, eat good food. Oh Boy! the food over here is good and value for money.

Little things.

Girls feel safer late at night out in the streets. I being a guy used to avoid going out for a walk or a run late at night in Delhi myself.

Silence, people don’t honk much on the streets. I guess maybe my place is blessed with silence and decency around noise pollution.

It’s one of the least polluted areas of India one thing I take pride in.

Welcoming neighbours, I tell you honestly whenever I run out of groceries and feeling lazy on the top of it. My doorbell magically rings with food on the other end.

Lastly, if you are new in Vadodara, Gujarat, India or some new place in the world, feel free to share your experiences. I’d love to hear/read them in the comments.

Dear Reader,

A happy new year to you and your family.

I’m in a phase of my life where apart from just getting better in computer science, it has been a massive one for self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-improvement for me.

TL;DR?

Read this instead.

I’ve gained knowledge in or mastered:

Cooking

All thanks to my friend’s mom. I got to learn the basics. Then I gave it a spin in my own lab(Kitchen) I’ll be honest, initially, the output or results were simply horrible yet I kept admiring it even then. I guess iteration concept worked out well and now I know how to cook a decent breakfast, lunch, and dinner for myself. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with oregano, makes my meals interesting with some cheese.

Financial literacy

Read 4 books Rich dad poor dad, Unshakable, The Total Money Makeover, and Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics**.** I found these to be enough for starters to understand the topic and an article that I was able to understand after going through all 4 books mentioned here.

Living alone

Oh boy! Here’s a kicker, I work remotely so I planned on moving out of Delhi (Dil waalon ki Dilli) and moved to Vadodara, Gujarat. After 2 months of getting the essentials in place. One fine night post-dinner I just realized the progress I’ve made so far, how I went from nothing to everything(mostly) all by myself and some help from my friend(TBH).

The first 2–3 weeks were horrible I’ll be honest, but then you get into the vibe of living alone. You get to understand so many things and concepts about stuff you’ve never ever focused upon.

10 Km Run

So the city I’m living in currently is a dry state(Alcohol is banned). I’m a Punjabi guy for whom alcohol consumption over weekends is a casual affair. However, after living here for over 3 months, I came to realise there are so many things in life you can do instead of just going out with friends and party over weekends. Out of which one single example is 10 Km run I completed recently in 1 hour 43 minutes approx. I know it isn’t really any close to a record but hey a 10 km run in a single go. There are so many other things like reading stuff you love to learn more about. Watching Netflix and TV series is not really my thing I call it a cheat night if I tend to do it. I mean come on! I cannot completely ignore it.

Travel abroad

Oh Oh! I finally got an opportunity to travel out of India for the first time. It made me realize a different aspect of life as a traveler. After 17–18 hours of the journey(one side). From passing out at Airport terminals, and the cab drives to trying new cuisines. It was something new.

I’ve still got a dream of experiencing a decent beach somewhere in the world.

Thank you 2018 and Hello 2019!

Over-communicate and take your time before replying

Communication is the blood of remote workers. Keep it flowing. Getting a lot of messages from others can overwhelm you. I’d suggest you keep calm and deliberately put a delay of 5–10 min before committing to anyone or replying to their queries. Replying after reading carefully and patiently helps in understanding them or their requests better.

Respect everyone’s time and understand working asynchronously

I believe the sole reason developers wish to work remotely is that they want their own space and time to solve problems. Problems here can be personal as well as professional. Understand the fact that it’s okay to wait for others to approve of your suggestions or requests to any particular thing related to work. Perhaps make use of your world clock app and being polite will serve you well in the long run.

Being self-driven help

This is my personal favorite. When you are in the iteration phase of your existing applications and solutions, it is a no-brainer to wait for someone to assign tasks to you. Unless your organization has more than 10 developers.

Just declare whichever task you are picking up to your team or maybe create a PR and share its link on your respective communication channels.

Work-life balance will happen to you

Oh yeah! if you manage to continue working remotely within a month or two you’ll end up finding ways to balance the two.

Workout and eat right

Helps in bringing you back to the civilization.

Read books

Not just any books, read things that are relevant to your real life problems or maybe references for being more productive. Also, try to read books that are really interesting for you to read otherwise it gets tough to finish them.

Travel

Go and meet new people at different locations. It’s refreshing and raises your productivity levels.

Pre-assumptions

Don’t.

Change log:​

• Temptation of having a workstation of my own is dying. (side-effects of minimalism I guess). Given two of my full HD monitor screens to family members kept one for the sake of it. Probably get a 4K monitor display by the end of this year.
• Moved completely from Chrome to Firefox Developer Edition. (installed react and redux dev tools and I’m happy with it).
• Putting Siri at work even more than ever before, wish the new “read today’s news” thingy was available in India. Still confused about AirPods meh!
• Not sure but my next phone will be an android with dash charge feature if Apple doesn’t provide it in iPhones by the end of this year. Also, OnePlus 5T is super compatible with my MacBook Pro 2017. #BadApple
• Still love using notepad and pen for slowing down(get clarity) my thought process. Using Todoist for work, nice one I must admit specially their shortcut keys. Totally worth going premium with this one.

• Started meditating with Calm (deleted), _HeadSpace(_deleted) and finally settled with Oak App.

• Got bored of home gym exercises. Found nice resource for understanding Yoga. Read first part of Inner Engineering. Feels luxurious tbh.

Thanks for reading. :)

A below average student till class 10th, I was more of a vocalist than anything else. Wanted to purchase an electric guitar after breaking brother’s acoustic one, a request to which just like any other Indian parent would obviously refuse or maybe it was just my case(IDK). I used to love playing GTA Vice City on my computer, used to spend 8 hours playing that amazing game. Found myself fixing my computer so many times with the motivation to keep playing. After school, my folks suggested me to go ahead with computers instead of finance and accounts(Best decision of my life).

October 2010 First lecture on “Programming with C” at college and at that very moment I realised how much of trouble I had dragged myself into. All other students at the college were from science background or at least knew about “computers” in general. On the other hand, I appeared to be clueless and calculating remaining time for that lecture to end.

A little about my past…​

December 2007 One of my future mentors insulted me about what I was doing with my life. Out of anger I self-taught myself “trigonometry”. Honestly, I was just trying to mock that chapter and make fun of all the formulas in a funny way. It turned out to be my favourite chapter, as it was the first chapter I aced at school because surprisingly I found it to be interesting. When I realised other students were not that good in it, self-taught myself the remaining mathematical concepts using an Oxford reference book subscribed it from the school library and suddenly realised what a pile of crap N.C.E.R.T books were. However, full of important examples and exercises I couldn’t run away from.

Realising the fact I’m good at one thing made me confident towards the entire outlook of life.

Now coming back to college days, I spent a generous amount of time with “Let Us C” book, ended up scoring more than the C programming language lecturer’s favourite list of students in the subject. The trick was, the theory not practical, sucked at it back then. Completing my Bachelors became a game to me, I just knew what to read before the exams which were basically “Everything”.

July 2013 Now, not all was glamorous or easy for me I failed at my first attempt to get a job at an Indian MNC. Without losing much of hope I prepared myself for regular Masters Degree entrance exams and to my surprise found myself with a job offer from the best company out of the bunch. Sept 2013 GTA V released. Funny, when you have a job in hand, same Indian parents will even let you purchase an Xbox(another funny story maybe for some other day). In my defence, I really needed it to play that game as it was not available on PC back then.

Mar 2014 Joined my dream Telcom. based software services & hardware stacks company Aricent as a Test Engineer. Still look at it as my foundation where they approved of teaching self with the available resources in hand(internet mostly). Then one of my friends gave me a book called “Programming Pearls” after going through it. I gave up automation/manual testing as a profession.

Sept 2015 After many rejections from many companies decided to become a freelancer, worked as a web developer but mostly an iOS apps developer. Within 3 months joined a product based start-up ServX currently backed by YCombinator and other HNIs.

June 2016 Seeking challenges joined an organisation where I met one of my mentors and currently working with at Kerb, remotely as a Full-stack Developer and a Ventures Scout at Navitas Ventures.

August 2017 I got my Masters degree in Computer Applications which I completed while working as a software engineer and co-organising meetups for iOS Developers in my city.

Not trying to portray I’ve achieved anything or something, these are mostly the good parts and I had a lot of support of amazingly supportive friends. There’s a lot more for me to learn. Fail fast!

I’m just trying to display how I found the turning point in my life with a mathematics chapter that I self-taught myself. Also, an electric guitar looks like a bad investment to me now. All I needed was a subscription to Apple Music.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

Photo Credits: Ben White

I put a stop on my forever quest of finding the best way to keep reading and stay updated.

So, I asked my friends and literally the world on twitter.

Where on earth should I keep the awesome articles I come across and what is the right time to read them?

Answer to the first question is:

Don’t. unless its something worth keeping for later try pocket/browser’s bookmark. See, the information is dynamic in nature. Read it, get it, move on to the next one.

Answer to the second question is:

Date.now(); Otherwise you might end up with 5000+ or more articles unread on your Pocket account or Browser’s Bookmarks and probably irrelevant piece of information the time you get on to them.

Lastly, Another hack.