Multi-dimensional Improvement
2021 is probably one of the busiest and most stressful year I’ve had so far. And this says a lot, considering I’ve been relatively busier than normal people and my life is naturally stressful. The growth spurt of eFishery, the funding round, and the lack of organization infrastructure to properly manage it, required me to work much longer hours, pressured me to handle more varied issues on daily basis. I had to take multiple managerial roles at once. There are many days when I had to start very early at 7 am and finish super late at 2 am, and kept working over the weekend. Even during a break, my brain seems to be constantly processing ideas, solving problems in the backlog, or planning what I need to do the following days.
Of course, I didn’t do this as a badge of honor coming from a toxic hustle culture. Or posted it in Instagram to show the world how inspiring I was as a founder. I did it based on necessities, there was no other option. Fortunately, this pays off. eFishery grew by 8 times last year. We have almost 30,000 farmers now, provided Rp440 billion loan to more to 7,000 farmers group, and sold tens of millions kilograms of feed and fish. We launched 3 core products and built an end-to-end digital ecosystem. We grew the team to 900 employees. eFishery is now the biggest feed and fish distributor in Indonesia, the agritech with highest loan channeling size in Southeast Asia, and the largest aquaculture technology company in the world.
Amid this growth rate in eFishery, as a CEO, I grew a lot too. My capability in business strategy, fundraising, and company building have improved by a large margin in a span of 1 year. I am now also a better leader, growing myself from someone who manages a small team, to the one that runs a 1,000 people organization. My skills in negotiation, financial model, organization designing, product development, and sales expansion have drastically upgraded. As the company grew 8 times, it’s safe to say that I also, professionally, grew that much.
This is good, isn’t it? I should be proud of it, shouldn’t I? Well, yes, if I see myself in a single dimensional identity: a professional who runs a company. Luckily, I refuse to that notion and still assess my own self as a human being. And when I do, I’m not that proud of the achievement. It does feel like I grew 8 times as a CEO, but the other dimensions of my life seems to be either contracted or stagnated. I don’t feel I’m 8 times a better husband, father, or son to my family. If any, it could be that I’m slightly a bit of a worse one, considering that I didn’t spend enough time this year to take that role suitably. I definitely a worse friend, because I don’t even put my energy to socialize and caring about anyone in my circle.
In a personal level, I don’t think I’m a better intellectual. Aside of business, I didn’t learn much last year. No new skills that I tried to master. No new topics that I explored arbitrarily. This is strangely different that years ago when I effortlessly feed my curiosity to read about existentialism, theoretical physics, or psychology. My mind hasn’t blasted off any new thoughts or ideas aside what I put in the company. Emotionally and spiritually, I’ve been staying where I was years ago. No progress on contentment. No new enlightenment and profound view about life. I haven’t discovered anything new about me deep inside, except what I already established years ago.
So, after I assessed myself more thoroughly in a complete construct, last year is not too endearing. If I put the fact that, socially, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, I haven’t been progressing that much, then I’m just a business manager who grows his skills, simply because he needed to. I’m merely a professional who is too busy to be home with his family, to be out with his friends, and to be deeply alone with himself. And this is just sad.
Improve the Unquantifiable
I’m not saying that 2021 is a bad year, of course. In fact, it was the best year for eFishery so far, so this was definitely one of the best years for me too and I’m genuinely grateful for it. However, spending my usual tradition of contemplating in my birthday in New Year’s Eve, and thinking deeply internally, left me with a slender of dissatisfaction about where I am now. Not that I’m not happy of who I am, but considering that time is finite and passes quickly, I should’ve done better. I should’ve been a better person in all dimensions of my life. I tried to jump into a resolution to plan a better 2022, until I realized that I need to figure out first the reason why. If I knew that I should improve in multi-dimensional ways, why didn’t I continuously make efforts to do so?
Well, I think, first of all, I was too busy to remember it. I was too occupied by the troubles at hand and short-term objectives, that I forgot that there are bigger goals in me that I need to proactively pursue. And secondly, it was hard to measure it. It’s easier to improve material or physical side of us, such as business, income, assets, and health. We can plan a resolution, and then take some metrics to calculate our improvement where it usually aligns. However, all of the other dimensions are intangible. How do we measure the improvement of our relationship or intellectual enlightenment? We can have a resolution like “spend more time with family”, but when we actually do, it might not directly impacting the relationship positively. We may plan to read 50 books, but it might not correlate with more understanding and original ideas in our mind.
And that’s where the problem lies. Unlike the business and income that we can easily build a quantified feedback loop to get an update about our progress, the intangibles are static and intuitive. We can’t just do it like checking our bank account to see whether our savings are increased. In order for us to assess the intangibles, we need to have a step back and comprehensively analyze it. And this is what I was missing when I was very busy. My fast-paced environment dragged me to run super quickly, so the short break to observe and examine my own self became a luxury.
The 2022 Resolution: More Breaks
Having said that, I have put down a list of resolution to improve every aspects in life, from the tangible to intangible ones, but the most important one would be to have more breaks. Not a break to go to a beach and sip a coconut, or to stay home and watch Netflix. But small monthly checkpoint to dive internally and be self-aware about the progress outside the quantifiable improvement. This needs to be broken down to small routines: a) weekly learning session to take random new topic to learn so my intellectuality would be stimulated, b) hanging out monthly with friends, and c) 2-hours slot every month to ponder on spiritual conception. And the monthly breaks would help me assess whether those routines are effective to improve my own state.
The materialistic targets, as I have been excel on this, are more straightforward. Yes, the goal is not at all simple and far more ambitious than before, but at this part, I have been grown so much as an entrepreneur and a leader. So, taking eFishery to be the largest aquaculture company in Indonesia and the biggest agritech in Asia would already be engrained in my muscles and is now part of my daily drive. It will still be hard, even harder than the prior years, but I’m now better equipped to achieve it, thanks to the busy and stressful 2021.
So, I think that is the true intangible outcome from last year: it rendered me to be a strong business leader, a competent operator. Now it’s time for me to put more of my time and energy to improve the other dimension of myself in 2022. By the end of next year, hopefully, I might also be a better father/husband, a clearer thinker, or a humbler person. All in all, hopefully it leads me to be a better human being that creates values to anyone around me.
