Year of Discovery (Week 8: Daily Schedule, Disrupting Traditional Industries)

I’ve been intentional about publishing my YoD pieces every Wednesday, but I slipped up this week. It was a classic case of writing a whole piece yesterday to discover that it didn’t save when I clicked ‘Publish’. So here goes again.

Over this last week, I’ve been conscious about what it means to come back to Kenya, where I’ve lived almost 1/3 of my life. The shift in the environment when I went to South Africa was so important for me to launch my Year of Discovery through meeting new people and engaging in new ideas. I was afraid that coming back to Kenya would spoil me with the comforts of familiarity and in an environment of habit, and I wouldn’t have the same drive for discovery.

I was definitely mistaken. While I gained incredible habits (in reading and other idea-generating activities) in SA, I’ve been feeling like I want to shift my time from consumption into creation again and Kenya as felt like the right place to do so. As I’ve come back to Kenya, the 1:1s I’ve had with people also in YoDs has been inspiring and I’m feeling more energized about new potential ideas.

Perhaps it’s also apt that today, I got a Facebook reminder that it’s been 7 years to the date since Frank Tamre and I founded Moringa School.

How I Set Up My Days

A number of people have reached out to me asking about how I structure my days during my Year of Discovery so I’m spending part of my reflection this week sharing this. Every person has their own habits and routines that work for them (with varying amount of structure), so I would take my structure with a grain of salt. If it inspires anything, then I’m happy.

At the start of 2021, I knew I would not have as much structure once I joined the board of Moringa in March, so I crafted a document called: ‘Personal Goals: 2021’. In this document, there are 4 tabs:

• ‘My Why’: contains my 6 core values, my vision for the world, the identities I have and want to build, how I want to be in 2021 (‘make courageous decisions’)
• Annual Goals: split by 7 categories (finance, career, writing, relationship, language, discovery, read)
• Quarterly Goals: split by 8 categories that feed into the annual goals (health, growth, North Star, discovery, Moringa, write, relationship, language) and 6 enabling habits that allow me to accomplish those goals (Soul — therapy/coaching, Food, Breathe — meditation, Spirit — journaling/writing, Sleep, Daily Reset — morning routine)
• Ongoing Projects: tracks different hypotheses I’m testing through conversation and prototyping

Each Sunday, I re-center myself on ‘My Why’ and my quarterly goals and create my weekly goals that enable me to move closer to my quarterly goals. And each quarter, I review how I did against my quarterly goals and set up my next quarter’s goals aligned to my progress and my annual goals.

It’s not so dissimilar to setting up company annual and quarterly goals, and for me, this was important so that I truly live my days based on what is most important to me. It’s also helped me ground myself instead of feel anxious without structure. That being said, even though I have goals each week, I also leave ample time for spontaneity (a last-minute lunch with a friend or call with a big thinker someone has introduced me to or excursion to a new coffee shop).

Some questions to reflect on:

• How much structure do you need in a Year of Discovery or even while working to make sure your life has the balance you want?
• How do you balance spontaneity with structure?

Jio’s Endgame

I’ve grown increasingly fascinated by the audacity and risk-taking of people who have had successful careers (Mukesh Ambani of Reliance/Jio, Michael Jordaan of FNB Bank and now of Rain, BankZero in South Africa) who reinvent themselves and go on to innovate in some of the hardest to disrupt industries. When I met Michael Jordaan in South Africa, I remember being uniqely at awe with how curious he is and how he continued to say that he was always learning. For me, it’s always inspiring when someone understands ‘success’ as an external cultural element and is able to wave that away to remain true to their curiosity and drive, allowing those to guide who they are, what they do and how they live. Continuing to adopt a true beginner’s mindset without allowing ‘success’ to get to one’s head is always the most inspiring to me.

Through learning about Jio, it’s fascinating to me that when a person builds or innovates when they have nothing to prove to themselves or the world, the possibilities are limitless. Jio is doing something no other infrastructure, product + service, operating system, device, telco or technology company has done in the world.

In history:

• There’s never been a successful example of a telco going up the stack.
• There’s never been a successful example of a consumer app (product + service) going all the way down the stack.

And Jio is proving otherwise. Telcos in India are all responsible for making India the cheapest market for data in the world, while you pay one of the highest prices in the world just to participate in this market and Mukesh Ambani in his drive and ambition was able to disrupt the industry despite the challenges.

Questions I’m reflecting on:

• What types of leaders inspire me and why? Which leaders do I aim to emulate?
• What traditionally old industries are ripe for disruption? How can I break them down to understand the inefficiencies and the opportunities?
• In understanding various industries, how does that align with my purpose and my ikigai?

What I’m reading this week: All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou