I’m a big proponent in just going, instead of worrying about where I end up. From travelling alone with an open mind to attending my first Hackathon on a whim, which led to starting my first company, just doing and going has led to intensely rich experiences, many of which I consider to be the highlights of my life. Doing is powerful and attracts attention from other people who are doers as well.

Last February, I was convinced by a friend to attend a hackathon in NYC being held by the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Office of Financial Empowerment. At the time, I was a beginner coder (even more so that I am now!) and didn’t think that I could contribute much, but went anyways because — why not? Turns out, the hackathon was part hacking together an application and part problem-solving session. I had a blast thinking about how to solve a real life problem and putting my limited coding skills to use. The result? We won first place, and that hackathon idea led to a contract, which led to the implementation of our product across NYC, and now is in the process of being offered to cities across the country. With no prior planning and a “let’s do it attitude”, I stumbled into a wonderful experience and possibly a sustainable startup venture (but more on that another day).

The same philosophy goes for writing as well. If you read the preamble, you know that I’m currently on day 7 of a challenge to write 1,000 words for 100 days. Prior to this challenge, I tried time and time again to start blogs and come up with interesting material. I would procrastinate on the writing, trying to come up with interesting material and picking the right fonts, themes, and pictures — and ultimately never get to the writing. None of those attempts even made it past a few posts, and certainly not to any fan fare. This time, I just started writing. Following Srinivas Rao’s suggestion of “putting my fingers to the keyboard”, I typed until I got to 1,000 words — it took an hour and a half, but I got there. Day 2 was also a struggle, but I just wrote on. By the third day, the words started coming a bit easier, and a dozen or so people read my post. Fast forward a few days, and my last post on travelling alone has garnered over 1,300 reads and a dozen tweets! For a person who a week ago had no writing presence and a small Twitter following, it blows my mind the impact that ‘just doing’ had.