Beginning to act on long procrastinated goals are difficult and we understand that. We don’t learn with just theories. We learn by experience. At GetEchoed; with this post – we shall feature spotlight on one GetEchoed Stud – every week – where we will bring real life experiences of people. People similar to you and I; who have dreamt and struggled, Struggled, failed and won them over with time.

Let’s begin with one experience at a time!

If you ever thought what you should do about your undying thirst for learning new things, let me say – it’s a very desirable question to find an answer for!

Meet Varun Jain – quizzing enthusiast and a budding entrepreneur. His journey of overcoming challenges in actualizing his passion is a story of finding solutions to problems where one has little control – and inspiring in own ways.

Always keen to learn; Varun had little affinity for the traditional academic discourse. Born and brought up in Delhi and educated in a not-so-elite-school of the capital; brushing his quizzing skills was indeed a luxury for him; that took its own time and cost. Facing challenges in striving balance between his pursuits for knowledge AND completing prescribed syllabus in time; Varun had realized early on following dreams does not come as an easy give away.

In India, where back in the early millennium, the country was struggling with challenges in the base order of Maslow’s need hierarchy; smooth dissemination of knowledge was a privilege of the few. Lack of a nurturing environment; brushed the intellectual curiosity under the carpet of regular knowledge gathering. Amidst all of this, attending the-then only annual quizzing event of the nation would often leave him in awe of the probable opportunities available to folks who had accessibility to knowledge.  The challenge of a nascent quizzing ecosystem and a heavily academic pedagogy of Indian education system; pursuing a journey of intellectual curiosity had their own ramifications on pursuing the goals.

Varun grew up to be an engineer by profession; working for a global management consulting firm. While life may seem sorted for most – there is only so much fulfillment for the intellectual craving in a to allow going beyond scratching the surface of knowledge. Disillusioned by his day job and an undying passion for giving meaning to helping intellectual curiosity; he came to terms that one has to figure out solutions oneself. Learning begins within.

If not a full time quizzer / quiz master himself, he saw the problem of not having platforms to hone quizzing skills; he realized the opportunity to build a platform where intellectual minds could sharpen their skills without putting too much at stake and have fun on the go. He gave a new dimension to ‘quizzing the right way’ with Quizot – ending the long lasting dearth of user friendly and accessible platform for ever keen learning enthusiasts.

Among the zillion challenges, most imminent was to build a website – each line of code at a time – to make a platform that brought the experience of flirting with knowledge, on-the-feet thinking and intelligence to life

Ask him the mantra for keeping on the focus; Varun believes fighting your own demons and getting back to square zero gives the strength to start from the basics to get cracking on anything new. Learning to teach oneself is the most important thing for people who are learning new things. Then begins the journey of patience and perseverance through failures and challenges. It begins with the understanding that its “OK” to struggle with new things. Patience is the virtue and giving up is not an option. Delaying self-gratification and making the right choices is most important in keeping the focus right.

Working on passion – cracking one goal at a time – is what makes Varun Jain – an inspiration for being a GetEchoed Stud. Varun believes that had a platform like GetEchoed existed a decade before in India; he would have used to bring his goals to life; learning from doers who have been there, done that.

His success mantra – begin with things and be comfortable with struggling in the beginning. That’s the only way to learn – make yourself learn to learn

Follow him on Quora and check out his goals on GetEchoed – to discover how he works on his passion – cracking one goal at a time.

That’s how GetEchoed Studs roll their lives out! Join the caravan of DOERS at GetEchoed

Have a story! Reach out to us and we will love to talk about your awesomeness. We know you are amazing. Bring it on!

 

 

This post is written by Arpita Chakraborty, straight from her laptop – sharing learnings and experiences of working across startups for years now. She is a social media geek and loves to question things at GetEchoed. Tweet to her about anything @arpitaambition