I survived my MSc. program in France by being [basically] totally broke. I was seriously in money-saving mode. I was mainly eating a sandwich a day. Or if I want to really spoil myself, I would buy a 3 euro lunch meal at the university cafeteria and consider that a restaurant meal.

I didn’t feel pity and I still don’t.

I was completely content and I really didn’t care much.

All I cared about was that the outcome of all this. The outcome in my head is that I will start generating income as soon as I finish my master. And I did. I was hired for a Software Engineering role in Squla, a startup in the Netherlands. I was taking home more salary than any other engineer at the same level, even when they were 3+ years already in the company.

I don’t want to glorify the grind. But maybe I do. The thing I’m thinking about here is how hardship and discomfort, not comfort, is what pushes us beyond what we normally think we can do. It’s there where we most grow. Where we most must persist.

We can apply this everywhere: going without food for an extended period of time, have an extra lengthy, extra heavy gym session, running a double distance, implementing and deploying a technology in a very short, very constrained amount of time (I remember when I did this in Neurofenix’s backend with Serverless SLS stack), starting a business and timebox it, reading Aquinas’ Summa Theologica in couple of months (haven’t done it), Turning over a team performance under 1 month (have done it), being completely off (really off), being completely on (focused).

I’m thinking how can I create this for myself on a regular basis. And how I would teach this to my kids in the future – how to create these manageable hardships for them. The deliberate discomfort.

I don’t have the answer now. But I must do it.

Writing this now reminds me of Seneca and stoicism.

Let the man speak for himself:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.

Seneca from Moral Letters to Lucilius

Salam, peace.