Being a runner and training for a race rewires your brain. I mean it.
I wrote it once and I’ll write it again: I still can’t believe I ran a marathon. The amplitude of the post-race high is incomparable. There’s so much self-belief instilled that it would be silly not to ask “what other crazy thing could I do?”.
The beauty of living in a fast-paced environment is that crazy knocks your door on a daily basis. Optionality is abundant—it’s what makes this decade so exciting to be a part of. The challenge we’re all left with is to wisely pick our battles.
A friend shared this feedback to me with me last year. It meant a lot, knowing they had my best interest in mind and wanted me to succeed. I needed to learn how to wisely choose my battles. In my time as a PM, I felt like there was a perpetual feeling of want and a lack of deprioritization. It’s human nature—no one likes abandoning a possible vision for the future. We’re all more loss averse than we’d like.
A few months ago, the opportunity to build something transformative at Codeium was surfaced. The thought of it was scary, not because of how bold it was, but because of how much change it demanded. Change is exciting though. It’s an opportunity to lose bad habits, to re-apply past learnings, and to learn something new about yourself.
Completing the marathon instilled so much excitement in me in the idea of change that immersing myself into the challenge was a no-brainer. And if there’s anything I learned about being in my body, it’s that I love challenges.
It wasn’t just me—my entire team at Codeium dramatically picked up the pace for this. Shared suffering might be an accurate term for the last few months, but so is shared joy. We pulled way too many late nights, worked on weekends, reminded each other to sleep, and occasionally saw coworkers come into the office in the morning before we left. We had many internal deadlines, endless moments of panic, and a sickness that ravaged our office. But we also all shared a burning excitement for what this could become.
It wasn’t long before we shared early versions of the product internally and people were blown away. That’s when we knew that we were onto something ground-breaking.
Fast forward to this past week, and we had the best launch we could ask for. Windsurf, our brand new code editor, has been launched for the world to see, use, criticize, praise, and build with. The reviews have been everything we could ask for. You know that you’re onto something when people are making memes about the product that you built.
Work’s been incredibly fulfilling the last few months. When work is a predictable system for fulfillment, it’s such a privilege. In other words, work is as fulfilling as how much effort I put into it. These types of systems in life are such a joy. It’s why so many people invest so much in their hobbies and friends—there’s always more fulfillment to be grabbed from the table. The last few months may have felt like years, but those years have been some of the most fulfilling and some of my proudest work.
There are a few things for me to look forward to in the next few weeks. Notably, I’m running a Hyrox race, visiting home in Montreal, and attending two weekend trips with friends and work. I’ll also be traveling to Asia at the end of the year and spending a bit of time in China with family.
Looking forward, I have a few personal goals in mind:
Legs: I’m training to bullet proof my legs from any injuries by squatting a ton. I’ve recently hit a squat PR that I feel proud of and want to safely continue pushing my physical limits.
Cardio: My cardio has nosedived in the last few months. I plan on bouncing it back up by doing a lot of zone 2 and hopefully still achieving my goal of 1,000 miles by the end of this year. Might be tough, but we’ll see.
Reading: This has also completely fallen off. I’m still planning to try reading a book end to end by the end of the year.
Writing: I’d like to write at least one blog post before the end of the year.
Early rise: I’d like to get back into an early morning routine and sleep before 11pm every night.
Good to be back here with words streaming through the system. Thanks for sticking around.
PS: Please try Windsurf at windsurf.ai!
legend
hell ya