Dhawal Tank

Author: Dhawal Tank

  • The State is the Work

    In my work as a solopreneur, and in working with other solopreneurs, I find that the most difficult part of our work is not the work itself.

    The most difficult part of our work is being in the right state of mind. The right energy state.

    In a job, you are forced into a state. The workplace meetings, the expectations of someone in power, and team members keep us in check. We show up and do our work, even when it can grind us down.

    There’s a reason that half of us are unsatisfied at our work.

    But when we work for ourselves, the difficult part is cultivating this mental state. Sustaining it also takes effort.

    Instead of being unsatisfied in a job, we end up being unsatisfied and blaming ourselves. So we end up in this ebb and flow.

    For most of us, the day to day work itself is not hard to get into. It can be challenging, sure. But once you are in the swing of things, the work gets done.

    The hard part instead is to get into the state where we feel good about our work.

    We need rituals to support our work. This seems like a “soft” thing. After all, work is work and we can get it done wherever. But I think these rituals are the main part of work.

    These rituals can sustain us. These rituals cannot be mechanical. They must be deliberate, mindful, and real to us.

    What rituals support you?

  • Beyond My Capacity

    “I don’t have it in me to do this myself,” she said to me.

    She was the heiress to a global cosmetics empire based out of Asia.

    It was my first trip to Switzerland. I was taking in the stunning view of the Alps at the campus of the Symposium. I was having breakfast on the patio at the venue.

    Global leaders had come to discuss the future of work. All the sessions were interesting.

    But it was this conversation I had over breakfast that I remember the most after all these years.

    She was vibrant and full of energy. She was deeply interested in my story and gave me her full attention.

    I did not catch on who she was until we were well into the conversation. She told me her life story, growing up with the weight and expectations that comes with being an heiress.

    She told me about the responsibilities of her role. What it was like to be groomed from a young age to take on this role.

    “I honestly just pray and ask a higher power to guide me through these tough decisions. I really, truly, don’t have it in me to do this myself. And so far, it’s been working.”

    That honesty was disarming.

    Maybe it’s because we live in North America where these deeper philosophical or spiritual matters are brushed underneath.

    Where people aren’t this open about something so personal to them.

    But we have to accept that great leaders do more than just rely on their logic or intuition to guide them.

    There is an element of surrender. There is an element of trusting a higher power. There is prayer. There is faith.

    We pretend so hard that these things don’t matter.

    I’ve worked with some people who are so driven by logic that working with them becomes unbearable. I’ve seen these people have low empathy, low consciousness, and low respect for their team members. Not always, but often enough.

    They leave behind a trail of people who can’t wait to leave the door.

    But there are others who have a deep inner life. Filled with a deeper yearning and surrender to the mysteries of life.

    These leaders and their businesses are a class apart.

    I wonder what would happen if we became a lot more open about this dimension of life at work.

    We would probably make more holistic decisions, see ourselves and each other differently…and go home and sleep a bit more soundly.

  • The More We Give

    It’s a universal law that the more I help someone else, the more I end up helping myself. Thus the phrase, “In the joy of others, lies your own.”

    I was fairly stuck on a business challenge for the last few weeks. I was spending countless hours reading up on ways to deal with it. I had even experimented with ways to get past it.

    But nothing was working.

    I decided I needed a different approach to things.

    Enter the law of karma.

    You reap what you sow.

    I reached out to a friend who was feeling stuck on a completely different aspect of his life. He was spinning his wheels for a while on something.

    I entered the conversation with a desire to catch up and then find any way to help him.

    Just listening to him and asking him a few questions helped him get unstuck. I don’t think I did anything too substantial.

    The very next day, I was rewarded with an introduction to an industry titan by someone else entirely. This person easily gave me the idea I needed to break through.

    We don’t often see the threads of life and how they interact with one another.

    We don’t see the seeds we plant in one place sprout elsewhere.

    But it always does. And faith in this idea has been helping me give more unconditionally.

  • Users and Customers

    Only tech companies and drug dealers call their customers as users.*

    If that’s the case, then what story are we become addicted to when we show up here?

    Modern work is performative in nature. We talk about authenticity while being inauthentic.

    Business “leaders” talk about culture while creating toxic fumes at work with everyone who works with them.

    And on here?

    AI written posts with the same:

    • 🔥 emojis for neuron activation
    • 🌳 bullet points for extra padding
    • ✨and a bonus point for extra “value”

    With turns of phrases that sound the same–and repetitive.

    (Pro LLM users will note that em dashes are used all the time by AI)

    What would happen if we no longer thought of ourselves as users?

    What would purposefully using this place look like? What would purposefully engaging at work look like?

    Maybe taking charge of our work, our career, and the direction of our lives begins with something simple.

    No longer seeing ourselves as a user on here.

    And no longer seeing ourselves as “just” an employee at work.

    *Credit for this phrase goes to Edward Tufte.

  • Just Create

    I once worked with an attorney at a big law firm who was an amazing, fascinating person. We kept pushing him to share his insights and ideas on here. And he kept resisting, pushing away. Even in the safety of a group that was cheering him on.

    We keep waiting for someone to give us permission to create.

    We are living in an age of transformation. Jobs, degrees, careers, are all up in flux.

    The social contract between employers and employees is breaking down. And yet, we keep clinging to these old markers of comfort.

    That’s why I show up and make these posts. It is my small act of creativity.

    Sure I am also working with clients, building projects, and doing other things. But showing up and writing this short post in a few minutes daily helps me asset my independence.

    It helps me find my own voice. Articulate my thoughts. Clarify my head. All in the hopes that it helps someone else as well.

    We think another degree, another certification will keep us “safe”.

    But I am realizing that the safety zone and the comfort zone are going to be in two different arenas.

    I’m starting to see that safety belongs to those who will give themselves permission to create.

    Can you create something today? Even if it is small? And share it with someone?

  • Phony Games

    There are lots of phony corporate games played at work. Perhaps the worst of them is the game of “competition”.

    It happens in law firms, sales jobs, and almost everywhere else.

    For some reason, we have all been led into thinking that beating someone else motivates people more than… doing well. Or doing work we’re proud of.

    No matter how harmful and stupid, executive “leaders” seem to get away with terrible work cultures all in service of “competition”.

    It starts in school. I’m learning that in America at least, schools are pit against each other. District against district. The very existence of teachers, schools, etc hang in the balance.

    We’re taught that for one company (or country) to succeed, another must fail. Something disputed repeatedly by Nobel Prize winning economists.

    Why do we accept this Squid Game like zero-sum way of thinking?

    It seems like people care more about how their kid’s school is doing compared to other schools. As if that’s a marker for the quality of education.

    We are taught that we need to compete with one another to “win”. But research repeatedly shows that the pie gets bigger for everyone when we focus on cooperation instead of competition.

    At work, teams are pit against each other. Within teams, people are put against each other.

    All in the mistaken notion that people do best when they have to “beat” someone else.

    I saw this in law practices where the draw of the almighty billable hour made people burn out. Competition didn’t help.

    Sales has insanely high attrition rates. Let’s stop pretending that the cost of hiring/retaining sales teams is lower than the revenue you get.

    All this is based on some artificial scarcity.

    Research shows that cooperation works better across the board. But all this talk about competition certainly helps us vie upwards for the approval of the overlords.

    Which might be exactly the reason why this game continues to persist.

  • Endless Skill Trees

    If you grew up gaming, you know all about skill trees. But what makes for the trunk and roots in your work and business?

    In gaming, you start at the lowest branch of the skill tree and level up with experience. You unlock more abilities as you climb the tree.

    Skill trees exist in our work as well. There is an endless universe of courses and certifications to help you “level up”.

    As a society, I think we’ve overemphasized the branches of skills. We keep upgrading and trying to climb higher.

    We even think about the trunk, which I consider to be schooling.

    But the roots? The soil?

    I think that is about the culture. Wisdom. Self-knowledge. Consciousness.

    The amazon is facing deforestation everyday mostly to raise soybeans for cows.

    No matter how tall the tree, nor its many branches, there will be a deforestation of human work this century.

    Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about leveling up on our skill trees. And instead find a different forest to thrive in.