Everything around you teaches you something! Keep your eyes and ears open!!

It’s been a while since I wrote something. I was thinking for a while, what should I write about, what would I like to share. One fine day as I was working in my garden I had the ah ha moment. As a kid, I would go with my grandfather in the mornings to his garden to water the plants. He would teach me gardening tips and tricks. Who knew those lessons learnt as a child would form a foundation for my core values.

This year when I picked up gardening as a hobby, it gave me an immense satisfaction. There was a sense of purpose every morning I woke up. Every day, first thing I would do is to go check out my plants in the garden. Watering the plants has become a ritual before I have my coffee. Taking care of those plants felt like caring for my child. As fall sets in now and the plants have started to wither, I realized, I have grown so much as a person in last few months.

First lesson

When I sowed the seeds in spring and started seeing sprouts, I was over joyed. It gave me hope that yes, what I am doing has started bearing fruits. I just need to keep doing this daily, without fail and hopefully I get the fruits in summer. Isn’t this what we try to do every day at work? You write a small piece of code, you execute some task on production line or you take a decision in a meeting, all of this is with a hope that my act now will bear fruit in the future. I just need to keep watering my plants, take care of them, place them under right amount of sun, rain, and they bloom to give you the fruits. This was so eye-opening to give me a hope to wake up every day, take every action at work with a sense of optimism and hope. Things do fall in place, if you do your basics right!

Second lesson

One fine day, I observed that one of my pepper plants has stopped bearing new peppers. I started wondering and then after thinking over it for couple of days, I realized that it’s roots have outgrown the pot. I need to get a bigger pot for it to grow more and allow it to blossom. After I shifted the pot, it started growing again and then I got abundance of peppers for next few weeks. Looking back at that I can relate to the work that we do. When we design a system, we build it with current projections and give it some buffer for organic growth. But, if we wait till the end for it to tip over, it stops working or slows down. Refactoring your system every time you touch it and making it better allows it to grow without impacting the output.

Final lesson

If you think deeply about how plants grow in a garden, one thing you will realize is they build an ecosystem. An ecosystem under ground and above it. That’s the final lesson which I learnt, the importance of building an ecosystem. Under ground, there are earthworms, small insects, ants, etc. all making their home, giving fertilizer for the plants to grow, loosening the soil for good aeration. Similarly, above the ground, you have butterflies, honeybees, other flies and birds playing nicely in and around those plants. They help in pollination, building honeycombs that produces honey, helping build flora and fauna in the region, all which is necessary for the survival of a human. The same is true when you launch any product at your company. It starts with a technology, builds into the product. Once the technology becomes affordable, it is consumed by masses which allows to build an ecosystem around that product. For example, look at amazon.com, started as a online book store, grew on to become an online marketplace for different businesses and now is a behemoth in supply chain providing around the world almost anything you want delivered to your footstep.

Hope this article gives you a different perspective to look at everything in and around you with hope, optimism and curiosity. Until next time, stay safe!