Utkarsh Amitabh argues that short, practical experiments like trying new roles or starting projects beat waiting for clarity. He traced his own path through sports, acting, engineering, and entrepreneurship, discovering he's a community builder. He's launching a Network Capital fellowship for 50 people to run their own experiments.
Chapters
Hi everyone, I'm Utkarsh. Today I'm here to talk to you about the importance of micro experiments in figuring out what we want to do with my lives and the problems we want to work on, the people we want to work with. And it's such a tricky problem, right? We have multiple curiosities, multiple areas of interest. I for me, I began by being interested in sports and acting, went on to study engineering, then got a liberal arts degree that got an mba, worked at Microsoft, became an entrepreneur. Along the way, there have been so many instances where I've been asking myself, you know, what is it that I want to do with my life? And ultimately I figured out that community building and applying my skills and working with a wide range of people to help them figure out what problems they were most curious about. This entire process of building this ecosystem, this architecture, made me realize that essentially at heart, I am a community builder. If I were to trace my life and look at some of the most momentous steps that I took, those were the micro experiments that I did when I wanted to test whether I was good enough as an actor, whether I really enjoyed the process or not. I. I went and auditioned for hundreds of roles in major and small theater productions, films. One of my movies recently aired on Amazon prime. And I can't help but reflect or remember the time when I went from the for the audition. I was living about 100, 120km away from where the audition was. The role was, was a meaningful one, but not a particularly big one. But the whole journey I kept thinking about the character. How might I portray that person? How can I do justice to the role? It wasn't easy at that time in my life. I hadn't practiced much, I wasn't sure, but I was always curious and I went with it. It was slightly uncomfortable to start with, but ultimately I got better. I got the role, the movie became reasonably successful, then got on Amazon prime and I discovered something really critical about myself. Similarly, when it comes to writing this book that you see the seductive illusion of hard work, I didn't become a writer in one day. I wasn't even sure whether I was a good writer or the process, whether the process of writing energized me. But I decided to give it a shot. And writing became such a fantastic teacher to me. The process of putting pen to paper made me realize how I think the kind of writing that energizes me, what I need to read to be able to produce the kind of creative work that I'm most passionate about. This, this process of becoming a writer, trying to, you know, exceed whatever level I was at, helped me again discover something really critical. It, of course, resulted in a book, several articles, Network Capital, most importantly, and a wide range of areas that needed clarity. But I decided to just partake of that experiment and see where life goes. Similarly for community building, I didn't become a community builder. One fine day, I decided to start and see how I felt, adopting the mindset of a scientist, somebody who's going into a lab, the lab of life, not with a solution in mind, but a variety of experiments that he wants to design. I think that has been quite helpful for me in achieving clarity. And clarity is power. I often tell Network Capital community members. And because clarity is power, we have to drive home this point to ourselves that we're not going to get clarity or figure out our lives by sitting under the metaphorical apple tree and waiting for that apple to fall like it did in the apocryphal Isaac Newton story. The apple never fell on Newton's head. In reality, the apple will not fall on your head either. The only way you'll be able to figure out what you want to do with your life is by conducting experiments with the help of a community that trusts you, that you trust, and see how that goes. We're going to conduct a fellowship called I don't Know what I Want to Do With My Life Fellowship in, and we are accepting registrations for that right now. If you're interested, you can check out NetworkCapital TV. Go to the fellowships tab and scroll through the fellowship that drives your interest. It is one of the most popular fellowships of Network Capital, but we've decided to keep the cohort size small this time, so we'll be accepting 50 fellows. Feel free to join in. It'll be fun to discover what, what our true curiosities and passions are and how we can help each other conduct these micro experiments that can finally lead to the kind of curiosity that guides us into shaping a beautiful world, shaping a beautiful career, and a meaningful one at that. Once you do that for yourself, I think it behooves that you do it for others as well. I find some of my most successful, most accomplishments that I'm most proud of, ones where I've been able to add tangible value to others life. Doing so has given me a lot of meaning and some success. You might want to try it as well. So see you at NetworkCapital TV very soon. Take care. Have a great rest of the week.
