My Failures

THE ATTEMPTS, SWINGS & WHAT THEY COST ME.

This page will tell you more about me than anything else on this portfolio.

Not because the failures are dramatic - but because I've always been someone who attempts things. Not always wisely, not always prepared, and definitely not always successfully - but I attempt.

I believe in attempting loudly and failing honestly - that the gap between "I think I can do this" and "I've actually done this" is wider than most people admit, and the only way to close it is to attempt, fall short, figure out exactly why, and go again. Wins come after pitches that got torn apart, freezing up in front of decorated officers, quitting side hustles after three days, and losing opportunities I'd been handed simply because I couldn't stop planning long enough to start.

What follows are seven entries from my own record. Each one is something I believed in, a swing I took, where it went wrong, and what it permanently changed in how I operate. Read them in order - they tell a story.

Living in the Bubble 

The Startup Pitch & The CS:GO Dream

What I believed:

That wanting something badly enough was the same as being ready for it.

The swing:

In while working at the startup department SASTRA at Rashtriya Raksha University, I and my two teammates from NSG Hackathon walked into the MD's office and pitched him on the idea that we wanted to build a startup. No idea. No plan. No strategy. Just the energy of people who had watched too many founder videos and mistaken inspiration for preparation. Years earlier, in 12th grade, I was grinding CS:GO daily - aim trainers, callouts, ranked matches - convinced I was going pro. My rig barely ran the game at 30fps on a good day.

What it changed:

Now, every time I have an idea I'm excited about, I actively look for the ways to tear it apart - and I try to be that person before anyone else tears it for me. I look at both sides of the coin before I commit to either one. And with the rise and help of AI, it's been far too helpful in critiquing the ideas (ofc when it's not hallucinating and pumping us up xD to go and do it)

The bubble is comfortable. That's exactly what makes it dangerous. You don't know you're inside it until someone punctures it - and the puncture hurts a lot less when you're the one holding the pin.

Action First, Motivation Second

What I believed:

That motivation was the starting point. That somewhere ahead of me was a version of myself who'd wake up ready - fired up, certain - and that version would be the one who actually did things.

I was waiting for that version to show up.

The swing:

This wasn't one moment. It was a pattern across years. Projects I didn't start because I wasn't feeling inspired. Habits I kept postponing because the timing wasn't right. Ideas I sat on until the energy arrived. I treated motivation like a prerequisite - something that had to be present before work could begin.

What went wrong:

The energy never arrived on its own. Every project I'd actually finished started the same way - not with inspiration, but with a decision to begin anyway. The motivation to continue always showed up after I'd already started. Never before.

What it changed:

CIPHER didn't start because I woke up one morning feeling ready to build a cyberdeck. It started because I sat down and ordered the first component. Countdown Timer V1 didn't happen because I felt confident about learning Fusion 360 from scratch. It happened because I opened the software and started making something ugly.

The motivation to keep going came after. Always after.

I don't wait for the feeling anymore. I start, and I let the feeling catch up. Because it always does - just never before you need it.

The Easy Money Trap 

Dropshipping & Faceless AI Channels

What I believed:

That somewhere in the sea of side hustle content, there was a system simple enough to run on the side, passive enough to not consume your life, and profitable enough to matter. I just hadn't found the right one yet.

The swing:

Third year of college. I tried dropshipping - Shopify store, print-on-demand supplier, Meta Ads. The videos made it look like a setup problem. I started, hit difficulty within days, and quit. Then I found faceless AI YouTube Shorts - generate ideas, automate the pipeline, upload thirty shorts a week. Also looked simple. I started, hit difficulty, and quit again.

What went wrong:

Both required significantly more than advertised - real research, real capital, real time. The content had shown the system working. It hadn't shown the months of work before the system existed.

But the real failure wasn't quitting dropshipping. It was that after quitting, I immediately went looking for another easy hustle instead of asking why I'd quit. Same pattern, twice, no mental model update in between.

What it changed:

Nothing worth building is easy money. If something looks like low effort and high return, I'm either not seeing the full picture, or the person showing it to me has a reason to hide it. Making money requires time or capital - usually both - and the return is proportional to what actually goes in. That's not a pessimistic view. It's just accurate.

But the bigger lesson wasn't about money. It was about the pattern. Quitting when difficulty showed up, then immediately going looking for a way to avoid difficulty again - that's the thing I needed to break. Not "dropshipping is hard." The thing underneath that.

I broke it eventually. Not all at once. But I eventually broke it with sheer grit and hustle :)

Freezing When It Mattered

Failing as a Leader at NSG Hackathon

What I believed:

That leadership meant being the most prepared person in the room. About having the best plan. About keeping things running in normal conditions and everyone needs to be doing their part.

I had no idea what it actually demanded until a room in Palam showed me.

The swing:

NSG Digirakshak Hackathon. Fifth evaluation. We were called to NSG Headquarters to present in front of highly decorated commandos and IPS officers. We had prepared a clean 5-6 minute presentation - the same format that had worked in every previous round. We walked in confident.

The IPS officer looked at us and said he didn't have time. We had under a minute to present.

We started presenting, one by one, compressed and fast. He interrupted almost immediately.

"Ye sab to thik hai. Demo dikhao. How does it work."

We explained that we couldn't fly the hexacopter indoors. He didn't blink.

"Working ka video dikhao. Phatophat."

And then - nothing. Every single person on that team went silent. Mouths shut. Eyes forward. We were second-year college students in a room full of commandos speaking in tones that didn't leave space for uncertainty, and we had no video, no backup, and no words.

The silence felt very long.

The Workshop That Never Happened

Paralysis by Planning

What I believed:

That starting before everything was ready was reckless. That the responsible thing was to prepare properly, and launch only when the material was good enough.
I believed this so thoroughly that I planned myself out of an opportunity someone handed me.

The swing:

While working at Paras Enterprises, the director's wife of a school group met me, heard about my AI background, and offered me something I'd been quietly wanting - some independent work, she offered me workshops for students across her institutions. Full creative freedom. She'd pay for it. My employer said go ahead. I said yes. She asked how long I'd need to prepare . I said a month.

What went wrong:

A month passed. Materials weren't ready. Every session of preparation produced new ideas, better approaches, things to restructure. Every change was real. The material was never finished. I asked for fifteen more days. Still not ready. By the time I reached out again, annual functions were coming. The window had closed and never returned.

I had been handed exactly what I was looking for, and I lost it not to competition, not to bad timing, not to anything external. I lost it to my own unwillingness to start before things were perfect. I kept moving the finish line because I was, underneath all the genuine improvements, afraid to ship something that wasn't exactly right.

What it changed:

I don't wait for the right version anymore. CIPHER and Countdown Timer V1 both exist because I started with good enough and let improvements reveal themselves through doing.

Planning matters - but there's a line where it stops being preparation and starts being avoidance. That workshop taught me exactly where that line is.

Being in the Right Rooms and Saying Nothing 

Missed Connections

What I believed:

That proximity was enough. That being around impressive people - working alongside them, attending the same events - would somehow translate into relationship and opportunity on its own. Someway I was also incompetent and socially reserved at this point in my life.

The swing:

IIT Bombay. RRU. NSG evaluation meetings. AI conferences. AWS community meetups. I was in rooms with people whose experience was years ahead of mine, the kind of people you look back on later and think, I should have talked to them more. Some became mentors and friends - but almost none of that happened because I reached out. It happened because they came to me.

I showed up, did my work, and went home.

What went wrong:

Nothing dramatic. Nobody rejected me. I just never tried. I told myself I didn't want to seem like I was networking for the sake of it. I told myself I didn't want to bother people. Comfortable excuses, every time. The cost was invisible in the moment - you don't feel the absence of a connection you never made. But it accumulated quietly.

What it changed:

I don't do the card-exchanging, small-talk version of networking - that's never felt right and I don't think it actually works. But I've learned the difference between that and something real. Finding a genuine point of contact with someone. Engaging with what they're actually working on. Making an impression through a real conversation rather than a practiced pitch.

Now, when I'm in a room with someone whose caliber is ahead of mine, I make the effort to talk to them. Not to impress them. Not to pitch myself. Just to understand how they think, what they've seen, what they know that I don't. The goal is simple: if I ever need to reach out to them, or they ever think of me for something, neither of us has to hesitate.

That goal requires showing up, not just being present.

Monk Mode Didn't Work 

Changing Everything at Once

What I believed:

That transformation required total commitment, all at once. That the right move was to overhaul everything simultaneously - diet, sleep, workouts, reading, journaling, new habits - and hold the whole stack together through willpower.

The swing:

Multiple attempts across multiple years. Always starting on a Monday. Healthy food, daily workouts, no junk, journaling every evening, new projects. I'd go hard for a few days. Then one thing would slip. Then another. Then the whole structure would quietly collapse and I'd be back where I started - with the added weight of having failed the attempt.

What went wrong:

Every new habit demanded the same resource - the conscious attention required to do something not yet automatic. One new habit is manageable. Two is harder. Five running simultaneously is a system that overloads almost by design.

This wasn't a discipline problem. It was an architecture problem. I was trying to build every floor of the building at the same time, and wondering why it kept collapsing.

What it changed:

One thing at a time. One real change, held long enough to become automatic, before the next one begins.

The clearest proof of this shift is Network+. I studied and only studied it - no parallel projects, no other goals running alongside it. Twenty days of focused preparation and I cleared it with 814 out of 900. The same logic is how I'm approaching fitness now. Not overhauling everything at once. Adding one thing, letting it stick, then adding the next.

I'm not trying to enter monk mode anymore. I'm trying to build systems that outlast motivation - because motivation is not reliable, and the only systems that survive its absence are the ones built one layer at a time, slowly enough that each layer is solid before the next one goes on top of it.

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