I bought a GoPro and a DJI drone with no plan for either.
For a while I just flew the drone, around the flat, nothing on the line, and nothing came of it.
Then I went to Infosys, the company I worked for, and asked if I could fly it over the Mysore campus and shoot a hyperlapse of the building.
I had never made anything like that before. I didn't know if they'd say yes. I didn't know if what I made would be any good, even if they did.
Pata nahi tha haan bolenge ya nahi. Bas pooch liya, jo hoga dekha jaega.
They said yes.
I posted the video. It crossed a million views. A startup in Bangalore saw it and gave me my first job outside Infosys. The video that did it was one I'd made for the company I still worked at, because I'd asked if I could make it.
I'd always assumed "figure it out as you go" meant doing the thing quietly, seeing what happens, dealing with it later. Jo hoga dekha jaega.
I've started to notice this is closer to how most of my real growth has happened than any plan I've ever written down is less like "I researched this and decided." and more like "I had no idea what they'd say, asked anyway, and built whatever came next on top of the answer."
What actually increased, jump after jump, wasn't how much I knew walking in. It was how much I was willing to not know, out loud, in front of someone who could say no to my face.
For Digital marketing, I quit fast enough to know it wasn't mine. Video editing, I got decent at by doing it badly in public for a year. Design, the thing I'm doing right now, writing this: still finding rooms inside it I didn't know to knock on.
People ask me now how I made the jump from engineering to design. Like there was a clean jump. Like I knew where I was flying.
There wasn't. I didn't.
I still don't know if this note is any good. Posting it anyway.