Neil Kakkar

I have been in a lot of stress lately because of the workplace dynamics. Initially I couldn’t even know if it’s actually work related or if I am going through some kind of health issues. After thorough investigation I kind of realized its mostly the work pressure which is acting on my nerves and causing me to trip. Here is the rough approach I followed to start debugging myself.

Physical: 3 major components...

Sleep: Are you getting the right quantity and quality of sleep.

Exercises: Are you getting enough physical activity? Make sure your routine involves some sort of sport which you are excited about and one which takes you out in nature and sunlight.

Nutrition: Monitor what you are putting in your body and more importantly when. Cook food, real food. Make sure you are taking the necessary supplements like Vitamin D( most are deficient).

Mental:

Meditation: I am still trying to get the hang of it. Hearing a lot of great things and trying to spend at least half an hour in a sit.

Journaling: Game changer for me. https://neilkakkar.com/the-human-log.html

Learning: Last but not the least reading, listening or watching to new and interesting ideas and people.

Spiritual:

This is personal and you need to sit with yourself and analyse what's working and what’s not. Take some time off and listen to yourself. This is always the most tricky one.

Hope this rambling is of some value! Cheers!

UK doesn't have 18% inflation, that is just a projection from Citigroup [0] (if gas prices continue to grow it will probably get there, like the rest of Europe). Inflation is at 10.1%.

I'm not sure why you say 'low salaries'. Adjusted by cost of living, salaries are not that low [1]. Median (removes those salaries from 'money laundering industries') salary in London is almost £39.7k [2]. Adjust that by cost of living, and it is higher than median income in San Francisco or NYC [3].

Infrastructure is miles better than the US. Public transport, while expensive, works quite well. The US has virtually no public transport whatsoever.

Housing and renting is expensive in every major city, it is not a problem exclusive to the UK.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/22/uk-inflation-will-hit-18-per-cent-in-early-2023-says-leading-bank-citi-gas-electricity

[1] https://neilkakkar.com/salary-calculator-by-city.html

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/416139/full-time-annual-salary-in-the-uk-by-region/

[3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,newyorkcitynewyork/HSG010221

Edit: format

When I moved countries I looked at 3 things

* Quality of life assuming same standard of living
* Culture and things to do beyond tourist stuff
* If I saw myself in the place for at least 5years

Going to a new country is a huge move, so be 100% sure you will like the city you'll settle and the company you will work for. Once you are there, going back will be financially and emotionally expensive.

Work is work, the pay seems good, just check the true conversion beforehand in sites like this https://neilkakkar.com/salary-calculator-by-city.html

Also make plans to visit your folks regularly if money is no issue.

In regards to the sort of job you'll be performing, maybe you could apply your skills to automate the boring stuff?

Besides that, make sure to be flexible about what you eat and find friends outside work. Invest in building a social circle. I have seen many foreigners that were miserable because they never made real effort to make the new country home and kept missing the old country.

I think you'd like this post I wrote: https://neilkakkar.com/agentic-debt.html , parts of why I think we wouldn't get automated away just yet. It might be true eventually - and when it does happen, I'm sure I'll find something else to do, most probably up the stack. Managing for now seems like a terrible task for agents. I need to guide them to the right solution.

_Parts_ of what I write are drudgery, which gets automated away. The "why" we talk about in sync, so it's much less of an issue in general.

When I say management, I mean more like a staff engineer or a tech lead, rather than a traditional manager.

The referenced idea of a 'human log' is great[0]. I started doing something similar 4 years ago and it eventually evolved from per-project notes into a full diary. Being able to search for 'August 24 2016' and know exactly what I did that day is quite powerful.

I encourage anyone to take 10 minutes(or 30...) at the end of the day to write up what they've done. Just a text file with minimal formatting has scaled to 2.6MB of hand-typed text. Though, after a bit, I've tended to shard out specific long-running topics into their own files.

[0] https://neilkakkar.com/the-human-log.html

Time to pull up my RSS reader!

https://drewdevault.com/

http://jvns.ca/

https://www.benkuhn.net/

https://danluu.com/

https://scattered-thoughts.net/

http://antirez.com/

https://www.kalzumeus.com/

https://neilkakkar.com/

https://zachholman.com/

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/

https://endler.dev/

https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/

https://www.the-paper-trail.org/

https://tonsky.me/

https://dave.cheney.net/

https://blog.wesleyac.com/

https://blog.samaltman.com/