I’m going to shake a thousand hands during my freshman year at Stanford University.
It’s going well so far! Check out the live tracker of my progress:
Mobile users — flip your phone horizontal to view the entire graph 😀
Here’s a look into why I’m attempting this feat, how I plan to accomplish it, and my progress during the beginning of the challenge –
Why Set Such a Lofty Goal?
There are a lot of ways to spend your time in college. Any given evening, you could be going to the gym, attending office hours, going to a party, hitting the town, playing video games, studying, working part-time, sleeping, learning a new skill, writing a blog post, or many other things.
The thing is, you simply don’t have the time to do all of this at once. Doing one thing comes at the opportunity cost that you could be doing something else. Absent a plan, the thought of this can quickly become overwhelming. With an ocean of possibilities, how do you go about choosing how to spend your time?
I weighed the things that I feel are most important in order to come up with a SMART goal, such that if I accomplished only that goal and nothing else, I would be satisfied with my freshman year overall. Having an overarching goal that aligns with my values and is completely in my control will help me make the daily decision about how to spend my time.
Here’s a brief word on SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for setting effective goals. Here’s what it entails –
Specific – Define as many aspects of the goal as possible. Think about who is involved, where it will happen, and what resources will enable you to do it.
Measurable – You can’t succeed without a definition of success. In business, you should make sure that your goals have KPIs associated with them.
Attainable – Be realistic with your goals. You can challenge yourself, but don’t be too extreme. Also, keep your goals within your control, instead of someone else’s (ie. you can’t control if you get a promotion, but you can control the degree of effort you put in at work).
Relevant – Make sure that the goal aligns with your priorities, be it your business strategy or your personal values. You won’t care about achieving the goal if you’re not thoroughly convinced it’s worth it.
Time-Bound – Create a sense of urgency for yourself. Whether it’s a short-term or long-term goal, set a deadline and milestones along the way to stay on track.
To my readers, I encourage you to consider setting at least one SMART goal for your personal development. Many people apply goal-setting techniques to improve their businesses or careers but don’t apply them to improve themselves. If you ponder your primary, overarching goal, it likely won’t be the same as mine. It could be academic, professional, or personal. By setting a SMART goal for your personal life, you’ll find it a lot easier to chase your dreams and become a better person.
If you do set a SMART goal for yourself, feel free to contact me and tell me about it. I’m always interested to hear about others’ goals!
Why do I Care About Shaking 1000 Hands?
Meeting and genuinely connecting with people is one of the things I value most. Personally and professionally, I’ve come to realize over the years how important it is. Here’s why –
1] Aligns with my Mission – My mission in life is to make the world a slightly better place. On balance, every day, week, month, and year, I try to make a net positive impact on the world.
To make the world a better place, I often go out of my way to help people in need. This ranges from simple things like helping people carry their bags to more involved things like starting an organization to provide tutoring to those in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, to help the people I encounter every day, I have to meet them first! If I can get into a conversation with someone, I’d be glad to talk about what opportunities they are seeking and how I can help them achieve those goals. Plus, having met so many people, it works to benefit everyone, because I often have in mind someone who I had previously met that I can introduce them to. These mutually beneficial introductions have often provided value to both parties, which I think is awesome.
2] Exposure to a Diverse Set of People – Everybody brings a different perspective to the table, and learning about their perspective enhances mine. I believe that it’s valuable to learn about what different people are passionate about, as it’s always very different than mine. In recent casual conversations, I’ve unexpectedly learned about the cello, dungeons and dragons, and baking.
I’ve found that we all share more things in common than we may think. It may be a simple observation, but there’s always some mutual experience or feeling that I have with the people I meet.
A good rule is to assume that the person you’re listening to knows at least one thing that you don’t. Though my primary goal is to help the person I am speaking with, my secondary goal is to find out some of those things that they know that I don’t and could enrich my understanding.
3] Non-Fixed Pie – Some people have the mentality that success is a pie, and one person being successful takes a slice of the pie. If one person takes a slice of the pie, there is less of the pie for everyone else to be successful. Rationally, with this “fixed pie” mentality, one can easily justify jealousy and hatred toward those who are successful, resorting to sabotaging and trampling over others to get ahead.
However, the healthier mentality is that if I am successful and you are successful, the pie will grow to accommodate both of us. There is no limit on success – the increasing obtainment of success is what pushes the frontiers of knowledge. Thus, I don’t believe that success is a competition against others, but rather a collaborative effort such that I try to succeed while helping the most people along the way.
4] They Can Help Me – By being ruthlessly helpful myself, sometimes I meet people that are able to help me achieve my goals. I’m not just in it for myself, and I’m completely fine with doing favors with no expectation of them being returned. However, in the long run, doing the right thing generally pays off.
As an example, I participated in SEMI’s High Tech U program in 2018 at Nordson, where I was nominated as the leadership ambassador and scholarship winner. I kept in touch with my contacts at SEMI, not asking for or expecting anything more in return.
Fast forward to 2022, my SEMI contacts reached out to me with a speaking opportunity on a panel at SEMICON West. It ended up being an amazing gathering of thought leaders in the semiconductor industry. Again, I took the opportunity to meet these amazing people, a decision which has been well worth it. I’ve benefited from those connections already during my internship at EMD Electronics.
I’ve had countless of these serendipitous experiences. On the outside, some think I’m lucky and that’s why I get so many great opportunities. In fact, though, the success doesn’t matter so much to me. I’m just obsessed over genuinely connecting with people and helping them out to the best of my ability, and sometimes, awesome opportunities pop out of it.
5] Build Personal Relationships – College is a great place to make lifelong friends. It starts with meeting a wide breadth of people, and continues by building deeper relationships with them as time goes on. You never know the story of the person next to you unless you have a conversation with them. The best case scenario is that you meet someone who you can help, the worst case is that the conversation is uninteresting and you disengage. Either way, there’s not much to lose!
I grew close to many of my friends in unexpected places. A notable one was on the robotics team with me as a high school freshman, and he rarely spoke to me or anyone else at the beginning of the year. As the year progressed, I continued engaging with him, and as I continued learning about him, I saw many similarities between the two of us. He opened up more to me, I opened up to him, and eventually we became quite close. We greatly enjoy spending time with each other outside of any work-related context. We’ll stay friends for life.
Think back to how you met your closest friends. It was likely quite random as well. It may have been in a mundane place that you visit every day, or during a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Either way, it’s well worth it to maximize your opportunities to meet amazing people. The best way to get started? Shaking their hand!
It Goes Beyond the Handshake
I want to emphasize that shaking someone’s hand doesn’t accomplish anything in and of itself. There’s a tendency to have shallow interactions when focusing on breadth over depth. Just shaking people’s hands doesn’t do anything for any party.
Rather, the handshake is only the start of a longer-term relationship. A relationship that lasts only one interaction and never gets any follow-up is worthless, yet I feel that many people neglect keeping in touch.
Here are three pieces of advice for going beyond the handshake –
1] Keep it Simple – Following up can be as simple as messaging “I remember you mentioned XYZ last time we spoke, how did that go?,” “Want to grab lunch?,” or “Hey, how’s it going?” Don’t overthink it. It’s just meant to get a conversation going.
2] Make Time In-Person – The easiest way to follow up with someone is to see them in person. The people you see at home, in the neighborhood, at school or work, at church, etc. are often the easiest to keep in touch with because of your proximity to them. Make an effort to stop and have a conversation with them. You never know what you’ll learn!
3] When to Message – Whenever someone I haven’t spoken to in a while pops into my head, I send a quick message to see how it’s going. This happens more often in your day than you’d first guess; most people spend a lot of time thinking about others but not reaching out. Most of the time, it’s not a bother to ask how someone is doing – the worst that can happen is that they don’t respond, which is perfectly okay!
During this challenge, though the title is about shaking 1000 hands, I’m simultaneously trying to keep in touch with the people I knew going into Stanford, meet new people, and keep in touch with those new people I’m meeting. The combination of all these things is what will accomplish the benefits I noted in the previous section.
A side note – if you’re reading this and thinking “Gee whiz, I should reach back out to Raj,” or “Wow, I’d love to meet this Raj fellow,” I’d love to chat with you! Contact me at this link, all it takes is a quick hello. I look forward to connecting with many of you!
Rules of the Challenge
I’ll be shaking 1000 hands during my freshman year at Stanford and counting it live along the way. I have a very simple offline counter app on my phone that I’m using to track people as I meet them, and every morning I update a Google Sheet to track my overall progress.
The graph in the updates section of my website will be updated live as I go, so if you’re ever interested in checking in on me, that’s the place to look!
Here’s the criteria for a handshake –
1] I shook their hand. Just seeing someone around campus doesn’t count as a handshake.
2] I haven’t met the person before. Anybody I met before September 20th (the day I moved in to Stanford) doesn’t count as a new handshake. Reintroducing myself to someone I’ve met at another time during the challenge also doesn’t count as a handshake. The goal is to meet new people!
3] They’re a person. I thought I’d mention this to make it clear that I’m not limiting myself to meeting students at Stanford – it could be faculty, members of industry, or anyone else I encounter.
4] The COVID-19 provision. If I speak to someone, in-person or virtually, for at least 5 minutes, but don’t shake their hand, it serves as an exception to Rule #1. Though it’s hard to determine what a virtual handshake looks like, I think this is about as close as I can get. I’ve met the person and had a good conversation with them, which is more than equivalent to a handshake.
I’ll be sure to keep you updated with some of the people I meet. My first mini-update will be below about the first 10 days of the challenge, as I’m sure it’ll be an eventful transition to Stanford. Subscribe to my blog to stay in the loop!
Update – September 20th through September 30th
Mobile users — flip your phone horizontal to view the entire graph 😀
As expected, the first ten days here at Stanford have been quite eventful. Moving into a new space and getting familiar with a new environment has been fun yet complicated. Regarding the handshakes, everyone around me was new, so meeting people was no challenge during the first couple of days. Even just spending time in my dorm, I found it easy to connect with people.
At the time of writing this, though, I can clearly see that my rate of handshakes is decreasing. These days, spending time in the dorm or grabbing a meal, I gravitate towards talking to the people that I already know. This is totally fine – I do value going beyond the handshake and cultivating deeper relationships.
That being said, I am quite happy that I have this challenge in place because as I mentioned in the first section, it’s encouraging me to get out of my comfort zone and continue meeting the amazing people at Stanford. I’ve both hosted and sought out a number of events to give me an opportunity to meet new people. Despite the slowdown, I am still confident that I’ll be able to accomplish the challenge with an ongoing effort on my part.
I’m also glad that I’ve been able to help a number of people, even within the first 10 days. I introduced a student doing research with a startup founder innovating in the same space, made a connection for a friend to get a software engineering interview, and made myself available to speak at an on-campus event later this week. Stanford is facilitating my ability to make an impact in others’ lives.
Thus far, I’ve met so many amazing people. I will write about many of them in a future blog post with a more extensive update and summary of the challenge. For today, though, I think it would be fitting to conclude this blog post with a spotlight on my first handshake (photo of the two of us is above!) –
When I first arrived on campus on September 20th, unfamiliar faces were everywhere. With my eyes laser-focused on Google Maps, I tried to find my dorm among the residences on campus. Seemingly out of nowhere, I heard a stranger ask, “Hey, are you Raj?” Confused as to who this was, I said yes. and He introduced himself as Sammy, one of the residence assistants living in my dorm. I appreciated the warm welcome!
Since then, I’ve gotten to know Sammy a bit more. Sammy is a senior studying Public Policy and Economics. He grew up in Maine before coming to Stanford and loves the outdoors.
On second thought, I think saying that Sammy loves the outdoors is a bit of an understatement. Last year, Sammy took a gap year to attempt to break a world record. With his friend Jackson, they completed the Calendar Year Triple Crown – hiking the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide trail all in one year. Those are three of the longest trails in the United States. They are the youngest pair to accomplish this gargantuan feat, being only the eleventh and twelfth people to ever have documented completion. His story is incredible, and I encourage you to check out the LA Times article about the journey or listen to the podcast produced by Sammy and Jackson.
The thing that’s great about Sammy, and the many others I’ve met since starting this challenge, is that while being so successful, they are incredibly humble and nice. Everyone is so supportive of each other, and kindness is palpable on campus. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Sammy. I look forward to my future post when I’ll share about more of the awesome people I’ve met!
Stay tuned to my blog and social media for updates on this challenge. Feel free to contact me, I’d love to meet you!
1 Comment
Why I Ended the Handshake Challenge, and Updates - Raj Pabari · May 29, 2023 at 10:15 pm
[…] the beginning of my freshman year at Stanford, I set out to shake a thousand hands. In January, I ended the challenge and stopped counting […]