What's your life philosophy?

I was recently invited to be featured in my alma mater’s “Hall of Personalities” which is being put together to celebrate our 50-year anniversary. A former classmate nominated me, and I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email asking me to share a little about my journey ever since I graduated in 2009 (it’s gonna be 12 years soon, damn).

As part of the profile, they also asked me to fill out a personal question. The one I chose ended up being “What’s your life philosophy?” which certainly was the meatiest of them all. But I was somewhat keen on answering it, because I felt I had to put some work into it (reflecting, deciding, and putting it all into words). Here is how I ended up describing it.

The way I think about my life is actually very simple. My life is represented by a book with 80 empty pages, where each page represents one year of my life. Also, I was given 80 years (finger's crossed) to fill that book with stories. At the end of my life, what will remain, is not what job title I had at the age of 26, or what my salary was at 32, or what car I drove at 43 – what will last, and hopefully outlast me, is the richness of the book I wrote. It will be the stories, memories and emotions I experienced throughout my life, just as much as the connections I've made, and the people I've touched.

Writing the best story I could possibly write is what matters most to me, and I use that as my guiding principle to make decisions. It's the principle on basis of which I moved to China on a whim, and it's the same principle that has made me say YES to the craziest and most uncomfortable opportunities that came my way. The question “is this a story worth including in my book?” is pretty much the leading question on basis of which I make larger decisions in my life (moving places, taking opportunities, etc). It has prompted me to try many new things, and to do things I never thought I would be capable of.

The downside of this approach to life is certainly that it’s very restless in nature, and that, by default, it doesn’t lend itself for stability and tranquility. An exciting story often needs new material, but that’s not how life usually is. But that’s also something I am learning to appreciate and embrace, maybe having some pages in that story that are not all intense, but more quiet, thoughtful, reflective.

Anyway, I hope this makes you think a little bit about your own life philosophy. Do you have a guiding principle or question that you use to make decisions? A north star of sorts? I’d be curious to know.

Are you making the most of your time in life?

34 is a weird age. It’s young enough to still be at peace about being single and thinking myself “I still got plenty of time to do X,” but it’s already old enough to feel out of touch with some things (dancing on TikTok?) and to be looking back on a good number of years of “adult life” (say the last ~10 years of my life).

So here I am, at 34, thinking about life, and realizing that my biggest fear is not aging, death or illness. These are the inevitable elements of life that we all will face at some point. No, my biggest fear is time running out and not having made the most out of that time. Because that is actually evitable.

Truly the question I ask myself every day is “am I making the most of my limited time?” 25 is gone. 27 is over. 30 has happened. 32 I will never get to experience again. So soon enough I will back on 34, and I will ask myself: “did I really make the most out of that year?” Did I live fully and truly? Can I unequivocally say that I made the most under all the limitations I had? “Limitations” by the way can be anything from a sick parent you have to take care of, to your day job, to a lockdown or an expired passport.

On a daily basis this means that I wake up and ask myself “What do I need to have done/accomplished today to feel good about myeslf?” Writing this blog post for example was on my list for today. So was going for a walk around the neighborhood, as well as journaling, cooking, listening to music, calling friends, and reviewing Chinese vocabulary. As you can see, things that are more on a “pragmatic to-do” level. If I can end the day knowing I did the things I wanted to do, I feel good about myself and about the fact that I used my time well.

Zooming out, on a more monthly basis, I ask myself more high-level questions such as “What are my priorities in life right now and do I have them right?” or “Am I really doing the things that matter to me?” Sometimes I also ask myself “What would I need to do differently to be more satisfied in life?” As you can see, more directional questions, trying to make sure my plans and actions are aligned with what I want in my life. Some the questions I ask myself currently are how long I am comfortable being nomadic, if I am willing to leave SF for NY, or if I am on track for whatever I want professionally (a specific experience, promotion, etc.). Feeling this sense of alignment is encouraging and affirming.

The question of whether you are making the most of your life is really subjective and relative. Did I do make the most of 25, 27, 30, or 32? I don’t know. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. What would be the point of beating myself up over that now anyway? When it’s over, it’s over. That’s why I find it important to ask that question not retrospectively, but more contemporarily as you go through your life.

Measuring your own pulse

Sometimes I notice my own spark in my eyes. Of course I can’t see it, but sometimes I feel it. I am talking about something, explaining it to someone, and I suddenly notice how I speak faster, how I smile while I talk, how I gesticulate with all my limbs. 

I don’t think I always noticed these moments until someone once called it out “you are so animated when you speak about this topic.” Since then, I have become much more self-aware about when I am in that kind of flow. When my pulse is faster, when I sit upright or lean forward, or when the ideas are just coming out of my mouth one after the other without being able to stop myself.  

Surely there are many different ways how one can find out what they are passionate or excited about, but noticing that kind of energy in yourself is possibly one of the most authentic and unfiltered ways to gauge your interest in something. It’s also something we are not really taught to do, in a world in which we often pay little attention to our emotions, and are constantly distracted by everything and nothing.

Similarly, I sometimes find myself watching a video on social media, and half-way through it I notice that I am smiling. Actually, I usually notice that smile at the end of the video when it’s over, and the smile on my face is all that lingers. These are always brief reminders that whatever that topic was that I was watching – a proposal, a baby video, an act of kindness – it’s something that touched me or that I feel positively towards. 

Now you might say “but isn’t that obvious?” Yes, for some topics it might be obvious. But for other topics, this idea of “measuring your own pulse” – either via your heightened energy level or a simple smile on your face – can really help surface things that you are interested in, but that you didn’t really realize you were interested in. 

Here is an example from my own life. I have always wondered if I want to have kids. And I always had a feeling that the answer was yes, but I wasn’t really sure. Then in the last few years, whenever I saw a video with babies, I noticed how I always ended up with a huge smile on my face, both throughout and after the video. Now I am not arguing that this is the ultimate validation of me wanting to have kids, but noticing my own reaction only reaffirmed that this is something that naturally delights me because that’s exactly what my reaction was to those videos.

You can make of this what you want. For me, it’s a really beautiful exercise in self-awareness while living in a world in which we are not always in touch with our emotions. Also it’s a powerful way to gauge what topics might speak to you, touch you, in ways that might not always be so obvious.

China – a living and breathing memory

I have never talked publicly about how I ended up in China, why I went, what it meant to me, or why I ended up leaving. I certainly talked a lot about my experiences there, the “what” I was experiencing, but not the “why” behind it.

As the world is celebrating the New Chinese Year these days, I can’t help but reminisce over the ~3 years I got to spend between Beijing and Shanghai. Memories so vivid, they often lift me from my familiar surroundings, and transplant me back onto the busy streets of China where I was often the only foreigner in a sea of Chinese.

So how did I end up there? It was a confluence of four different reasons – two of them push (away from the US) and two pull (towards China). My first push reason was massive fatigue with the Bay Area and disinterest in my job prospects post-MBA. The other push reason was that I really didn’t want to be in the US during the Trump presidency. My first pull reason was my fascination with China. After my first visit in 2016 I had pledged to make it part of my life’s journey, and I felt the time was right. The second pull reason was a woman I had met who was living there, and part me wanted to see if it could go anywhere (it didn’t).

So before I knew it, a mere week after graduating from my MBA, I put everything into storage, packed a bag, got a tourist visa and found myself sitting on a plane with a one-way ticket to Shanghai. No Chinese, no job, no network or anything – just an AirBnB to get started, and this insatiable desire to start a new chapter.

Those four reasons aside, moving to China for me was absolutely aligned with who I am, always looking for new cultural challenges, and a desire to explore and understand the world by immersing as deeply as possible. I fundamentally believe in the global role China will play in future, and I wanted to connect to that.

Fascinated with the rise of Chinese tech, I wanted to help Chinese tech companies expand internally. I ended up joining bike-sharing mobility giant Ofo in Beijing, heading up their international Business Development. The company was operating 10M bikes in China, and was on the verge of international expansion. Within a year, we opened ~50 new markets in ~20 new countries. It truly was a wild ride, which got even wilder as mismanagement and a leadership feud with our investors forced us to scale back our international operations and focus on China where competition was brutal.

At my one-year mark, with a bleak outlook for the company, a VC-friend introduced me to a Chinese couple that she had just invested in, as they were looking for a third, international, co-founder. After two-weeks of founder-dating, we decided to work together and start a cross-border social e-commerce business. Happily I dropped my life in Beijing and moved to Shanghai, the city I originally intended to live in when I moved to China. What followed was a journey of starting a company, hiring ~50 people, raising more money, and turning an idea into reality.

Starting a company is always hard, but it’s even harder doing so abroad in a cultural environment that really doesn’t always work in your favor. Cultural barriers, linguistic misunderstandings, the entire spectrum of “foreigner working abroad” issues, amplified by the fact that China is so much more different than other international markets. So as we were ready to raise our Series A, some ~1.5 years into the journey, I decided to move on from it. As a co-founder, you want to see yourself there for many years to come, and I just couldn’t.

When I moved to China, I had certain professional goals. Of course, I had just graduated from business school and there was a certain career-trajectory we were expected to be on (i.e., steep & successful). Yet my time in China didn’t match those expectations. Ofo would eventually go down and bankrupt, and leaving a company you helped get started is always a disappointing experience because that wasn’t why you got started in the first place.

Yet as hard as China was, it was that very hardship that got me excited. I loved being in China, I loved every moment of it, every second I struggled, every misunderstanding, every frustration. I remember breaking down in the hospital out of exhaustion and frustration because I had no idea how to navigate a foreign healthcare system. I remember how lonely I felt at work, finding it hard to socialize in Mandarin. The difficulty of studying Mandarin and how many times I would repeat the same chapters and characters. But I wouldn’t want to miss any of these experiences. China didn’t give me what I was looking for professionally, but it gave me 10x of what I thought I would get personally.

After ~3 years, I wasn’t done yet with China. I still wanted to continue my journey and invest in a new relationship I was in. But after spending 6 months searching for new opportunities, I just couldn’t find anything that really satisfied me. That’s when I eventually decided to end my China chapter 1.0 (knowing I’d have future chapters), and to move back to the US to continue my job search there.

By the time I packed my bags and put everything into storage again – this is at the onset of the pandemic – I was expecting to come back just weeks later. The moment I was leaving China, I wanted to go to the US and just take care of some preliminary business (find an apartment, start networking, etc). But by the time I arrived, it became clear that going back to China wouldn’t be that easy. And before I knew it, China shut down. Even now, more than a year later, I have the majority of my belongings sitting in Shanghai, unclear when I will see them again.

The hardest part for me, other than my relationship which suffered tremendously from the border closures, is that I never had a chance to say good-bye to China. I never got to say good-bye to my friends, or visit my favorite places one last time. I thought I would be going back to China 3-4 times a year for both personal and professional reasons. But over a year later, all I have are my pictures and memories. I am not even sure I will get to visit China again in 2021. And this sudden cut-off is really something that hurts.

Remembering one of my last conversations in China, with my friend Alex who was also on the verge of leaving China, we declared China as a living and breathing experience that we would carry with ourselves into the world, and that it wasn’t just limited to a specific location. A year later, this is what China is to me, a memory that is alive wherever I go.

Back from a hiatus

I took a hiatus, but not intentionally. 

Over the past six months, I just couldn’t write. I had neither the creativity to express myself, nor the desire to do so. 

This COVID crisis has impacted us all in different ways. My biggest source of ideas and energy has always been my social life, the people around me, and the conversations I would have with them. In the absence of that, during a time of solitude and isolation, I didn’t have the input and stimulus that I otherwise used to have. No banter, no bouncing off of ideas, no “yes, and” conversations that would allow me to expand my horizon. In some way, my creative idea-generating muscles weakened.

The other thing was that I didn’t want to express myself. I think over the past couple years, I have become a little more private, slightly withdrawn. That tendency was accelerated by the abrupt way I left China early 2020, which disrupted the flow of my life. In addition to that, a recent separation forced me to reflect a lot about my life, decisions, and objectives. And during times like these, when you are questioning so much about yourself, you just don’t have the foundation to be assertive about the ideas and thoughts you carry with yourself. 

More recently, however, life has become more calm, and I have become more centered. I have made peace with where I am in my life, physically, as well as where I am in my life’s journey, emotionally. In parallel, I am refocusing on myself, on my goals, my health, and my relationships. I am putting my energy out there again, and get energy back in return. Because of that, my mind is spinning again, my idea-generating muscles are contracting, thoughts are forming, and the social energy around me, albeit small, is further cultivating those ideas. 

So yeah, this was a long hiatus. But I am excited to be writing again, and to be contributing to this repository of thoughts and ideas that I have been nurturing since 2013.

Quarantine thoughts – Wear that damn mask

I don’t get it.

Why is it so hard to wear a little piece of cloth that covers your mouth? You will still be able to talk, shout and breath. This is really not a big ask. You don’t even have to go spend money on it, you are allowed and encouraged to put something together at home, a piece of fabric, whatever it is, and use it as a face cover.

No one is taking anything away from you, you are simply being asked to take care of your fellow citizens, of your community, of your loved ones. You could be infecting and killing them without knowing, yet here you are, fighting for “your freedom and liberties.”

The individualism in American society, this idea of the “I” before everyone else, is sometimes hard to process for me. I wish people would care more about how their actions impact others, and make the effort to think beyond themselves.

Sure, not everyone in Asian countries which are known for a higher degree of cultural collectivism always wears a mask, but there you also don’t see idiots storming capitol buildings, armed with rifles, shouting for their right to get a haircut. Yet here we are, and the president of the United States says that wearing a mask is a sign of disapproval of him.

Just look at the numbers. Notice anything?

Wearing masks is mandatory in over 50 countries. Yet here we are, not only with a curve that was never really flattened, but with a significant uptick in recent cases.

Sadly, the refusal of wearing a mask isn’t just an attempt to make a case for one’s freedom, it’s symptomatic for problems that go much deeper than that. It’s a sign of protest against a collective effort to protect those in need. It’s a denunciation of a country’s effort to work together unitedly.

I love America for so many things, but I hate how individualistic and selfish some are and how it seems to be so hard to look beyond one’s own needs and interests. You wearing a mask doesn’t take anything away from you, it actually augments you for the empathy and care you show for others. It only makes you a better human being, and not less.

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Quarantine thoughts – Making this year count

This has been a crazy year so far, and my feeling tells me that that the second half of this year still has some significant action coming our way. So buckle up and don’t let your guard down (i.e., fucking wear that mask).

We are approaching the end of the first half, and as I reflect over the past five months, there is one specific fear, and one particular hope that I carry with me. In fact, they are both two sides of the same medal.

What’s my fear? My fear is that everything that we have been through this year will fade from memory. The moment the news cycles focus on the election, once we are consumed by the debates, a gaffe by Biden, and outrageous tweet by Trump, that we will forgot everything we have been through the past 6 months. And it doesn’t have to be the election or something political, maybe it’s a natural disaster that’s around the corner, maybe it’s something completely different – after all, 2020 has been full of “didn’t see this coming”-esque WTF moments . I feel we are all just eager to run away from the past 6 months, and with that, we run away from the opportunity to make it all count.

Which brings me to my hope. Which is exactly that we don’t run away. We don’t forget, we don’t get distracted and don’t leave all this work unfinished. We are all given this incredible opportunity to make long-lasting change, and I want us all to make it count. Growth happens through friction, and boy have we been given some friction this year. Two of the most important elements of our lives, our healthcare system and the quality of our social fabric have been put under an immense test this year. We are given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to effectuate change that would otherwise have taken 10+ years to materialize. Our eyes have been opened to how much we’ve had our priorities wrong when it comes to our public health. We have all been woken up to the systemic racism in our systems. Now what? Are we really just one distraction away from forgetting all? I just hope we don’t turn around and leave this all as half-finished work, but that we seize this opportunity to keep working, keep yelling, keep fighting for the change that we know we deserve.

Now you are probably thinking yourself “duh, Omid, don’t we all want this to be permanent?” Like yeah, totally, I know you get it. I know you want it, too. But what are you doing about it? Maybe you still care 3 days from now, but will you be caring about this all 3 months from now? I can’t tell you what your priorities should be in future, that’s not on me, that’s on you. And that’s exactly what I hope you will do. That you sit down and ask yourself what you are going to be doing once that black square is two scrolls further down on your feed. Are you still gonna care about black lives and stand up for them even if there are no more rallies? Are you still gonna appreciate immigrant healthcare workers for how essential they are to our lives? Or are you gonna fall for your old patterns of thinking and acting? These are tough conversations we all need to have with ourselves. How are we going to show up for the change that we want to see around us?

I want to leave you with a profound comment that has shaped a lot of my thinking over the years.

The things you want to change need to change just as much in you

So yeah, you want things changed? Great! But the question is how much have those things changed in you?

Only if we show up differently, if we care more, if we get our priorities right, we will be in a position to show up differently in future. But for that to happen, we need to do some deep thinking and reflecting. We need to ask ourselves tough questions and change our priorities. No matter how uncomfortable it is.

So yeah, know that the next distracting news cycle is just one incident away. So whether the first half of 2020 will be a simple memory, or the beginning of a better future for all of us, is a function of how much you keep caring and not how much there is news coverage.

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Quarantine thoughts – Strange market dynamics

It’s interesting to look at how the COVID19 crisis has changed certain market dynamics, or even flipped them upside down. 

I was looking into the micro-mobility industry recently, trying to understand the impact this all will have. I think the demand for group mobility options will be significantly impacted as long as there is no vaccine. That means that personal mobility options, to which micro-mobility vehicles belong, will be higher in demand. Would you really want to take the subway with hundreds of others if you could just cruise form A to B by yourself? Probably not. As a result, almost over night, the entire market – measured in mid/long-term demand – for micro-mobility grew. However, immediate demand fell sharply with everyone in quarantine. This in itself is such a rare industry event to see an industry’s size and potential to shoot up, but its demand to decline rapidly. 

Another rare event is something I picked up in the Robinhood Snacks podcast. Apparently the immediate demand for shampoo and other personal care products has increased, but usage of it has declined. Makes sense, you want to have it at home, but you are likely not gonna use it as much. Here again, it’s very unusual that the need for a product would go down, but it’s demand would go up. 

The other crazy thing we saw the other day was how the price of oil has become negative, that you’d get paid to buy oil. In essence, it’s because demand has fallen so strongly that there is now an oversupply while suppliers are running short of storage capacities. 

It’s interesting to see how this crisis has been turning upside down so many principles and models we usually deem to be true. Maybe some of these trends, or similar ones, existed before, and surely not all of them will last, but rarely have we seen them at such large scale. 

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What goes around comes around

The other day I lined up to order coffee in a coffee shop in San Francisco. While in line, I noticed that a former Associate Dean of my business school was queued right behind me. He and I never overlapped at school, but I knew of him, and he still had a good reputation at the school.

After he placed his order, I approached him, and briefly introduced myself. Reading his face, I could clearly tell that he was surprised that I had introduced myself – despite our shared Stanford connection. So I told him: “I just wanted to say hi. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to overlap with you, but you still have a very positive legacy at the school and I wanted to let you know that.” Hearing that I had approached him without any ask or intentions, except just wanting to be nice, he visibly opened up and started showing interest in me. After a brief conversation in which I shared with him that I am looking for new work opportunities, we said good-bye and that was it. 

What I didn’t know was that he was there with his wife, and after they finished their coffee, his wife walked up to me, gave me her business card, and said that she was hiring on her team. Turned out she was a VP at one of the companies that was on my target list. I thanked her briefly and they both moved on. This was weeks later and I am not in the process for a role in her organization. 

For me, this entire story is a story of how the universe will always respond with the level of energy you put out there. I didn’t have to introduce myself to him. I didn’t have to let him know that he has a wonderful legacy at school. I could have easily just gone about my day. But I did believe it was a good thing to do, so I just did. The fact that his wife then appreciated the gesture so much that she gave me her business card is just a testament of how that energy can come back to you.

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Checking yourself for blind spots

I recently finished watching Netflix’s Making a Murderer. I won’t spoil the details of the series, but I can definitely tell you that I gasped more than once “what the actual fuck is going on here?” It’s an unbelievable story of someone being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and of a criminal justice system that screws him over and over and over again.

As I was watching the show, I frequently asked myself “why are people not seeing his innocence?” Until at some point it dawned on me that maybe it’s me who is not seeing it. After all, I am consuming the narrative of the filmmaker, which by default is filled with bias. So what if the blind spot is on me, and not on them? While I wasn’t able to fully resolve this situation, I was glad that I got to a point where I started “checking myself” and questioning my own viewpoint on the story. 

I think one of the more important skills as a leader (or even just as a thoughtful human being walking through life) is having the understanding that blind spots exist, and having the awareness to “check yourself” for those. 

I once got feedback from a manager that I should shift the focus from spotlighting my own voice to spotlighting the voices of others. The feedback didn’t make any sense to me at that time, because that perspective was so incongruent from the way how I thought I was showing up. Well, not until I started counting the ‘I’s and ‘We’s in emails I had written. That’s when it hit me that I was truly walking around with a blind spot. 

“Checking yourself” is not the same as “checking IN with yourself,” while the latter is more about assessing your feelings and emotional state of mind, the former is more about surfacing blindspots you might be carrying around with you. It’s an attempt to uncover the “unknown unknowns,” and questioning the assumptions you carry around that might be preventing you from seeing the full picture.  

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