TTT 12: Give, Give, Give
Hi friends,
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City - let's get into it!
Thought I had
It’s easy to write about what you’re already doing.
It’s tough to write about what you’re an expert in and feel disengaged from.
I got to speak to my old manager, Louie Bacaj, last week about writing online.
He encouraged me to write more about being a Staff+ engineer in the industry. It’s easy to forget I jumped 2 levels from Staff (E5) to Distinguished (E7) in less than 3 years. Most people never even make it to Staff.
In his words, “You’ve done in 3 years what most people take 30 years to do. I know you’d kill it.”
It’s important to remember in the internet game you have to give 19 times for every ask you make. And you can only give in what you’re an expert in. Talking about things you’re learning can be an ask; especially the more you’re on the “figuring things out” side.
I appreciate you, Louie, for reminding me to give more.
Be on the lookout for an essay from me on software things next week :)
Thing I did
I Facetime Video’ed my aunt, Aru Periamma, and we practiced speaking Tamil on the phone for 15 minutes!
It went super well!
The next step is to start recording the conversations. Viewing the recording after will allow me to build story stax for the new vocab, verbs, and colloquialisms. This is how we layer semantics onto language learning “by ear”.
The other benefit to recording conversations is that I will have raw material to edit into TikToks to show how these techniques of learning “by ear” have improved my own Tamil speech.
I’ve had multiple strangers reach out to me in my DMs on Instagram noting how I’ve improved so much even just over the last 6 weeks with just random Tamil sentences I’ve spoken on my stories.
Looking forward to “showing” over there and explaining “how” in my newsletter.
Tweet I loved
I never noticed I do this when buying.
When you feel heard/seen, you’re much more likely to buy. The buying is actually 2 or 3 layers away from where you need to meet people. Something to keep in mind when marketing a small bet.
I'd love to hear any feelings you felt while reading this and until next time - be easy.
Love,
Janahan
P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to forward this email to your people or share this link. It'll encourage me to keep writing!