why IDK is the most powerful acronym ever

a lil work & personal update

Author

Sneha Rampalli
February 04, 2025

hello lil bees! how’s January treating everyone?

anyone feel like time is just flying by, and you’re just getting your bearings 😅 

I started this year off on December 31st, 2024 writing my personal OKRs for 2025.

(I know, total dork mode moment 🤓).

OKRs = Objectives & Key Results. In less corp-speak terms: they’re goals with metrics.

I’m out here preaching about not hyper-optimizing every part of your life, but it’d be extremely egotistical of me to say I’m no hypocrite. I’m only human!

And honestly, I wrote that as a letter to myself because time stresses me out.

I need to sleep 8 hours a day. I need to wake up early in the morning to work out. And I need to eat at around the same time everyday.

These are all things that make me feel like a strong version of myself. In other words, feel like I have control over the randomness we live in. I think I’ve always thought this way, but this feeling has only amplified as I now work two jobs: 9-5 & 5-9.

The idea of wasting even a minute makes me feel like the world is ending. Even though I know, humans need space for spontaneity and play, even if it amounts to nothing.

And btw, I’m still compulsive in my need to sleep and work out and eat well. But baby steps. My OKRs this year were no longer 3 pages. It started like this instead:

2024 was a year of a lot of learning and trying so many new things. It was a really hard year but also very fulfilling. Lots to be so proud of, because I actually acted, rather than just talking.

This was the first year I broke out of my “lazy ambitious” persona. I learned a lot about burnout, entering trances of stress. I also learned a lot about writing, what I like to create, and honed in on how I want to overturn the conversation around money.

As life goes, there will always be uncertainty, but I’m ready to give space for ambiguity and space. For the first time, I’m actually really excited about it.

2025 is going to be a big year and that comes with a lot of emotions. Excitement, ambiguity, anxiety, friction.

Sneha

TL;DR: be okay with not knowing & act anytime you feel an ounce of anxiety.

It reminds me of a song I used to listen to obsessively in the senior year of high school, called Maybe IDK by Jon Bellion. I was in the car back from a soccer game with a guy I didn’t even knew I liked and we were driving back in utter silence yet agreement while listening to this song.

Till this day, I feel chills hearing it. Because like Jon says, “if I knew tomorrow, I guess I wouldn't need faith.”

that being said: “plans are useless but planning is indispensible.”

So here’s what I have planned for 2025:

  1. Launching Money Whispers

Who are we? The bearer of your craziest, juiciest money secrets. just kidding (kind of).

Money Whispers is the magazine of. the. year. We’re featuring anonymous, raw, and real money stories. Because it’s about time we talk about money honestly.

Think NYTimes Modern Love meets Overheard in New York.

This is my brainchild from August 2024, and I’m finally doing it folks. People are telling us all about their money stories through:

Share your whisper here; we’re listening and the world’s waiting.

  1. Upending the financial education system in America

As y’all may have seen with this article, I find most financial education in this country to be quite ineffective. And I’m not stopping there.

I’m building this in stealth mode with all the available time I have, but here is the second round of the MVP. I’ve already gotten some great feedback from trusted testers, so let me know if you’re interested in helping me develop my MVP 🙂 

The site is password protected, so you can do one of the following:

  • Please respond “MVP” to this email to access the site

  • Email me at [email protected]

  • DM me on instagram

  • Pass it along to someone who would find this useful!

  1. Celebrating love (personal)

My lovely sister and one of my best friends are tying the knot with their life partners. I already know so many tissues will be involved in my future.

  1. Interviewing dope people who build cool shit

I’m not going to lie to you folks, I have no intention of creating a podcast. My real intention is to share with you how money influences people to build cool sh!t, especially because so much of this is hush hush.

So far, I’ve interviewed a founder and climate change activist. For February, I’m chatting with a non-profit founder and a supper club organizer. Stay tuned and let me know if you know of any other cool people you want me to chat with 💬 

  1. Opening myself up to all forms of love! (personal)

Those street interviews man, they are making my heart come ALIVE. I’m meeting so many folks just from cold-DMing people if they want to be friends 😭 

It’s weird to say but I’ve felt an intangible opening of my heart this year.

Also, every time I’ve said I wanted to date in the last three years, I don’t think I was ready to take on the risk of heartbreak because of how many times it felt like I’d been burned.

But you know, nothing in life is without a lil bit of risk and faith.

Before, I wanted to fall in love and hold onto that person for the rest of my life.

Now, I am ready to fall head over heels and just let life take its course, no longer grasping on what could be?

In my first month of living in NYC, January 2023, I distinctly remember reading a passage from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying before my workday began.

(Can you tell a girl was really going through it? 🤪 )

Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why you hold on.

But there's another possibility: You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still
yours, even with all this space around it. So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.

Let us now think of what frequently happens in relationships. So often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize that they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile their relationship becomes.

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: How
can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it? How often attachment is mistaken for love! Even when the relationship is a good one, love is spoiled by attachment, with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the "souvenirs" of love, the scars of attachment.”

Sogyal Rinpoche

It really is funny how much knowing is only half the battle and how some of the best lessons of life just take time and patience.

until the next 🐝  and with 💛 ,

Sneha

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