The plan you don't need.
Dear friend,
Last week, the marks began to land.
This week, the next thing happened, almost automatically.
The plan started.
A new tutor. A new entrance test. A new branch. A new college. A new shape of the next four years, decided in fourteen days.
I want to write to you about why most of those plans are about to be wrong.
Two readers wrote back to last week's letter. Both worth listening to.
The first was a young woman finishing engineering. One week left in her course. Friends placed, she isn't, and it has been hurting.
She said something I've been turning over since.
She said time is healing it. And the community of people who care about her is healing it.
She didn't write asking for a better plan. She wrote because sometimes it is easier to say the hard thing to a stranger.
She is doing the right work. It just doesn't look like a plan.
The second was a 17-year-old who has been building brands and startups for the last four or five years. He just finished 12th. He is choosing an institution now. Not to become a builder. To find a building large enough to hold what he is already doing.
Two replies. Same lesson, opposite directions.
The plan didn't deliver one of them. The other never had one.
Both are doing fine.
This week at Let's Enterprise, our first-year students are getting ready for their first apprenticeships. Twelve months in, they have learned how to think, how to work, how to sit inside discomfort. Now we send them into a real workplace.
A girl came to me a few days ago.
"What if I'm not sure which industry I want to work in? I'm so confused. How can I apply for an apprenticeship?"
I told her this.
You don't start with clarity. You start.
Clarity comes from action plus reflection. You cannot reflect on anything if you haven't done anything.
The first apprenticeship is not the place where you choose your industry. It is like the first coat of paint on a canvas. It is not the painting. It is the surface that makes the painting possible.
You taste what a workplace feels like. You notice what energises you and what drains you. You meet a few real people. You come back changed in small ways.
That is the only useful thing the first plan can do.
I want to say something now that most 17-year-olds, and most of their parents, don't get told.
The perfect plan you are trying to make for your child this month is impossible.
Not because of the world. Because of you.
You have never made a plan and watched it fail. Or, more honestly, you have, but you don't trust the data yet.
Only after you have made many plans and watched them break, can you make one that holds. Because only then do you know what to anticipate.
The first plan a 17-year-old makes will be wrong.
That is not a flaw.
That is the whole point.
So the question is not, what is the right plan?
The question is, what is the smallest thing they can start today that will teach them what they do not yet know about themselves?
A first apprenticeship. A first project. A first reply to a stranger online. A first plan that fails by November.
Each one is a coat of paint. None of them is the painting.
Excellence comes from the willingness to put down a coat that you know will be covered later.
Plans don't compound. Work does.
In gratitude,
, Adi
Building India's 1st Working BBA
Write back. I read every reply.
PS. To the engineer who wrote in this week. You are not behind. Time is the right teacher right now. So is the community. You are paying attention. That is the work.
This week's recipe: Tadka dal.
Tadka dal is what you cook when there is no recipe.
You have dal in the house, almost always. You have ghee, jeera, hing, garlic, a chilli or two. The plan is barely a plan.
The taste comes from how you read the kitchen that day. How hot the pan. How fresh the garlic. How long you wait between the jeera and the hing. Whether the tadka finishes in pure ghee, or whether ghee plus a teaspoon of mustard oil makes more sense for what you ate last night.
The recipe is the wrong question.
- One cup of toor dal (or yellow moong, or a mix)
- Half a teaspoon of turmeric
- Salt to taste
- Three cups of water
- Two large spoons of ghee
- One teaspoon jeera
- A pinch of hing
- Three cloves of garlic, smashed (skip if you don't do garlic)
- One dried red chilli (two if you like heat)
- One small green chilli, slit
- A teaspoon of red chilli powder, added off the heat at the end
- Curry leaves if you have them
- A handful of fresh coriander to finish
Pressure cook the dal first with turmeric, salt, and water. Three whistles. Switch off. Let the pressure go down on its own.
For the tadka, heat the ghee. Drop the jeera. When it crackles, add the hing, then the smashed garlic, then the dried chilli. Wait until the kitchen starts smelling like it has plans of its own. Add curry leaves last, take it off the heat, and only then stir in the red chilli powder so it stays red and doesn't turn bitter.
Pour over the dal. Sprinkle the coriander on top.
Eat with rice or roti. Or alone, like soup.
Notice that the dal you make today will not be the dal you make next Tuesday. Next Tuesday's dal will be better. Because today's dal taught you something about your stove that no recipe could.
The same is true for the next four years your child is about to start.
The first attempt will be off. The next one will be closer. By the third one, they'll know what is theirs.
Wait for that.
Unsubscribe here in case you don't wish to receive my weekly letter Eat. Play. Love.
[unsubscribe]