We’ve got problems life. In fact, life is made up of problems. And living your life is to solve them.

The author of the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, puts it like this - “Happiness comes from solving problems”.

I’ve never thought of it in this way. I feel real happy when I figure out a way to solve things. Even when checking off a todo list item, it’s bliss. Which makes me think - Are todos a list of problems we want to solve?

Yeah, right?

A crazy thing happened at the beginning of this new year.

I got a email from founder of an amazing app, that I respect, to check if I’m interested to work with him. In that, he mentioned that he listens to Learning Curve Pod and few episode have resonated with him. He liked our conversations, which was one of the reasons for that job offer.

This was a great news.

Brittik and I (co-hosts of the podcast) found ourselves getting excited over the fact that people are listening to our conversations. We discovered new energy to start back the podcast and try doing it consistently this year.

I've been tweeting from more than a year now and this is my thought process behind sharing lengthy content like blog posts.

Take advantage of the algorithm

People are lazy. And the algorithm wants to keep them lazy.

When you share just the link on Twitter, the algorithm doesn't distribute it much. Because that takes the user out of the Twitter platform. Even if it does, people wont open them.

Okay, that's a click-baity subject line. But I'm glad you opened.

This letter is about my routine which works for me. I have been consistent with this from more than an year now.

Coffee ☕️

I am a developer – I turn coffee into code. (Cliché, I know) But frankly speaking, I've been loving my coffee lately. You could say I wake up so I can drink it.

It's been some time since I sent a newsletter and this is pretty late that usual.

First of all, Happy new year! 🎉

I took up a challenge this month to write 30 essays in 30 days. I hope and I want to do it. If you want to follow the progress, here is the tweet thread that I'll be updating every day.

The subject of this letter describes what I was doing for the past 2 months.

This year I spent a lot of time working. A day job and a side project and a podcast which were demanding my time every week, constantly. I did not take any proper breaks. It didn’t feel I needed a break. I was enjoying and having fun with all of them.

Then it all came on me suddenly. Don’t know if I should call it burnout, but it is probably that.

I just stopped doing everything except my day job. And it felt nice. I didn’t want to spend my free time on anything other than relaxing.

Takeaways form SEO for Devs Course

I've been taking SEO for Devs course by Monica Lent. And I pick up a lot of valuable stuff from it. It is a free email course.

I still have to cover the last two emails from it, but I thought of sharing the stuff I've learnt and implemented on my websites, Stackblocks and aravindballa.com .

I highly recommend the course if you have a blog or a website running.

Hey, Does 11:30 CET sound good?

I get confused when ever someone asks me this. Even if I plan to master the conversion of one timezone, my friends are spread across the timezone.

I wanted to solve this problem.

I closed my eyes and visualised my skill repertoire to see what do I have at my disposal to solve this.

I consider myself somewhat lucky. Aren’t we all? There is some amount of luck involved in every successful person’s life.

A lot of things in life happen because of luck and nothing else. No physical effort can force it. No intelligence and no education can increase it. .

Friction is a necessary evil. It is both a boon and a bane. If there is zero friction in this world, you wouldn't walk, couldn't move stuff around, etc. If there is too much friction, things wear out and get damaged.

That's from your 8th standard Physics lecture. Snapping back to reality, having a sweet spot with the friction is crucial. You tend to do a task or a habit when there is less friction associated with it.

And when you have or create more friction to do a task, you are less likely to do it.

Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #23 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I’m trying a new audio experiment

Imagine you are out for a run. You have earphones plugged in and you are listening to great ideas from all over the world. You are into it for 9 minutes and one idea in particular gives you that “aha” moment. You somehow connect it your previous idea, and you are experiencing this jolt of joy.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #22 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Trying to do multiple things at once is not that fun. Side projects quickly start demanding more and more time from you. They never finish in a weekend.

But I think I’ve figured out a balance between side projects and day job, which works for me. At least for now.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #21 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

When I build apps or websites, the first thing I want to do is to write code. Because that is what I’m comfortable with and I like to write code. But with experience, I understood that without proper planning it will take multiple iterations to get to the final outcome.

And when . Not actual money, but time.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #20 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I told you that there will be no Hackletter this week and I’d be on a trek. Both of them didn’t happen. I had to cancel my trek in the last minute because of few emergencies.

Now on to this week’s letter…

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #19 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Side Project chit chat

If you don’t know it already, I’m working on a side-project. And trying to build in the public by tweeting when I work.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #18 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Don’t leave a bug unattended 🐞

With experience, I’ve learned that - it’s good to act on the bugs you detected immediately. That’s how we can build quality software.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #17 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

In this week’s letter, lets go meta and talk about how I do this.

It is not straight forward. And if you are looking to start your own, this isn’t probably the advice you should look at.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #16 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Being busy is not important. Working on the right things is. Even if you don’t work long hours, when you choose to work on things that are essential, you move close to your goals.

I now plan my weeks. I think about what has to be done in the week so that I get a little close to my goals. If I don’t plan things, I keep working on random things that come to me. It’s like . Planning helps me get that .

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #15 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

There wasn’t a letter last week because I wasn’t doing great mentally. The week was pretty rough. I went on a short vacation to a nearby hill station and things came back to normal. Not completely, but better.

Choosing to work vs Having to work

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #14 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I wrote an article on what I do before ending my coding sessions, at work and for my personal projects.