Why the hell am I even doing this?

I am not sure how many of us question our decisions, despite having made them logically and having extensively, if not exhaustively, evaluated the risks and benefits. I can speak for myself. The questioning comes in two doses. The first is frequently worrying about the future value of the decisions. The second is periodically, and deeply, wondering why the hell I am doing whatever it is – are the reasons intrinsic, or extrinsic? Meaningful or stemming from the need to elevate a self? Does it bear any usefulness for the community?

Warren Buffet, someone I have learnt one or two things from, in his 2022 annual letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., says, “Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: if you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.”. My Data Science career has profoundly benefited from teaching. I have grabbed almost every chance to teach because of how much I learn and understand the concepts. Part of my plans is to soon attempt to explain statistics theorems and corollaries and machine learning to my 3 year old, and see how well I actually understand them. Anyone who opens up to a conversation with me knows how much I, annoyingly maybe, attempt to talk through various philosophical ideas to get clarity and congruence in my thinking. I have rarely, if ever, done so in writing, in spite of my awareness of the usefulness. This is my attempt to change that.

I have continuously examined my reasons for building the Busy Being Born podcast, but I have not documented them. We have spoken about them, in passing, in some of our episodes, but the details are mostly in my head. Maybe after writing this, I will realize the inconsistency and incoherence in my reasoning, and choose to let it go. Ha.

I was captivated by learning through conversations in 2016, when (thanks to my good friend Sam Floy, whose ideas and personality I felt incredibly drawn to) I discovered Tim Ferriss. I will go as far as saying that I was finding my way back after a few years of letting go and living in quite an unexamined way. I was not living badly and my default setting was not immediately fatal but it had been and would continue to be a gradual path to unideal results, starting off with physical health, if I did not change course. I was looking in many places for material and concrete self-help and Tim’s podcast and books were the beginning of the rest of my life. I read and re-read the 4 Hour Body and got inspired every day by the world class performers on the show.

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Reid Hoffman

Beyond the changes I continued to make in my life and regaining more control of my personal trajectory, two things happened:

I became acutely aware of the missing context in this particular self-help genre.
Naturally, I was excited to share the lessons of this new found framing and get more people on board. I now like to blatantly think of the people who I choose to influence my thinking as cult figures. And what does a cult member do? They preach and preach, in a bid to make anyone and everyone a convert!

And thus, the Prime Your State Podcast was born. I bought a Microphone and a stand from Amazon and armed with my simple gear and self taught recording and audio editing software, set off to talk to young Kenyans I reckoned Africa would learn from. How do they prime their states for performance? Three episodes. Kaput. And like 95% of podcasts started, it was in the graveyard! Sound quality perhaps cringe worthy but the content, not so much! I was proud of what I was setting up nonetheless, even though in hindsight, I find it a bit embarrassing. I also found solace in Reid Hoffman’s advice on building products: ‘If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.’

PYS might not have gone far, but I continued to feel the itch, mostly from the first challenge above. I continued to listen to more Time Ferriss, and would go on to discover other phenomenal long form interviewers and eventually personal cult (Ha) leaders (Peter Attia, Guy Raz, Naval , Tyler Cowen etc) whose ideas, guests and conversations challenged and educated me, but the context continued/s to be missing. Of all the identities that this self has, African is up there, and the difference in context is not trivial when consuming and applying individual and community improvement strategies and tactics. The political, socio-economic, cultural setting is different, and that plays a fundamental role. Context is everything.

Kigondu and I have come a long way, moving from discussing our dating escapades for hours in our early 20s, to discussing philosophy and self improvement in our mid to late 20s. Maybe I planted the Podcast idea into Kigondu’s head, because that itch was still there. That and maybe, it was just meant to be. I was just sparking the natural movement towards this thing. Two is better than one. Kidole kimoja hakivunji chawa! It is very different from building PYS by myself, because Kigondu brings in enormous creative talent and energy, in addition to his networks in the creative industry that brought us to the studio where it all happens, run by a gem of a human being and creative. 27 Episodes in, and it still feels like day 1. Still, I get overflowing joy when Abu, the producer/sound guy/solid brother, cues us in. I am still learning, and enjoying the conversations with every guest. I am still laughing a lot in between the stories of busy being born. That is important to me – because we are all dying men. And dying men ought to laugh at every opportunity.

Beyond the delight I get from doing this, the present value for Kigondu and I and for our ~100 odd listeners, and the future value I believe it has, if not for anyone else, my offspring, it just happens that doing this is one of those near effortless tasks. Do not get me wrong, it is WORK; from booking guests to doing research on them, from finding mutually convenient time slots for the three involved parties to making the interviewees as comfortable as possible and so on. It however does not feel like work for me, especially when we get to the core of this – the conversation itself. I do not know how big of a part I have to play in that, but it has been the accumulation of some deliberate and unconscious reps, stacked on nature’s providence. It feels quite natural, and if I could frame it within the Ikigai framework, then this is a passion and mission. And maybe, just maybe, we can find our way to the center. If it does not happen, then that is what nature has allotted, and I will accept it. Reverence.

Stay busy being born!