The glorified hustle

It has been almost a decade since I’ve started working as a Healthcare IT.

We have always dreamt of a shared platform that will make all health care problems simpler to solve. It should be a common place to educate, connect and rolling out solutions that are cheap, secure and scalable.

And as the first employee, my biggest commitment was to make that platform alive and growing.

That is what’s starting-up about, isn’t it ?
Working hard on your ideas, grinding, crunching and everything ?

Except it isn’t! Especially when you are working on Healthcare.

There is an irony I’ve found in this industry: It is those who are trained to take care of others’ health often have to neglect that of their own.

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The wake up call

The year is 2023.

We have been so hopeful when it kicked off, as COVID had been finally over.
I wouldn’t have even remotely suspected how calamitous the year could possibly become.

After years of work swallowing personal and family time, my lifestyle’s gone pretty much sedentary and my body went out of shape. To be honest, I have been noticing and trying to resume frequent badminton sessions by then.

And standing out of all the bad lucks of 2023, my knee ruptured after an accident on badminton court.
So my first ever surgery had to be done.

The early part of the recovery process has surely given me some bitterness I’ve never felt my entire life:

The loss of freedom.

• No freedom to move around
• No freedom to do basic personal hygiene like bathing or going to the loo.
• Lack of mobility also surrounds me with depressive thoughts

Only then have I realised that I would NOT even trade my mobility for creating the next unicorn.
Nah, not going to happen. Not in my lifetime

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Start with Health

So the first priceless lesson learnt: nothing is as precious as your health.
But more often than not, nobody notices that until it starts fading away.

• Without health, money or success is meaningless as you would suffer most of the time instead of enjoying them.
• Without health, quality of time is depreciating too as you would spend much of time fixing your health.
• Without health, there is simply NO happiness
  A normal healthy body is essential for a fulfilling life.

Another lesson learnt: boundaries are important.
The earlier you learn to set it the better.

My recovery process has been slow but steady since that wake-up call. And in the attempt to put health on top priority, these are what I’ve done (but more details on that for another post):

• Increase the amount of weekly exercises (2-3 x Swimming, 2 x Walking)
• Daily cold exposure to boost dopahmine and immune system
• Adjust my diet and lose weight (- ~4kg)
• Try out intermittent fasting. It works somewhat but with some side effects

Our company’s motto right now changes: Healthy first, World second.