Am I unstuck?
Well, folks, today’s the day.
This evening - approximately four hours after my writing this line - the first cohort of Unstuck kicks off. Utsav and I have been preparing for this moment for months. It’s the most ambitious project either of us have undertaken.
What makes it exciting is not the potential of how it could change our lives - but how it might change those of our participants.
I am aware that previous statement might sound very self-important, but dare I say, what we hope to bring about actually does help participants find a better sense of themselves, gain career direction, and live more intentionally. Don’t get me wrong - I’m immensely proud of the other things I’ve done - The 6% Club has mentored 300+ folks through their creative projects, and Rough Paper continues to meaningfully help businesses and entrepreneurs with useful marketing advice. But what Unstuck seeks to solve is something more ambitious.
As Utsav put it: With The 6% Club, we’re solving people’s third or fourth priority (having a creative outlet, the itch to express, etc. With Unstuck, it’s closer to the first - if not the first. The introductions of the 19 folks who’ve signed up for the inaugural cohort certainly reflects that: many are counting on us to help them decide what to do next in their careers, and what to prioritise in their lives after years of struggling.
Gulp.
Listen - I don’t want to make it sound like I have all the answers. This is my opening slide for today’s introductory session:
In fact, if you’d told me five years ago that I would be running a program where I’m helping people design their own lives, I’d have thought the vaccine did have side effects.
If I rewind the clock even further to ten years ago - May 2016 - I myself would have been an ideal candidate for the program my future self would start. I was floundering in advertising - with the rose-tinted glasses with which I viewed the industry as a MICA aspirant long losing their hue. I wasn’t sure where to go, finding no purpose and joy in what I was doing beyond sneaking indie music riffs into strategy decks - when a lifeline from OML came, to handle marketing for a music festival I had admired for years (thank you, ASR & TY). The next couple of years had their ups and downs and moments of self doubt, when I decided to work for myself starting 2019 (and helping me make this decision was one of my closest friends - who, fittingly, was the first ever person to sign up for Unstuck).
I have many lessons from freelancing and even more people to thank for making it work - in retrospect that would be the most important career decision I’d ever make. My partner in life would join me, becoming my partner in LLP as well. As Rough Paper, we would end up working on several projects - learning along the way, repaying clients’ trust, building the confidence to say no, partnering with some fantastic people. Personally too, many experiments happened - a digital marketing course during the pandemic (which birthed this newsletter), teaching at a university, starting new creative projects, shifting cities, and of course, starting The 6% Club and now Unstuck. More importantly, it helped me focus on fitness, and ask deeper questions of myself (abetted by my therapist). Right now, I think I’m in the most sorted space I ever was.
Reading those last two paragraphs, I realise I made the journey sound inevitable and painless - it was hardly that. Let me assure you it was nothing but that. There were tears, there was crippling self-doubt, many times I wondered if I was wrong to leave a salary at all, there were fights, there were angry client mails (one damning thing about working for yourself is that the buck stops with you, and you can’t blame anyone else for work-related misery arising out of choices you made).
Figuring sh*t out
In end-2023, my head (and, if I was being honest, relationship with work) was a bit of a mess, even if everything looked fine on LinkedIn (doesn’t it always). I pulled out a giant notebook I’d never used before and declared to myself I would use it to figure shit out. I grandly wrote on its cover:
Chuck’s great figure-out-orama of 2023-2026
I had no idea what the fuchsia I was going to write in there, but it felt good to just scribble that on the first page. Why 2026? I dunno, maybe 3 years seemed a decent time frame to have stuff figured out? Ideally I should have shit sorted out by the time I turned 40, but that would be less than a year away. I would turn 42 in 2026 so that seemed like a poignant way for a HHGG fan to have stuff figured out.
Over the next few days, I wrote a few things. I never journalled or kept a diary, so this seemed damn tough. So I started giving myself prompts. What are the things that are going right in life? What are you proud of? What happened this week you wish you could rewind and erase? Some of these are questions I never really asked myself and answered honestly. Maybe because I was scared to dig deeper, maybe because I thought the exercise was futile and the time would be better utilised listening to a Scott Galloway podcast.
Over time, I would ask more questions of myself, and get more comfortable being in my own head. As a child, one of my more eccentric tendencies was to have a “set of friends” in my head with whom I’d have conversations. They even had personalities - the naughty one, the smart one, the rebel. This habit never went away, and with my newfound comfort reflecting, I realised I’d upgraded my coterie of pals to a… council. They still retain their childhood personalities, but now with designations like the rational one and the playful one.
BTW, some people think “having imaginary friends” is weird, so if you prefer using 2026 parlance, you can them mental digital twins. Dang, sounds like a startup idea now!
Since I was hovering around 40, mindfulness seemed like a good thing to do - it helped me let go of many things, be more confident in the choices I did make, and generally get more out of what I paid attention to.
The quote “Pay attention to what you pay attention to” - by author Amy Rosenthal - became a tenet. I’m thinking of getting it tattooed.
So thanks to a combination of reflection, mindfulness and therapy, things started changing. All this helped me take the tough decision of quitting my university part-time job, improve my relationship with music, stay more focused in whatever I was doing, and realising that a kickass weekend getaway four hours away with a view like this can give you as much joy as an international vacation, at 1/50th the price.
Last year, I wrote about how I was finding my own internal algorithm - a slightly nerdy term for getting to know myself better.
How Unstuck came to be
It was around the same time Utsav and I were wrapping up our 6th cohort of The 6% Club, and wondering if there was something more we could do. Now, unlike me, my co-founder had his head sorted since he was born. An apocryphal tale goes that instead of crying like regular newborns, he recited Rumi to the attending doctor who would subsequently take up meditation and slow travel.
Interestingly, both of us kind of arrived at the idea of “helping people find life direction” independently, through different routes.
Utsav was always very find-your-values-rest-will-follow, while I had done sessions on freelancing and done some career consulting with several folks - often getting into other areas like hobbies and fitness to live a more balanced life.
Our thinking converged. WhatsApp “what ifs” became Google Docs. The first version of the idea was called…
Things moved fast.
We wrote out out a draft of the program. Many validated the need for it. We got lots of useful feedback. One (who would also go on and join the program’s first cohort) coined the name Unstuck. My therapist became our technical advisor. We decided to use our income tax refund to hire a kickass agency, Ping Pong, to develop our visual identity, website and this beautiful kit that goes to every participant.
In 2.5 hours from writing this line, we kick off our first cohort, and Roshan Abbas himself is taking a masterclass for us. This has now become a part of life and my LinkedIn profile. It truly is a remarkable conclusion to “Chuck’s great figure-out-orama of 2023-2026”.
But wait... Am I unstuck, myself?
While I was writing the copy for the Unstuck site, I kept asking myself that question. It’s not like I’ve figured it all out, I still have lots of self-doubts, questions and problems. If I’m not Unstuck, what authority do I have to give gyaan on the topic?
One slide we show in a 6% Club session is :
In The 6% Club, Utsav and I were coming from the point of view of (some) authority - we’d done several content projects between us, and know how it’s done. With Unstuck, we were more like peers. Highly observant peers, but peers nonetheless. We are also in this journey of getting unstuck.
A question I am very fond of is - what does your ideal day look like? Not the outsized day (eg - for a writer, winning the Booker or even publishing a book), but the average day (the writing, the research, the rejection, the actual work). It’s a pithy but powerful way of arriving at what you want out of life.
Where I am right now - working for myself, running a company with my wife, running another company with one of my best friends, living in a gorgeous home, in the best physical shape of my life - is something that would have seen mad ambitious when I was still in advertising. But even then, there’s so much more I want to do, many things I’m dissatisfied about. My goalposts for my ideal day have shifted - in a good way. The ambition is sharper. In fact, I’ve made a medium-term plan for myself, with yearly goals through 2029. Life is a constant process of experimenting, reflecting, iterating - just like any good process improvement.
Maybe one does not ever fully get unstuck, and life is about constantly iterating and trying to be better - a mindful hedonic treadmill, if you will. Anyway, it’s too late to change the program URL from getunstuck to stayunstuck :)
Utsav - remember, the most sorted person I know - opened up introductions on the freshly-minted Unstuck WhatsApp group by talking about a vulnerability of his, ie, what he himself was stuck with.
I suppose what makes us qualified to run this program - apart from what I’ve written officially here - is that we’ve both gotten good at extracting meta-lessons and frameworks from experiments and experiences. That is certainly true for me - and the number of notebooks and scribbles I’ve made in the last two years is testament to that.
And as the relatively more messed up of the two of us, I joke with Utsav that I should be the R&D department of Unstuck. Maybe I should stop calling that a joke.
We are indeed peers - constantly trying to live a little more unstuck everyday, trying to guide others who are in various stages of unstuck-ing themselves.
The ideal day keeps getting more ideal - and that’s not a bad thing, because - cheese alert - the journey is what’s important. You figure out who you are, what your values are, what you care about, and all that. The ideal day is not an end goal in itself, it’s just a compass (a sentiment Utsav articulates beautifully here).
Finding your own flow
A core belief Utsav and I have is that change is possible. Just because you’ve been going with the flow doesn’t mean you’re destined to stay on that path forever.
Change in career is possible1.
Change in identity - no matter how small or big - is possible2. Especially if it’s self-imposed.
Change of health situation is possible3. No matter how old you are.
Change of where you stay is possible4.
Change of interest and hobby is possible.
Change in so much else is possible. And for things that can’t actually be changed - how you deal or react to it, can be5.
It’s very liberating to think that it IS possible live life on your terms. But first, it’s important to figure what those terms are. It’s also liberating to know that any value or goal is okay, as long as you articulate and justify it, and also consider trade-offs (there are always trade-offs. Always)
Perhaps you ARE money-driven. That’s fine! But ask yourself why, and what you’re willing to sacrifice. You can’t have it all.
Maybe you say you want to live a creative life. That’s lovely! But know that it has less immediate market value, and involves more gruntwork than is publicly visible. And maybe that creative itch can be scratched without blaming the soulless tech job that actually bankrolls it (just a little perspective shift).
Maybe, you vaguely know you just want to help others. Lovely. But don’t leave it at just a slogan - ask who you can help, and how.
None of what we are planning to talk about at Unstuck is a trade secret or some secret formula we have cracked. It’s just forced reflection and articulation to arrive at the answers that are already in participants’ heads. Everyone can benefit from just asking themselves the seemingly simple, but actually bloody hard questions to answer.
What do you want out of life? What are the strengths you have you are not utilising? What makes you happy (oh boy, this one’s a doozy)? What are your values6? What does your ideal day look like?
Make up your own prompts. Heck, ask ChatGPT to generate a bunch for you. Get a paper and pen. Trust me, it’ll help.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure how this post was going to end up when I started.
Do I just say - hey, we’re starting Unstuck today, wish us well. Do I want to give some grand gyaan and frameworks for getting Unstuck to entice some of you to sign up for the next cohort? Do I disregard all of that and go back to my comfort zone of how tech impacts music?
I thought - well, let it just be stream of consciousness, I’ve blocked out a couple of hours for it anyway. So I started with “today’s the day” and just went from there, with no idea how things would go. Maybe - in the spirit of my own program’s ethos - I needed to just write to see what I really felt.
And what I feel is this: It feels like my entire life, perhaps Utsav’s too - has been building up to this. All my experiences at work, all my failings, all my therapy visits, all my scribbles, all my content experiments, all my reflection with ‘council’ members… have led to this. I’m not saying this to make Unstuck feel like some grand thing I was destined to do, but it feels like the right thing for now. And if doesn’t work out, it’ll give me enough data to do whatever comes next. Isn’t that the true Unstuck spirit?
Perhaps that’s the toughest question of all to answer. What if everything that happened in your life so far, has happened so you take the step you know you need to?
If you made it this far, thank you. This was one heck of a ramble, but it feels good to get it off my chest.
Stay Unstuck.
Chuck
I pivoted twice, and made it work.
It’s a small thing, but letting go of “the music curator” tag I foisted upon myself was hugely liberating. More on that here.
I was a fat blob in 2014. I worked hard at it, and put on muscle at the ripe ol’ age of 38. My sleep - once my bugbear - has gotten substantially better. My mental health is leagues above where it was when I first went into therapy.
For what we were doing, Divya and I decided we didn’t need to stay in a small house in Mumbai anymore. Our shift to Pune has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We don’t have ALL of Mumbai’s conveniences, but it also forced us to think about what we value.
If you’re skeptical about this, I highly recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. If someone who was in a concentration camp and lost all his loved ones can find meaning in life… then some of us who are irritated with our B2B SaaS job surely can.
More power to you, mate!! Stay unstuck - it helps others in unseen ways as well :)
Such a great example of good rambling...the consequence of regular reflection! You and Utsav just continue to inspire your cohorts of TSPC..all the very best!!