On Navigating Life
Navigating, Not Designing
Almost 10 years ago.
A friend of mine told me this quote:
“the truest form of intelligence is designing the life that you wanna live.”
This stuck deeply with me was because..
I considered that friend very intellectual.
I had many other friends that I’d consider that ‘they’re killing it’..
..but they’re spending their life climbing some ladder that they’re no longer excited about.
They’re doing the right thing, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
They secretly hate their life.
That’s why I kept on living on this premise that the humans should apply critical effort on ‘designing of their life right’..!!!
I thought if I’d figure out:
What’s meaningful to me? (my Ikigai)
How do I wanna spend my days (my precious time)?
Who are the people I wanna spend my life with?
What are the activities I wanna be doing?
I’d achieve nirvana.
I also read Naval Ravikant’s quote where he says,
“if you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?”
And I’m his big fan.
So, I used to daily spend hours making those determinations and then moving my life toward those things.
So, Am I crazily happy now? Have I figured it all?
Nope.
With a little more wisdom from my continuous failures of understanding life and people..
I can say that it’s half lie.
The first problem: designing life assumes you already know what you want.
(or you’ll definitely find answers to those questions)
You don’t. I didn’t.
Sh*t, most people in their 30s, 40s, even 50s are still figuring it out.
A lot of what happens in life, you can’t think your way to it in advance.
The business you almost didn’t start.
The kid you had no idea how to raise.
The move that made zero spreadsheet sense.
You didn’t design your way into those.
You fell in.
And they became the whole thing.
Meaning shows up on the far side of the decision, not before it.
Yep. After. Not before.
The second problem: happiness becomes a shaky scoreboard.
Some of the most meaningful stretches I’ve lived were objectively miserable in the moment.
Sleepless infant years.
Building something that kept failing.
Sitting with a sick parent.
These score those terribly on happiness.
But I wouldn’t trade a single one of those. :)
Finally,
The critical thing every busy professional and parent is doing mindlessly nowadays is optimising and auditing life choices.
Whether this is ‘The’ Right Life.
Whether your years are ‘adding up’ correctly.
Am I making enough money?
That’s exhausting. A little fckd up when you think about it.
Wrong way to live.
The people I actually want to be aren’t the ones with the best-designed lives.
They’re the ones absorbed enough in something that they’ve stopped checking.
Present. Building. Raising kids without constantly Googling whether they’re parenting correctly.
Working on the thing without refreshing their sense of purpose every quarter.
Weird, right?
A clear mind is one which eventually stops auditing life.
So here’s where I’ve landed:
Do the work.
For its own sake, without gripping the outcome.
Still, think hard about what matters.
Who you want around you.
How you want your days to feel.
That’s real. Don’t skip it.
But hold it loosely.
Don’t try to control and optimize everything.
Design enough to have direction.
Then show up to what’s actually in front of you.
Navigate and meet the life in front of you well.
That’s the version I am trying actually live.
— Gourav