Weekly Notes Archives

Wk 39-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes, thoughts, highlights and other things from the week 39 of 2025.

Sunday the 28th.
Starbucks, Versova.

The week gone by was hard and long. For starters, I turned 43. And I am sad about it. Many reasons.

A, I was to be rich and famous and powerful by 42. I am not.
B, I dont think I’ve done enough to celebrate another year around the sun.
C, While I am not in the legacy game, I definitely am in the experience game. And with each passing year, my ability to access grand things goes down.
D, I realize that on a realistic timeline, my ability to do things goes down with each passing day. You know, age. I look like I am 50. I can feel the tiredness in my bones. Most days I wake up with a sore back. I cant seem to see very well. The skin is breaking from more places. Even Dr H mentioned that she’s unable to understand why things aren’t happening. I dont know either.

So that.

Ok, wait.
I dont want to make this into a pity party.
Lemme change the narrative.

So, I love when I am with people. I love how I think that life has great things to offer to us. I know deep inside that life is essentially a mirror – if shows you what you want to see. So, we shall move on. Oh, I am changing the format of this weekly update. Let’s see if you can spot it.

The song of the week is this cover of Aint No Sunshine by CAPTAIN OG and Shotaro Miyamoto.

Ok, let’s go!

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ I met Arun Sir and Hareesh Sir for a Meru review and got a whack on the side of the head about money.
In that, I realised that I need to make friends with people with money. I think I’ve always shunned money as a bastard thing. But I need to start loving it. And not be overwhelmed with it. I’ve always operated like I was the richest person in the world and never got into money conversations. Between time and money, I’ve always picked time. When in conflict, I’ve left money on the table for others to pick up so that I can walk away with some peace.

I think I will change that.

More on this as I think more. #sgtothink

B/ Take token for everything.
Staying on A, each time someone has come to me for help, I’ve extended my support and help to them at no cost. And in fact, often at my expense (of time, energy, money etc). But I think I will change this from now on. I will ask for a tiny token (or Re 1) before extending any help. I must work on building a “seek help from SG” page where I list these things.

No, I am not taking the decision just yet. This is very intrinsic to me – the want to help the underdog and have more people do more.

My argument has been that if I take ANY money, even if its 1 rupee, it becomes a transaction and then I have a performance pressure. And knowing myself (perpetual underachiever feels), I will not be able to do justice! Plus once someone pays me, it becomes a transaction and it’s never ending!

On the other side, if I dont do a transaction, then I am not obligated. And that relieves me of the responsibility of the outcome. But then I become that consultant breed that I loathe from the bottom of my heart!

Any how. I will think on this and decide it over the next few days. #sgtodo

C/ The third lesson from the meeting is that I must make check lists. I anyway do this but I want to be able to do this at a GRANULAR level. And then I should be able to get even a machine to execute things.

I’ve lived my life in a freewheeling manner but now as I am older and have lesser time to get things done, I will lean onto this. I will re-read the Checklist Manifesto.

Also, I think, this is a lesson I need to give to folks at C4E. If there’s a checklist structure and a scrum master to run and list priorities I think life would get better. I know C4E is built on top of self accountability but this could be a good driver. Again, not my place to recommend or push things at C4E. I would let them decide. I can only leave a note to them.

D/ This linkedin note on creative folks, from Prak is fabulous.
She says something that I’ve always known but I never knew how to write. About the creative folks, she says,

What happens when you take this type and put them within the same tiny rooms and dull walls day in and day out?

They lose that perspective. They lose their voice. That freshness and creativity? It dies a slow death, like a plant kept away from the sun.

Touch grass is not just a fad for us, it’s a way of building the things, creating in the best way possible.

We make space for epiphanies, to enter flow zones of brilliant work, to find sparks of magic in the world outside walls, both physical and metaphorical.

Creative folks bring their whole self to office, not just “a skill”.

I knew of this all the time but I could never find the words to articulate it.

Thanks, Prak.

E/ This piece makes an argument that warmer counties are poorer. If there is one thing that you read today, read this.
I am convinced that once I move to a colder place, I will be better off.

In fact I was thinking today only – what holds me to Mumbai. Some years ago it would have been friends and SO. But the only friend I cared for in life is no longer in India. And SO, well, lol. So, maybe its the trigger to move to a colder place? But then, Indian passport 🙁

But, in spirit of action and seeing something that I always knew on paper, why cant I make my way to a colder country?

F/ This text by the other Vembu is brilliant.
More than the hyper-national conversations, I like how they’ve chosen to play the long-game. Ofc its easy to talk about things after you’ve succeeded. I am a sore old man. I played the long-game all my life and look where it left me. And despite that soreness and my bias, I encourage everyone to play the long game.

Also, the podcast I was gonna do with Riya’s help was gonna be called The Long Game. I will have to find a new name. I dont want to encroach upon someone else’s work even though I am a rounding off error in their scheme of things.

Oh, see this video of Steve introducing about podcasting.

G/ Mahabharata
Today is the 6th day when I am writing a post on my linkedin where am talking about a lesson from Mahabharata. They are on my linkedin. Do see those.

H/ Ashutosh Rana and Rashmirathi
You have to see this, unless already.

Ok, this is it.

I/ Music and mehfils
I am seeing Shotaro Miyamoto on loop and the urge to build mehfils is getting stronger by the day. I really really really need to dig this shit up. See this exasperated note!

There was a time when I was doing this with CSS. We kept it just right – friends, music, camaraderie but I wasn’t able to continue with it. You know, life happened. And then with time it withered away. I so want to get back in those rooms. You know, Sofar, Tiny Desk (by NPR), even Coke Studio but done in an intimate setting!

J/ Focus
Saw this tweet and wondered, if the missing ingredient from my life and success is focus. I’ve never been the kinds to stick to one thing. But maybe this is the thing that I need to do? With Meru, at least I am trying to do one thing. Let’s see if it bears fruit.

K/ Mental Health 101
From whatever little I know, I’ve been able to distill that your happiness is the gap between your expectation and reality. By corollary, it’s also the gap between efforts and returns. And thus the old-age advice on not attaching to outcomes serves well.

So that!

This is it for this week. More next week.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos that I took and saved in the last week. Here.

The cover would be this…

Lemme know which one do you like the most. And do share some of your photos with me!

🈺 LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldn’t). And I just added health a few weeks ago.

Book 2 – There was no movement.
Nothing to report.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it long ago.
Now its time to think about the plan for the next year. Lol.

Health – Was ok health wise but not doing very well with food and all. So a -1. PS: I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. This has fallen off the grid completely. The rigor with which I worked on this is gone. I need to restart. Am taking off Monday and Tuesday to only fix this. So, 0.

Meru. Great progress but not something that I can talk about on this blog. But till we ship, I will give myself a 0.

C4E. No action from my side. No comments. A 0.

Brand SG. Riya has started to share things on ToL. You may check it out here and here. Early days. But some action finally. Thanks to Riya, a +1!

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Nothing.
So, -1

Shauk. No action.
No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score for the week is 0

I need to now ensure that I get a + every week. And that means I will break things into tiny chunks and manage those.

Watch me.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by…

What trends do you see?

I see…

Consistent unhappiness.
Bad food.
Sleeping late.

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

I read somewhere that you need 4 things to live long – sleep, exercise, diet and community. I will track all four. And then some more variables that I feel are important to me. Let’s see what comes out. Also, I log a few things at these links – food log, my daily health log channel.

1/ Sleep
I slept ok, but later than what I would’ve wanted.

2/ Exercise
No action. Despite my 100% intentions.

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
Was terrible.
I am just not able to solve this.
: (

4/ Community
No large movement on this.

5/ REDACTED
This was being tracked till the last week. I have stopped this from this week onward.

6/ Movement
No action.

: (

7/ Meditation
No action.

Overall, the last week on health front has not been the best. I am thinking why am I even tracking this if week after week, all I have is inconsistent outcomes?

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

Here are some…

1/ This post from Sam Parr. About how to live a good life.

2/ This X thread about Osho is very interesting. I am not too well read about his life and work but this was a good 101.

3/ This Linkedin broetry has great advice for young people. I love these parts the most…

1. 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗶𝘁: Regular readers know the Explore vs Exploit framework. In situations of repeated decision making, you can either 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 (try a new thing), or 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘪𝘵 (stick with what you know works). In building a career, the early years should be dedicated to Exploit. Try as many things as you can. The time to Exploit your skills / experience will come later. For now, experiment!

5. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀. My closest friends today are from only two cohorts – college mates, and friends from the earliest days of my working life. Cherish these early years. They offer you deep friendships, lasting mentors.

6. 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵. Eating out every day, too much drinking, long nights at work, travel, no exercise. Think your body can take punishment and still endure? Maybe. But it’ll thank you later if you took better care of it.

4/ This post on the Taste and Talent gap is worth it’s weight in gold. Do read it?

5/ This X thread on success is great. From this, I love these…

you should be able to sleep on floor, no matter how rich you become

dilute stakes at peak to use the money at extreme lows and stay afloat

business is an emotional ride and very bumpy, be prepared

if you can move to Dubai or US make some money quickly then expand in India

always have 36 months of money for family security

6/ Shaan VP on how to be rich. This is a 20-odd minute video. Must see for everyone.

This is it for the week. Oh, I am reading this book these days. Painfully slow cos time. But a riveting read!

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

I’ve been skipping this for a while now.
Lets see when I get back to this.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Grind.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Sad, Tough, Routine, Routine, Busy, Grind, Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. The previous editions are here: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (missed), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (missed), 16, 17 (missed), 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (missed), 23, 24 (missed), 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 37-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes, thoughts, highlights and other things from the week 37 of 2025. Wow time flies!

9 AM, Sunday the 14th,
Starbucks Versova,

I’ve had probably the toughest week in the last few weeks. If I look at my charts, I am sleeping well, emotions are in check but I had a terrible week. I know it. Quantified self may not be as quantifiable as we imagine it to be ;P

There is clearly a lot that goes under the hood that we are not aware of. And I think that ability to scratch beyond the surface is what separates winners from losers. At some point, I need to grow that ability. I dont think I have at this time.

Anyhow. A lot to be said and a lot to be thought about.

Let’s get going.

Oh, the song of the week is Jagjit Singh’s version of Chaudhavi Ki Raat. Here.

Chalo, let’s go…

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ Jazz
I have started to like Jazz. I never imagined that I would love things like Jazz music. But I like it now. May be its the impact that Akshay has had on me. Or may be its a natural instinct to start like mellow things as you age. Or may be its the appreciation of fine things in life (lol, am calling Jazz fine). Or maybe this is an hangover from Whiplash?

Whatever it is. It’s interesting and I like.

Here’s one of the playlists that I listen to often. And I am listening to this as we write this. You must watch this. People having fun!

And yes, my choice of music platform is Youtube. Not Spotify lol.

B/ SG’s Raison d’être
Am continuing this from last week’s point E.

Last week, I wrote this…

From last week’s update. Here.

From all the 84 people that read that post, 2 decided to support me. Both are at a 1000 a month. Thank you, Prakruti and Shruti. I now need 998 more folks.

Also, 2 out of 84 is not that bad to be honest. Now that I have 2 patrons, I need to think what can I offer them. And how can I expand this.

C/ Domesticated SG
I’ve found a spot in my house where the sun peeks at me in the morning. So, most days, I putter around there, peeling eggs, almonds, cleaning the kitchen and all that. I dont do anything of use to be honest. It’s an hour of wasting time but I am told by Dr H that I need to waste this hour. So that.

Oh, I am also getting a lot more domesticated. I am buying things like lunch boxes, containers and what not. I already have an air fryer, a blender, an egg boiler, a humidifier. Apart from tons of glass jars, spouters, containers and all that. I’ve ran away from a functioning kitchen all my life and now I have one. Sigh!

What age does to people ;P

D/ Walk streak
Since early august I was on a 8K per day streak. I broke it yesterday 🙁

This was made possible by Abhinav and Unlock!

I am committed to continue this. So while I missed this yesterday, I will try to get back to it today on. As I write this, I am on 1000 odd steps for the day. The ambition is to do 15K today. Let’s see how it goes.

E/ Weekly Updates + Roam
I found a way to import my blogs in Roam.

And now I have a tracking system! Yay!

F/ Distribution / Personal Brand
Not one day goes by when I am not reminded by how stupid it is that I did nothing on my personal brand over all these years that I have been active on social media and internet.

I really have to pull up my socks, pants, life and EVERYTHING that I can on this. I need to start putting my face and thoughts and ideas and everything else out!

G/ Upskilling Cohort for Mid-Career Folks
A friend (Akshay) and I had this idea – what if there was some cohort for mid-career professionals who are wading in the ambiguity with their careers? And the cohort could offer a structured program where you could attend sessions by others (gyaan), upskilling workshops (say AI), and opportunity to find gigs that are not soul-sucking full time jobs.

We floated this idea in couple of groups – one was DD’s group and the other was MDI’s community. We got some really interesting feedback. What do you think? Would you be interested? Why? Why not? What would you want to see in that cohort? What money would you pay? No, we dont want to charge people who want to upskill but we want to filter non-serious participants. And any other feedback?

H/ Bending Spoon’s acquisition of Vimeo
I read this week that Bending Spoons is acquiring Vimeo. If you are uninitiated about BS, they are a tech venture studio of sorts that also owns and runs wetransfer, issu and evernote! Oh, I also love their Values page!

Also, Bending Spoons is the kind of business that I want to create. In fact, the labs piece by AK is my ticket to that. I just need to find a way to show the kids the light and move beyond the quirks.

I/ Bharat Ek Khoj
Someone needs to reimagine and retell Bharat Ek Khoj. May be using AI. I wish I had the money to commission it! In fact, on that thread, reminds me, I have so so so many ideas that I want to work on and I dont know how to do all of those 🙁

Ok wait. I will not cry.
Moving on.

Ok, this is it. Moving on.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos that I took and saved in the last week. Here.

And here’s a photo that I want to share with the world…

Took this on one of the mornings at Starbucks.

Do share some of your photos with me 🙂

🈺 LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldn’t). And I just added health a few weeks ago.

Book 2 – There was no movement.
A, I was busy with work.
B, Bri was busy as well.
So, I have nothing to report. Will get back next week.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it long ago.
Now its time to think about the plan for the next year. Lol.

Health – No large actions.
PS: I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I was not on track at all.
With FOXO I had built a good habit of eating in moderation and all that but one slip from my side, I am back to the starting line. I need to get back on track. A 0.

Meru. Lot of action but no updates that I can put on this blog.
So, a 0.

C4E. No action from my side.
But we did survive one more month without ruin. So that’s a win for sure. With the way things are going, I will have to take up a loan to pay September salaries. So it has a good thing and a bad thing. May be a 0.

Brand SG. No action.
Riya and AK and Vishal and others have been at it but we havent shipped anything. So a -1. Also with a team and talent like that, it’s a shame that I am unable to get them to do more for me.

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Nothing.
So, -1

Shauk. No action.
No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score is -2.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

From Week 37 of 2025

What trends do you see?

I see…

Better sleep despite my emotions being all over the place. Funnily the days that I was most screwed, I seem to be sleeping better. Lol.
Food needs fixing for sure.

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

1/ Sleep
Like I said, this seems to be ok.
Despite my emotions.
I think I am blessed!

2/ Exercise
No action 🙁

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
Was terrible.

Here’s a screenshot of macros from last week. I am told I need to add 20% to what I track. Please do the math ;P

I use chatgpt to estimate this.

So, am ok on protein (I think) but I need to fix my carbs and calories.

Oh, in case you need my prompt for this, lemme know. It’s able to find macros but I am yet to automate it to a point that it can add to the tracker by itself. On that, I am sure it’s possible but I havent had the time to play with AI tools yet.

4/ Community
No large movement on this.

5/ REDACTED
This was being tracked till the last week. I have stopped this from this week onward.

6/ Movement
No action.

Apart from steps over the last week. See this.

7/ Meditation
No action.

Overall, despite everything, I am unable to anything about moving the metrics that matter. I think I need intervention! Who? Come on, universe. #sgtodo

Also, question for the world at large – how to people manage work, life, family and fitness? #tothink

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

I read a lot last week. I mean it feels like that.

Here are some pieces that I want to share…

1/ Longevity as the new status game by JMJ. Here. Satirical read about how longevity has become the new pursuit of the rich and tech-ous.

2/ The note from Wire about the Nepal situation. Here.

3/ Here’s a note on Pmarca’s operating principles and the change. Here. I think I am somewhere in the same flux. Over the last year or so, I’ve become a lot more manager than maker. And thus I need to change as well.

4/ My friend Pavithra on self worth, told thru the lens of GLP-1 drugs and Serena’s decision to promote these drugs. Here.

5/ This tweet on how to use modern digital marketing.

6/ Aarya write about what makes Apple, Apple. Very well written piece from a young person. Must read. Here.

7/ This story on Parsi’s Towers of Silence. And Vultures. Really. MUST read. For sheer joy of reading. And amazement.

8/ This review of Manu Joseph’s book, Why The Poor Don’t Kill Us. No, I have not read the book. But I am aware of the sharp tongue of the man. And I love how he’s able to write so well. This review is Josephesque itself. Do read.

9/ Ev (the twitter guy) talking about “Why Greatness Can’t be Planned”. I havent read the book but I love the narrative. Here. I can totally see myself buying the book. Meanwhile, here’s a summary of the book.

10/ Saw this on HV Pandya’s X. About Steve Job’s Miracle Year at Apple. Here. Oh, and here’s to the crazy ones…

Thats it for this week. Phew!

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

I’ve been skipping this for a while now.
Lets see when I get back to this.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Tough.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Routine, Routine, Busy, Grind, Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 36-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from the week 36 of 2025.

Sep 6, 2025
Starbucks, Versova

I am starting this on a Saturday. Let’s see if I get to publish this today. Last few weeks have been tough, accounting to all the work and meetings and all that.

Today’s Sunday. And I didn’t publish this on a Saturday! Lol!

Let’s continue.

Today’s track is from Lucky Ali. This one.

Nahi Rakhta Main – Lucky Ali

So, let’s go…

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ Ember Months Lock In
Most of the startup world is talking about the great lock-in over the Ember Months. Funny I didnt know of this as a concept all this while. But now that I know, I am inspired to something. I think I will make it about fitness. Work, life, people, relationships, etc etc will come and go but fitness will stay with me. So that.

A part of this is that I will run a HM on 31st Dec. I am 14 odd weeks away from it. And as of today I can only run like 10 meters. Let’s see how it goes.

What are you gonna lock-in the next 4 months with?

B/ Teacher’s Day
A sum total of two people wished me Happy teachers’s day. Which is fine. I dont want adulation anyway. But I am very very big on learning and lessons and life and all that. And I want to believe that I am teaching a lot of people a lot of things. And while they may not acknowledge me, I hope they are using it.

On the flip side, I used to be big on wishing my teachers and my mentors each year. But since the last few years, I’ve stopped doing this. There are a couple of reasons.

1 – I am like eternally grateful to them. And I try and thank them a lot. And that means that I dont need a specific day to think about them and wish them.

2 – With time, these special days have stopped meaning a lot to me. Call it my laziness, call it my limitation but I no longer think a lot about these days.

3- I often thing that by wishing one, I am not wishing or thinking about others. And there have been way too many teachers that have made me who I am. So, my policy is, dont wish any. I know this is stupid – at least the ones I wish will feel good. But here I am.

C/ New Twitter / X handle
If you know me, you know how important it is for me to connect with people – new or known. And twitter has been an incredible source for that. But lately, even though I got a premium account, my reach has been limited. I can blame it on my content (probably true cos I dont get reach on any platform that I am active on) or I can blame it on the ago (lol). But I dont get reach.

One investigation (in my head) tells me that its probably because I’ve done things that may flag the account as a bot (following a lot, unfollowing a lot, posting links etc etc).

So, I want to build a new handle and see if I get more reach on it. Also, on the new handle, I will talk about one niche (the holy grail of growth on twitter). The only trouble is, I dont know what niche to talk about!

Oh, while I made a plea to the world to follow me on the new handle, I asked them to share a quote. Some people shared and some of these are gems! I think I will get someone to make posters, frame those and send to people who’ve shared those quotes. AK, up for a challenge?

D/ Fold Money + Kite by Zerodha
Thanks to Fold Money, I discovered that I had stock investments worth 80K! I thought I have no savings. But I was wrong. So I will sell those. And try to prepay some of my loan.

E/ Saurabh Garg’s raison d’être
Aka, why am I here. Aka, what gives me joy. Aka, why I do what I do.

This is tough question that I will never find an answer to. Most people dont. While most people are ok with the ambiguity, I am not. I want to find an answer. I know it may never dawn upon me but I will continue to try.

A thread in that direction is as follows. PS: This was an outcome of one of my free thinking sessions.

My salvation is in thinking, reading, knowing more. And not in doing.

I am an explorer. I am an organic. I can get things done from others (not from self). I can push people to do more than they would have imagined. But I like to move across (not around) and I want to open doors. My magic is in connecting people and getting them to work with each other.

The life of an executer is not for me. As I reflect on my work and life, I realize I never was a great executer. I’ve not been a finisher. I like to take things from 0 to 1. But not from 1 to 10 and not from 10 to 100. I’ve never taken anything to 10, let alone 100. And I am ok with this.

So, I want to do more of what it takes to be this organic, this explorer, this tinkerer, this door opener. And then whatever happens from there on, I want to let that happen!

Also, when I let this happen, how do I make an honest living?

One way it that I find 1000 true fans who will give me 1000 bucks a month to live and then I do things that support them. Till last year I would have scoffed at the idea. But now, I dont. Talk of changing philosophy ;P

So, here’s my plea. If you are reading this and you want to support me, here’s a test. You have my number. If you don’t ask me. Make a transfer of an amount that you are willing to fund me for month on month. And then DM me. Let’s see if I get any close to my dreams.

F/ Do things with hand
Dr H asked me to do things with hand. Last time I tried doing it, I learnt how to juggle three balls. This time I think I will go back to Uke.

My only problem is that my neuroplasticity with the Uke is way too strong. And not is a good way. So, let’s see.

G/ The fall of the heroes
This past week two things happened that reinforced the belief that heroes fall. The Balraj incident and the dinner of tech CEOs.

H/ MDI network
I am incredibly grateful to the network from MDI Gurgaon. There are so many times when I need help and inputs and support and the network ALWAYS comes thru. I hope to be able to help others when they need me.

I/ Zakir Khan
Saw this (from Rajiv Nema).
And OMG. I am in awe of the man. The thing am taking away from this story is riyaaz. Must do more riyaaz. With everything I work on.

PS: Lately a few young people have pointed out to me that Zakir has not really lived up to the responsibility he has as a strong voice. I want to say that it’s his choice. And I am sad at the same time. Especially now that I have started to see things that Punit Pania wants us to see.

I think on this, the final word would be of Parijat’s. He said and I concur, “A spine is rare, harmful at times but valuable, I daresay”.

And no, I dont have a spine. More on this some other day.

J/ Personal brand
See E above. And in continuation to that, I’ve started to think deeply about my personal brand. To be honest, this is not the first time. But this time I am committed. and this time, Riya is helping me like she’s never helped me before. I am hopeful something will come out of it.

I sent the following to some friends…

Hello Saurabh! I’m working on a personal branding exercise for my startup journey, and I need your help. Can you please take this short personal values test: https://personalvalu.es/personal-values-test

But instead of doing it for yourself, please do it while thinking about me — what values you feel represent me most strongly. At the end, you’ll get 5 values on the final page. Please take a quick screenshot of that page and send it back to me here. It’ll really help me understand how I’m perceived by the people close to me. Thank you!

I would love if you could take this and share what you think I stand for.

K/ Larger font.
I had to change the screen resolution of my laptop to a higher one!

Age, sigh!

L/ What does the life amount to?
Someone asked me, what does my life amount to. I mean I am 42 and I have -40 lakhs of net worth and literally no assets to call my own. Even my CA told my dad the other day that all I do is dream big and do nothing. And that was a rude shock. And I need to find a way to not be that. Anyhow, am digressing.

So someone asked me what does my life amount to and I didnt have an answer. Then someone else I know told me that that person has a different metric. They said, “maine paise nahi kamaya but izzat kamai hai, log kamaye hai”

And I was like OMG, I am this! All I’ve earned is izzat, people, exposure. But then, these things don’t give me no dal roti. Sigh!

M/ Michael Lopp
The discovery of the week has to be Michael Lopp and his blog. I found him via someone on twitter and I think I’ve read a large part of his website. He’s one of those, “why didnt I discover this person sooner” person.

The few that I want to highlight are…

1 – Organics vs Mechanics. I am clearly an… go find out ;P

2 – Bored People Quit.

3 – Minimum Viable Curiosity.

N/ What can be road block for us?
One of the things I am grateful to Meru for is continued patronage of Hareesh Sir. And all the lessons I get from him.

In the most recent one, for each thing we work on, he asks us, what can be a road block for us in this project. He asks us to list those and then ensure that we prevent ruin on that end.

This one lesson is worth its weight in gold!

Also, random #parkedIdea – For each such thing, am gonna build a razor. You know, like Occam’s Razor. And maybe evolve them into decision making frameworks like Charlie has (you know, psychology of human misjudgment).

O/ Disappear from internet?
I’ve been thinking lately that what would it be like to disappear from the Internet. I know I am far from it. In fact, if anything, I am hoping to bombard the internet with my face – you know, AI avatar, content, blogs, videos and all that. All in chase of that “personal brand” thing that will enable me to get more opportunities. That give me enough cash flow to take care of myself and my ilk.

I wish I had enough to not worry about anything and have access to everything. And then may be, I would actually go missing!

Ok, wait. I have a crazy idea. I dont login to social networks at all. I am only on email and whatsapp and all that. And I get my people to build / manage / operate those handles? As if Saurabh is a mere bot and there are people that run that bot!

What do you think?

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 36.

The highlight is this one…

More people must know that they are insignificant in the large cosmic plan of things. While we are on this, please see this.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldn’t). And I just added health a few weeks ago.

Book 2 – I sat with Bri and I got it restarted. No large output yet. But I’ve started to work on it. No, I am not counting this as a win but this is definitely a start (was on pause for a while).

Yearly Plan – I dropped it long ago. Now its time to think about the plan for the next year. Lol.

Health – No large actions.
PS: I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I dont think it was on track. I did eat in moderation and I did try to be consistent. But I can do more. And I dont want to be randomly harsh. So, a 0.

Meru. No large updates in this week. So, a 0.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No action. Last week, at least I recorded a few things. This week, nothing. And this is an important plank. So, -1.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. I moved some needle but not enough. So, -1

Shauk. No action. No time. And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score is -2

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

I see…

Inconsistent with sleep. But a couple of good days. I think it boils down to discipline.
Consistent steps. I think I need to find a way to do similar thing with workouts and I will be unbeatable!
LOT of coffee. And all of it at Starbucks. Need to reduce it. No, not

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

1/ Sleep
This was better than last week. There were two 90+ recoveries. Need to continue to invest more on this.

2/ Exercise
Walks have been consistent. But havent been able to add any fitness yet. I must.

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
This week was little easy going. I ate things that I typically I dont want to eat. Really looking forward to the next week cos I am gonna get onto OMAD / 2MAD / Keto or something.

4/ Community
No large movement on this. Didn’t have the time.

5/ Crowdfunding health
I will remove this from next week onward.

6/ Movement
No action.
🙁

7/ Meditation
No action. I will start this for sure this week. Lol!

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

Here’s a list of interesting things from the last week.

1/ This piece from Samarth.

2/ Visa’s homecoming. Very interesting read. I see myself in him. Like a lot of his fans.

3/ Advice from someone who turned 42.

4/ Incredible long read on AI Bots and its all-pervasive impact. And in fields like healthcare! Thanks to PradX⁩ for the recommendation

5/ Alan Watts on Game of Life.

Thats it for this week. I know I should have had more. But this is it.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

I’ve been skipping this for a while now.
I think this will remain ignored for a few more weeks.
Let’s see when I get back to this.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Routine.

This is how it was last week as well.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Routine, Busy, Grind, Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 35-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from the week 35 of 2025.

Aug 31,
Starbucks, Versova
Finishing it on Sep 1, 2025.

Today I woke up late. I mean I was up at 6:30. And then I slept again (cos I was up till 2). And then I woke up at 8:30. And this means I am delayed on most things, including this note. But now that am here, I will make the most of it. And since I didn’t write the last week’s well, I need to do this one better.

Lol, talk of self-imposed pressure.

Anyhow.
We shall prevail.
And we shall do more.
Oh and before we go ahead, here’s the track of the week. This.

Ok, let’s go!

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

1/ The raison d’être of this weekly review
As I was writing this, I realised that it takes me about 3 hours to write this. Give or take. And then whatever time it takes me to maintain notes that I take thru the week (in hopes that I will publish this on this post). For the curious, most of those notes are on my Apple Notes, Self WA Group, TIL and Roam.

However, if I am to look at the value that I get from this, I think its zilch.

Apart from making me feel good about continuing with a habit for more than 8 months.

TBH, in the past, I used to have lot more time. And that meant I could work on this at my speed, at my pace, at my schedule. I remember I would start writing this on a Thursday and then I would get back to it often. Now, all I get is a half a day per week and in that time I need to crunch errands, socialise, do soul things and all that.

And thus I am left questioning this.

But then, I enjoy the process of writing. This is the only thing that I write these days apart from work. Plus, writing this allows me to reflect and see notes and revisit things from the week gone by. Its this revisiting that has got me numerous opportunities that I would otherwise not get.

So, if I were to do a pros vs cons analysis, I dont know what to make out of this.

What do you think? Should I continue with this? Or should I stop?

2/ Punit Pania
I’ve been aware of his work for a while but over the last week, I saw a lot of his videos. And with each, my are for him has only grown. What an incredible guy!

I wish I had the balls to be like him – live life on own terms and rely on 1000 true fans to support his life. He’s clearly using his ability to write and speak to rage against the system. In a manner that is harmless and yet impactful. At least I am a convert. I wish I had the talent to do that.

But then, even if I had the talent, I would probably not rage against anything. I would try and build things. I am never against anything. I am towards something else. I dont know if this makes sense to whoever is reading this, but that.

3/ Personal Brand
I’ve been making efforts on building my personal brand. Actually wait. I am not making efforts. Riya is. And Vishal and Naman are. I am merely giving into whatever they tell me. See this video as the first output. This is still a private link that we made as a trial. I have no interest in giving financial advice. Lemme know what you think.

I’ve also started to talk publicly about this on various platforms. And thanks to that, I’ve got inputs from many folks. Each is helping me sharpen it. Let’s see what comes out of it.

4/ Micro Dramas
I’ve been enamored by it. And everyone I know is talking about it. And I have this feeling of being left out. Super FOMO. Like I have with AI. And with so many more things.

Thing is, a lot of filmmakers I know hate this format (they think money is too less and there is no creativity etc) but I think its an important to embrace it. I think it will democratize storytelling. Like Youtube did. Plus, with all the noise of Tik Tok making a comeback, we will see a million filmmakers come to life – all equipped with simple phone cameras and insane talent. If someone can build a microdrama business, I think they are in for a goldmine.

Of course, I speak as an outsider. Till I had TRS, I was still on the fringes but I am no longer there and thus I know nothing about the business. What do you think?

5/ AI Film Fest
AK, C and others are working on putting together a film festival for content made with AI. Wow! I am constantly surprised at all the things they do! More details here.

Again, like micro dramas, AI as a concept is being dismissed per se by a lot of filmmakers but I know the time has come. Sooner you adapt to it and accept it, better it is.

Anyhow. Again. I dont want to talk more cos am not a man in the arena. But I do know that if young people think of putting together such festivals, the established filmmakers will have a field day if they embrace AI.

6/ Coaching
Sandeep Sir mentioned that I must explore coaching as a career option. I don’t think I want to. But he sees something in me that I dont see. And I dont want to dismiss him. Let’s see.

7/ This tweet from Naval on people
I am embedding it here so that it’s eay to read and all that.

I read this and I was like, o fuck!

I’ve long believed in this idea of having to identify people from afar. And then investing in them and then try to get them to work with me. And I’ve been mildly successful. Now that Naval has spoken, I must accelerate.

Also, thanks to Gokul (founder at CynLr), I understood the term “needle in the haystack” when it comes to talent. This is a very good way to spot talent. In fact, this is how scouts for the sports teams work. Even VCs have scouts that work for them to identify talent.

So that.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 35.

The highlight photo has to be this from Naval…

I saw this and I was like, O FUCK!
Ofc, I’ve spoken about it above.
Lemme know what you think of this.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldnt). And I just added health a few weeks ago.

Book 2 – no action.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.

Health – No large actions.
PS: I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I think I was better than last week. I ate mindfully. Had a few thing that I shouldn’t have had. But was ok more or less. If I had added workouts, it would have been sweet. I will give myself a 0.

Meru. No large updates in this week. So, a 0.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. Recorded a few things with Riya. Yet to ship. But I did record and did make a progress. After a few days. So, a 0. And not a -1. Yay!

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. No action. No time. And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score is -1.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

I see…

Eating a lot of things that I shouldnt be eating. I hope to fix this.
Lesser spends than I typically do week on week. So, yay!
Consistency with steps. Yay!
Need to check on emotions, especially in the second half of the week.

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

1/ Sleep
This was not good at all. I’ve been lagging behind on this. Must fix it.

2/ Exercise
Walks have been consistent. I do at least 8K each day. I hope to continue with this.

I want to add some workout in this. Yoga is easy but I need someone to help me. Gym, I can’t. I need to find a sport that equals weight lifting (you know, muscle and all).

Also, again, no action. So not counting this as a win. Till I actually do something.

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
This week was ok.
I had an average of 1800 calories in the week gone by.
As I write this, I have had only two Americano’s since morning. Not even protein shake.

4/ Community
This seems to be doing ok.
I am able to meet new people.
I am ok to build deeper relationships with more people. I am able to sustain interest as well. So all well.

5/ Crowdfunding health
I had said that I want my 1000 true fans to help me get healthy.
This will be a bummer.
I had to be under 90 but I am not losing weight at all. And I wont for the next few days either. So that will suck. I will inform these people and move on.

6/ Movement
No action.
Except walking.

7/ Meditation
I was to have meditated for a few hours this week. But I did not. So that. Will try again this week.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

Here’s a list of interesting things from the last week.

1/ Read this from Naval in the morning and was like a whack on the back of the head. There are so many times I think to myself – the world is unfair, I couldnt do it, I dont have it easy etc etc. But Naval is right. YOU have only YOU to blame if you’re not doing well. Will think a lot about this over the next few days!

2/ The CBO at Atomberg (Arindam Paul) just wrote a new book and its getting rave reviews. I am getting a copy for myself. Could be useful if you are interested in consumer brands, d2c, modern marketing et al. Check it here.

3/ This piece by Yash Garg on founder’s office roles is a gold mine for folks seeking such roles.

4/ Sahil talks about 3 types of friends. Incredible list. Made me think who’s my leaves, branches and the roots. I see myself using this analogy a lot in how I converse.

So yeah. This is it.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

I’ve been skipping this for a while now. I think this will remain ignored for a few more weeks. Let’s see when I get back to this.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Routine.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Busy, Grind, Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 34-25 – Weekly Notes

Weekly update from Saurabh Garg from the 34th week of 2025.

~~Aug 25. Monday.~~
Aug 26. Tuesday.
Various places, various times.
This was supposed to happen over the last weekend but I was unable to. Not that I was very busy or something. Just that something kept on coming up. And that kept delaying things. Plus I’ve had few very long days at work. Plus most times I would start writing this on a Friday and then complete in spurts over the weekend. This time, I was unable to work on this on Friday or Saturday. And then Sunday went in meetings and all that.

So that.

I had imagined that I will skip it. But then I realised that skipping would be taking the easy way out. And I dont want to break my streaks.

And with that intro and disclaimer, lessgooo…

Oh, the track of the week is this and this.

Chalo, lets go.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ Missed the Sunday Linkedin post.
I missed all my weekend things and this included the post I make each Sunday. If I had posted, I would’ve celebrated Dr Hitakshi. You must check her linkedin.

Apart from all the sense she makes as a doctor, she once mentioned to C that she wants to hire someone and the non negotiables that she has are, “Not dumb. Not slow. Integrity.”

These are super super important for anyone who wants to make a good life!

B/ Bikram Bumrah
I can dedicate an entire section to this, if I have to! But here we go!

I saw him live on Aug 23. For this show. And this was easily the highlight of the week! Here are some notes that I took…

Mumbai kaayaro ka sheher hai. Yahan aata ko aaram nahi milta.
You must do what it takes to chase your bliss.
The need of poets and all!

PS: I will write about him in detail some day.

C/ Ray LaMontagne
Ray is a gift that keeps giving. Since I’ve heard him at Starbucks, I have come to become a fan. I’ve heard almost all tracks. These days, I was born to love you is my jam.

D/ 2 lakh steps
Since the 6th of August, I have walked 2 lakhs steps. Super stoked. Apart from the lingering ache in the feet, I dont think I’ve lost any weight per se.

Oh, as I write this (Aug 26th), I broke the Canyons I was wearing. I need to get a new walking companion.

E / Flash Memory by Sandeep Kaul.
Met Sandeep over the weekend and he told me about this concept of Flash Memory.

He says that all he operates as a slave to his Flash Memory. Like a Flash drive, he only remembers things before and after 30 minutes of now. He has no recollection of the past. He has no plan for the future. He’s in the zone, all the time and leans onto AI tools and others to support.

Now, I have worked like this all my life. Just that I didnot know the name of this concept. From today on, I know the name.

There’s a LOT more. But since I am running super late with this and I want to push it, I will skip that for this week and post on this week’s note.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 34.

The highlight photo has to be of Bikram Bumrah. More about him in the next few lines.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldnt). And I just added health a few weeks ago.

Book 2 – no action.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.

Health – The last week was ok. Not the best. And I know I need to be regular. So that. PS: I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. Was not the best. I fell off the radar. And had ups and down thru the week. I will give myself -1.

Meru. No large updates in this week. So, a 0.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No large action. Did a lot of chats with a lot of people. But no action to show for. So, a 0.

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. No action. No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score is -2.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

I see…

A lot of reds in the sleep department.
Consistecny with walks (8K+ steps each day)
Tracked what I ate on most days.
Ok on stress.

You?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

I will start with updates on what am doing for health. I read somewhere that you need 4 things to live long – sleep, exercise, diet and community. I will track all four. And then some more variables that I feel are important to me. Let’s see what comes out.

So…

Sleep
Exercise
Diet
Community
Crowdfunding my health.
Movement (this should be part of exercise but I have a separate section)
Meditation
Some links: My food log, my daily health log channel.

Lets go…

1/ Sleep
This was not good at all. See the chart above.
Insta to blame.
I am removing insta from my phone.
Everything else I talk about health is moot tbh if I cant seem to fix this one thing.

2/ Exercise
No action on this apart from walking. I need to fix this. This week looks tough to be honest. I will try to include some workout for sure. Let’s see how.

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
This week was bad for food.
I need to get back on the track. Which I will.
As we speak, its 5:30 and all I’ve had is a protein shake.

4/ Community
I love this the most. Just yesterady I met two new people – both because of the communty that I had created.

5/ Crowdfunding health
I had said that I want my 1000 true fans to help me get healthy.

This will be a bummer.
I had to be under 90 but as of today morning, I am 93 KGs. Talked to Dr H and she mentioned that I need to not worry about it at this time.

6/ Movement
Want to add to this (apart from just walking).
This is zero at this time.
The only saving grace is all the walking. See this chart…

7/ Meditation
I want to restart on this.
Now that I will remove insta from the phone, I will replace it wiht Headspace. I will report back next week.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

PS: I had added YT to my “reads”

Here’s a list of interesting things things from the last week.

This thread from Rahul is goldmine. He talks about content, youtube and more. Do read this.
This tweet has strategies for a good life. I love each of his advices. And I can see implimenting most. Thats another matter that am still poor ;P
This post by Kavin Mittal on why he’s exiting India.
This post by Yash on how to land a founder’s office role
This link – https://trackthis.link/ – can bomb your ad networks and set random cookies. You MUST try this. But, please know that it will nuke your laptop!
A rare post on goepolitics – here. Important to read and understand. Cos, well, we are in a new world order where rules are being rewritten as we speak.
This post on work-life balance. I am working on a post of my own.
This research proves that the shape of logos can dictate how people percieve things to be. Very interesting. Must read.

This is it from the week gone by.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

Again, skipping this. Will get back to it at an opportune time.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Busy.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Grind, Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 33-25 – Weekly Notes

SG’s weekly notes and updates. For the week 33 of 2025.

Hello!
1 PM, 17th Aug, 2025
Versova Starbucks.

The week gone by was a moderate one. It was a week with a lot of chuttis and thus there was less chaos on the roads (except the one caused by Dahi Handi). Plus, it was after a while that I was in Andheri West for three days on a trot.

I did some work (at Meru we shipped our first thing). I played some (Krishna was visiting). I had some brainwaves (thought hard about where I want to be in life) and all that.

Overall, an interesting week.
Will talk more about it in a bit.

Oh, I am listening to this as I write.

Ok, let’s go.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ AI and the creative business
I can talk about this from three lenses – personal, Meru (as a brand owner) and C4E (as a partner to brands).

As Meru, as we scale the business, we need to be able to do more things and fast. Faster than I can say fast. And AI allows us to do that. I know there’s halluciantion, mistakes and all that but I need to imagine that as a brand owner, where do I want the penny to drop – at speed, at quality, as perfection. So that.

At C4E, the team has to adapt fast. Not because it will question the survival but because it will enable to do more.

On a personal level, I can now become hyperproductive. For example, we started to train Heygen on my face and words. Here are the first two outputs.

PS: All the work on this has been done by Vishal. I merely recorded it. I know this is not perfect but we will get to it with time.

Lemme know what you think.

B/ Smart Folders on Apple Notes
Accidentally discovered Smart Folders on Apple Notes and I think my life will change!

For context, I use Apple Notes as my temp notepad (apart from a pen and paper based notepad) and each weekend, I clean my notes by adding things to my Roam. I also use Apple Notes to save recurring things for fast and easy access (I may not have my laptop with me all the time but I do have my phone).

So when I needed things, I would often rely on search and then waste time. With Smart Folders, I am able to sort of bookmark things that I need faster access to. And for someone like me who leans a lot on notes, bookmarks, tools and people for details, this was a godsend thing!

C/ Notetaking workshop
Oh, and I took a notetaking workshop for a couple of young kids who’re gonna join college soon.

I didnt want to do this (I think that old methods of taking notes are no longer valid) but one of my seniors from MDI insisted and I couldnt say no to him.

While I did that session, I realised that I love to teach people. I just wish I was able to earn a lot of money doing that. I mean I can earn. I can charge a lot. But then my ethics dont allow me to charge from the ones who can’t pay. And the ones who can pay wont probably need me.

So that.

D/ Krishna
Krishna was in Bom for a couple of days. Each time I meet him, I am left inspired to do more. The guy literally went from being a cloth trader to a full-stack developer! A remidner that I must surround myself with more doers and people who want to stay with the times.

And I must become someone that a Krishna would like to hang out with.

E/ Off Insta. And failure.
I had decided that I would be off insta for a few days.

I could stay away for all of 2 days.
The addiction is real!

To solve for it, I’ve asked AK to loan me the spare iphone that we have at C4E. Let’s see how it goes.

F/ Meditation before a meeting / Grounding
In one of my coaching sessions with FOXO, the person asked me to do a one-minute grouding exercise to get into the mindset for the meeting. I find it funny cos when I come into a meeting, I come with 100% intention.

But then, Hemant recommends this as well. And I want to follow each thing that Hemant says. So, thanks to reinfrocement by the session, I will start doing this. A one minute breathing / grounding exercise before each meeting.

Lets see how the experiment goes.

G/ Punjabi MC
Listening to this as I write.

I really want to posture that Punjabi MC has to be one of the greatest artists of our time. Each time I need some energy, I put on something from Punjabi MC. Shinda, Mundeya tu bach rahi, Punjaban, Morni and many many more. I just wish I could dance alongside. But then I have two left feet.

H/ SG’s Braintrust
I have this WA group where I only add people who I…

have personally met (IRL or online)
respect
want to stay in touch with
am inspired by
want to learn from

Right now, this group is admin only. Very little chatter. I mostly use it to share things to get inputs, seek connections, throw ideas to see what sticks and other such things. This group has people across ages and locations.

I want to now expand this group. If you know me, lemme know and I will add you.

So, this is it for this week.

I know there should be more. Like I said, this was an easy week but the action and words and updates don’t match. Will fix this as we go along!

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 33. The highlight photo has to be…

I dont know the source. This came on one of the whatsapp groups that I am a part of. And yes, I know this is technically not a photo.

Not too many pics to be honest.
Was one of the weeks where I just didn’t have enough to save or share.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldnt). Last week I added health.

Book 2 – no action.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.

Health – I had a fairly ok one on health, except yesterday when I fell off the radar. I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I did ok on most departments except workout. Yesterday was bad. But I can ignore it. A 0.

Meru. We finally shipped the first iteration of the first product (of the many in the pipeline). It’s live at elevate.merulife.com. So a +1.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No large action. But like I mentioned, I did do some experiments with Heygen, thanks to Vishal. You can see here and here. So, a +1.

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. No action. No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0

So the overall score is 1.
Finally in positive after a while!

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

To me, this looks like a regular week in the life of a regular man. Some good days, some bad days, some good food, some bad, some walks and some not so walks. Guess this is the point of life? No?

Random update. Listening to some Afro-Techno Mix. This one.

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section some days ago. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

So…

Sleep
Exercise
Diet
Community
Crowdfunding my health.
Movement (this should be part of exercise but I have a separate section)
Meditation
Some links: My food log, my daily health log channel.

Lets go…

1/ Sleep
The week gone by was fairly ok. I have realised that I get 6 to 7 hours of sleep and most days I wake up without an alarm. So that’s ok.

Plus, on a day-to-day basis, I want to make my sleeping environment better. I cant fix the noise (I literally live on the road) but I can manage other things. And thus I am iterating with those. I cleaned my humidifier yesterday. I may not need it as long as it’s raining. Will play with it over the next few days and see how it impacts sleep over the next few days.

2/ Exercise
I still can NOT work out.
I tried yoga but all I got was 1 Surya Namaskar before I decided to quit.
However I’ve been fairly consistent with the walks. See 6 below.

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
I think I am eating better (except one or two off days – and I need to stop with these). But the funny thing is, my weight is not reducing!

I’ve been consistent with walks (and these are deliberate walks) and I eat in moderation (at least the last few weeks) but the weight is not changing. Sigh!

4/ Community
I seem to have found some friends and colleagues who I can hang out with whenever I want to and however I want to. I dont have any pressure of dressing up, drinking up, going to a certain kind of a place or doing whatever. I can be at my weirdest extreme and I am accepted.

No, I dont want to jinx it. Will work hard to preserve it.

5/ Crowdfunding health
Last week I said, I want my 1000 true fans to help me get healthy.

And I have two backers already. Both of them have committed 10K for 3 months, starting September, if I can show them that I can be under 90 KGs in this month. But, we are beyond the H1 of Aug and I am 92! Sigh!

6/ Movement
I am walking more than 8K steps everyday. Since the 6th of this month! See this…

7/ Meditation
I want to restart on this.
Specifically after I got that lesson in grounding aLets see when I get to.

Apart from these, I will talk about what I am thinking specifically about health

A/ Streaks is a powerful thing
If I’ve walked approx 1.4 lakh steps since 6th Aug, it’s only because of my want to keep the streak going. I think if I can implement this streaks thing at more places in life, I would have a better one.

The other thing that has worked in my favour is that there is this community (almost all are strangers) who’re pushing each other to walk more. I see updates from others and I want to walk. And that’s insane!

B/ Papad
I need to find a way to stop having Papad 😀

C/ Proximity to Kachra
When I am at work at Meru, we are all snacking non-stop all the time.

Ok that was exaggeration but you get the drift. There are 10 people in the room and each person gets hungry at a different time; and since we are a small team, each time someone is hungry, they offer what they’re eating to everyone else. And thus, I find myself eating all the time. And since most of these are snacks we order via Qcom, these are chips and all. Even “healthy” chips are made with oil and all.

While at home, I dont stock any snacks anymore. I have infact some leftover protein bar that we made last week. So, I am snacking better when I am home.

I can clearly see environment in action. And I need to fix this. Let’s see how I do this.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

PS: I had added YT to my “reads”

Here’s a list of interesting things that caught my eye. TBH I’ve not read all of these (had a randomly busy week) and I’ve added these to my TRL. I am dividing this section into two – one where I’ve read those (I will add a context) and the ones that I havent.

So, I’ve read…

This piece by Samarth Bansal. Very honest, very vulnerable. More than anything else, it makes me want to join TWT and work for them. Jokes apart, each “leader” must read this. Very very interesting. And very well written. Like I said on X, if there’s one thing you read this month, let it be this. PS: If you do read this, please share what you learn from this.
This post by Sahil Bloom. My number 1 takeaway was that most people don’t know what they want.
Bigotry of Low Expectations. Read here. Mihir told me about this in a meeting. When I heard it and thought more about is, I saw my mind bend!

Here are others that I’ve not consumed but have opened a tab for.

Tim Urban’s Last 6 Years.
Rahul’s tweet on how OTT is killing India’s ₹12,000 crore cinema industry
Gurwinder on how social media shortens your life
MFM on chasing a billionaire’s morning routine. Here.
Harnidh’s piece on Taste. Here.
Charlie’s 12 Rules of Life. Here.
Impact of Internet on OCEAN. Here. PS: Take OCEAN, Big 5 Test for free here.
Niraj’s list of things to do to reduce risk in India. Here.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

Again, skipping this. Will get back to it at an opportune time.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Grind.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Blur, Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 32-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes, thoughts, reflections and more from Week 32 of 2025. By Saurabh Garg.

Hello!
9 AM (of Sunday)
Versova Starbucks.
Finishing this post at 9 AM on Monday, the 11th August.

So, today, I am gonna make protein bars for myself. Yes, I wanna start with this. And this is monumental. For many reasons. For starters, I dont like my kitchen being used for cooking. I cant live with the mess it makes. And then second, I’ve always felt that cooking is a waste of time. And thanks to folks at FOXO, I am more mindful. And thanks to Abhinav, am walking!

Update from the morning of 11th – AK and I did it. More about it in the next week. Also from here on, I will go back to assuming that I am writing this on Sunday.

And as I write this, I am listening to this on loop. The mixing on this one is da bomb!

I wish I could rap. I loved a lot of Gully Boy (ya ya, the rap purists, please dont come at me). And understand more raps. And probably write it. And probably perform it. Sigh.

Ok, let’s go.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ Overthinker and Overcommunicator
I am the last person to ever give advice on relationships but I have a strong belief that an overthinker must be with an overcommunicator.

Like most things, I would have seen this on some insta reel or something but over time I have come to have a 100% belief in this one. And this is true not just in romantic relationships but also in other places (say, work).

Think about it.

PS: If you are an overthinker, please do see this video and this photo.

B/ Linkedin Amplification #sgSunAmp
Since the last couple of weeks, every Sunday, I’ve been posting a tiny update on my linkedin where I talk about people and projects that more people need to know.

I dont know how long will I continue with this but I want to do whatever I can do to push more people to do more.

Here are those posts – 0, 1, 2 (today).
You can use this link to find other similar posts.

C/ Cheap
Spotted this on twitter.

Love this static ad by Fang oral care. pic.twitter.com/5MNKjDOT9x
— Vinod Chendhil (@vinodchendhil) August 7, 2025

I saw it and I realised that each person in life MUST proudly announce the prices that they will work at. It could be a business, a freelancer, a company, an artist or whatever. But you MUST talk about what you want to charge for your time or services.

And it’s ok to discover that

Also see, E.

D/ Uni-dimentional thinking and life
I was going through the reading list of the week. And I realised that my greatest influences come from tech-bros, startup folks, business leaders, hyper-successful businesspeople, famous artists and others of the ilk.

While there is nothing wrong with this, I would love to get more variety. I dont know where to look and what to do. Any inputs?

E/ Hiring process
Prak posted this on her linkedin. Very very pertinent. And I have a lot of thoughts. I even went out of character and made a comment. I am willing to die on the hill that till you build a fanbase (or 1000 true fans), you will HAVE to bow down to CV, assignments, in-human things etc etc.

Also, this post from Prak made me realise a few things. Here’s a list.

I must write more. I struggled to articulate my thoughts in 1250 characters. This can only get better if I write more.
I must work harder on my personal brand. And each person I know has to do the same. If you do, you will probably not need to take up assignments. I remember there was a time when I was looking for work and I could say that I dont have a CV. My name is my CV. Everyone else must be in this same boat.
Whole of point D above.
Each person MUST read 1000 True Fans by KK everyday till the idea gets drilled in the head.

F/ SoG
I HAVE TO GET BACK TO THIS.
And I dont know how.
Sigh.

G/ Bad News ASAP
I learnt this at Meru.

If things are going ok or going well, I dont need to be informed. But if there’s bad news, I want to be informed as soon as possible.

For many reasons. These are personal (not Meru’s).

I can plan for contingency.
Same as 1 but if I know the bad news, I can try and figure the repercussions and prevent the next-order effects.

Also, most people dont like surprises because they dont know how they react to bad ones. I am ok in this department tbh. I continue to operate from problem-solution-action triad.

And to be able to do this, I know I must give enough comfort to the ones around me that the bearer of the bad news will not be shot at!

So if you work with me, always give me the bad news first.

H/ Ask for EXACT timelines.
This is the second lesson from Meru in the last week.

When someone says they would work on something for you, you MUST request for an EXACT timeline (and not a vague “next week”). I was practising this already in life, but thanks to time spent at Meru, this has become a second nature. Must do this more often.

I/ Futility of action.
See this.

The biggest lesson from this one is that while there is merit and effort and pain and reward in the action, the end result is often… nothing. It’s the act that is important.

Reminds me of Naval where he talked about how all you have is your present and intention. And everything else is immaterial.

Also reminds me of a question that Dr H and C asked me. Here’s my attempt to rearticulate. While I am eternal optimist and long on hope, how do I remain divinely discontent?

The answer is simple. On a day to day basis, I spend my time and attention and intention of the task at hand. And while I do that, each day has to nudge me towards getting better.

J/ Feedback and change.
Lesson three this week from Meru. When you give input to people, do they change and try to implement the feedback?

If they try, they are good people. If they dont, you ought to move on.

To be honest, this is a tough one for me. I’ve lived my life as a people person and this shift to project person is proving to be harder than I had imagined. Even though I have seen mentors, friends, colleagues, clients talk about it. I know everyone says its not personal but I am finding it hard. I know the answers are within and I need to work on myself.

K/ The underachievement mountain at 42
See this tweet.

I will not copy-paste. Just that the meeting made me realise that I seem to be the only one who’s not saved for the rainy day. And if I have only people to show for my life and time here, I need a reality check.

Reminds me of that dialogue from F1 – You are not a “has been”. You are a “never was”.

Oh, the other quote from the film that I love is, “hope is not a strategy”. Must get this tattooed on me. #superQuotes

So this is it.
A lot was unpacked in these words.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 32.

The highlight photo has to be…

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldnt). Last week I added health. I am moving that section higher as I want that to become the priority as we go along.

Book 2 – no action.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.

Health – I have been actually good on this one.
I track my health updates here, in case.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I did ok on most departments except workout.
I need to get going on that.
But I can give myself a 0. Yay!

Meru. Was busy.
No large outcomes to show for. So -1.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No action.
And no action does not mean 0. It means a -1.

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. No action. No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0.

So the overall score is -3.
Same as last week. Lol.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

Look at those steps!
w00t!

And yes, look at that state of emotion.
Will work towards that.

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

Last week, I added Health as a key section. I am still discovering what to cover here. Let’s see how it goes.

I will start with updates on what am doing for health.

So…

Sleep
Exercise
Diet
Community
Crowdfunding my health.
Movement (this should be part of exercise but I have a separate section)
Meditation
Some links: My food log, my daily health log channel.

Lets go…

1/ Sleep
I am ok on this department. I sleep well. I am trying to make my sleep environment better. I live on the mainroad and thus its very noisy at all hours. I use earplugs when I sleep to drown the noise. I will start using a humidifier. I have an ok mattress.

2/ Exercise
This is my Achilles Heel. I can NOT work out. I will find some alternative.

3/ Diet
This was my second largest problem. But thanks to FOXO and some awareness, I am doing better on this. I choose to avoid bad things. This is getting expensive to be honest but I can optimise other spends and ensure that I only put in good things into my system. I track each thing I eat on my food log.

4/ Community
This is the best across all counts. Even though I have quirks and all that. Dont want to jinx it. Will work hard to preserve it.

5/ Crowdfunding health
I thought hard about it. And I came to the convenient conclusion that the way you support your creator friends with money, commission, work and all that, I want my 1000 true fans to help me get healthy.

And I have two backers already. Both of them have committed 10K for 3 months.

And having said that, I dont want this early support to make me complacent. I want to earn it. And thus I’ve promised that by the time August ends, I would be 89 KGs (I am 91.3 as of today). So lets see.

Oh, I update this daily health log channel.

6/ Movement
I need to join something that makes me move. The week was good in terms of walks. I have averaged 12719 steps! I hope I continue this momentum.

7/ Meditation
I want to restart on this. Lets see when I get to.

Apart from these, I will talk about what I am thinking about.

A/ Mindful Eating
Since I’ve got FOXO membership, I am very mindful of what I eat. I am not perfect but I am better for sure. And I need to do a lot more before I reach my ideal levels. Let’s see when.

B/ Making my own Protein Bar
Along with AK and C, I will make my Protein Bars today. Lets see how that experiment goes. Am doing this because no protein bar in India offers a gluten-free, dairy-free option! Plus it’s been a while since I did something new for the first time!

I will report on how this goes.

Update on Monday, the Aug 11 – we did it! We are taking orders. Shipping free ;P

C/ Money needed to be healthy
I am realising fast that it’s incredibly expensive to try and be healthy.
Must earn more.
Lol!

D/ Whoop Age of 46
So, I am 42. And Whoop tells me that as per that, my age is 46. Not that I didnt know. But seeing this on the app, in front of my eyes was, well, eye-opening.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

PS: I had added YT from last week onward. Cos a lot of my “reading” now happens via podcasts / YT videos that I consume while in commute.

Here’s a list of interesting things that caught my eye.

Oh, this week onward, I am making this a tad different. I will also write a tiny note on what am taking away from this piece.

1/ SHL on high-value jobs – here.
My biggest takeaway from this post is that it’s ok to invest time to get the things done if you know you are onto something valuable.

I saw another chart the other day where they talked about how it took Figma 3 years before they had a viable product or something.

2/ Paul’s essay on Persistence.
Spotted this on Vinod Khosla’s X.
I had read it a few months ago and re-reading was so refreshing!

My takeaway?
Dont bet against the Collision Brothers and Sam Altman 😀

Jokes apart, the takeaway is in this line – “The persistent are like boats whose engines can’t be throttled back. The obstinate are like boats whose rudders can’t be turned” and “The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.”

3/ Balaji on AI. Here.

A lot to unpack in this seemingly simple list. To be honest, I loved all 10. But points 2 (verification part), 3 (the concept of amplified), 4 and 8 stood out. I specifically want to talk about 4. I am afraid of the time when there are no experts cos all of us will have trained via the LLMs. We are staring at a huge circle jerk!

Oh, point 8 opened my eyes about crypto. I see myself thinking more about it in the weeks to come.

Anyhow.

Let’s see where the future takes us.

4/ Kunal Shah’s Delta 4 Theory. Here.
See this in combination with Brian Chesky’s 10-star Experience video.

Both of them talk about almost the same thing – the importance of building something that the customers brag about.

5/ Tom Goodwin on Longevity. Here.
I dont want to write more – there is enough comments and chatter there.

And here are some links that I havent had the time to think deeply about.

Samarth on Craft vs Cash. Here.
AML’s next in her series of India’s Tier 2 and 3 manufacturing. Here.
This piece on comfort zones. Here.
MFM with Tim. Yet to watch. Here.
How to make friends and… Here.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

Again, skipping this. Will get back to it at an opportune time.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Blur.
This is the second time in the recent past when I felt that week went by very fast. So that.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Stress, Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 31-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from Week 31 of 2025.

10 AM.
Versova Starbucks.
AK’s spot!

I dont know how this came to be called AK’s spot. Like most things, it would have started with me sitting at one specific place, and then my people finding a place around me. AK being AK would’ve picked one opposite and then like each thing, this became a habit.

So, am AK’s spot. And here is my recap of what probably was one of the most stressful and yet exciting weeks in a long long time. For starters, see this…

Screenshot of Whoop data from last week.

Ok, I am still listening to Ray.

Today, it’s this version. On loop. I encourage you to play this while you read the rest of the post. Can’t stop thanking Starbucks for introducing me to this voice and track.

I must find a way to do these unplugged gigs. You know, like NPR’s Tiny Desk, Sofar, David Letterman’s and all that.

Anyhow. Let’s go.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

A/ WTF to write?
So, letting you all in on a secret. I copy-paste the secions an headings and content from the previous week’s post. Then I edit ALL the sections execpt this one. And then I take my time to go thru my notes and lessons and and all that and I add those here.

Today when I opened my notes, I realised that this week was so busy that I was unable to capture a lot of things. And that means that I dont have a lot of things to write here.

But we shall prevail and let’s see what I write.

B/ Linkedin Shoutouts
Starting this week, I will give shoutout to at least 3 people each Sunday on my linkedin.

This week, I gave a shoutout to Nikunj, Roohi and Nipun. See here.

In case you need me to talk about you, you know who to reach.

C/ Hard things that don’t scale
I am often reminded of doing things that don’t scale and now that I am in the middle of doing things, I am learning the deeper meaning.

Things that scale need time to put rails and then, well, scale. The things that dont scale are built to get to the market the fastest.

And that nuance is what makes a LOT of difference.

And no, I am not advocating one over another. You gotta pick what works for you and what you want to work on.

D/ Raanjhanaa’s alt ending
The neck of the woods that discusses films is going berserk about how the producers have used AI to recreate the ending of a film.

There are notes from people about how the director was not consulted, how the nostalgia induced by film now seems cheated, how the consumers deserve more. Etc etc.

Before I write more,

No, I havent seen the film.
No, I dont care about the fandom.

But what I do care is that AI is here.

And especially in disciplines like filmmaking that have been gatekept for long. After code, this is the one that needed disruption and is getting disrupted. I love that I am around to see this revolution. I just hope I was bang in the middle of it.

Oh, and couple this with Shekhar Kapur’s Warlord. And with attempt from C4E folks of doing a feature with TNKS (see this). And while editing, just saw this.

All I can say is that change is coming. And either we embrace it. Or we die a slow, painful, agonising death.

E/ Founding Creator Roles and JDs
In this video, Balaji talks about why EACH startup needs a Founding Creator. And wow, eyes opened. I’ve remained on the sidelines for too long. And I need to now advice the same to all my younger friends.

This is one of those life changing advices that need no more words to be split. I’ve been guilty of remaining a private person for too long and I need to change that. I wish I was more adaptable while I was younger!

F/ F1, the Film
I havent had the time to write about F1 yet. I will probably sit on it today.

G/ New kids to learn from
I am starting to feel the need of finding new people to learn from. In a different era, this was SoG (see this). But with time, that got faded. And now I have no one.

SoG and my life’s work

Thing is, lately that supply of new, fresh, young talent has dried down. I need to build another group / cohort or something that I can be a part of, to learn new things.

If I had more time, I would teach (each teaching session requires a lot of prep). And since I dont have that, I want to rather build some group. Any ideas anyone? How are you doing this? How do you think others are doing?

I do have some groups that I run where I overshare. Here’s a list.

SG’s Braintrust
TIL
2025 Mentees (private link)
Taste for Makers

And I am sure there are more. But I need this structured manner in which I can learn from young ones.

Come on, universe! Help me! tw

H/ Safe Word.
Was reminded of this. See this. And yes, inspired by Simon Sinek.

Ok, so words are not wording. See A. And see this. May be next week.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 31.

I would love to highlight this quote from Om, from this post about Meta’s MSL.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

I had two large things when I started this year. Book 2 and a yearly plan (that I’ve been writing for a long time. This year I couldnt).

Book 2 – no action.

Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.

And starting today, I am adding a new large life objective. Health. More in the next few lines.

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. More awareness. Tiny actions. I am also building a new section on this weekly review. But the metrics remain off the chart. So, a -1.

Meru. Was busy. Did some things that showed outcomes! A 0. Yay!

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No action. And no action does not mean 0. It means a -1.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. I started with poker. So a step in the direction. But a 0.

So the overall score is -3.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker.

Ya ya.
Far fewer greens.
I will fix it. Especially cos health seems to be a recurring theme here.

I need to find the cause and then eliminate that.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

I have added views as part of the reads from this week onward. This is cos a lot of my “reading” now happens via podcasts / YT videos that I consume while in commute.

Here’s a list.

Oh, while each of these links is interesting and important, I am highlighting some.

Microsoft Research’s note on what jobs are in demand and the ones that are gonna go out. Here. If you are the one who thinks will get impacted, please talk to me and I will try to help.
The Philosophy of Sridhar Vembu (of Zoho), according to Notebook LM. Via this.
Om’s MASTERpiece on Meta, Zuck and MSL. Here.
Balaji talks about why EACH startup needs a Founding Creator. Here.
This is a very interesing post on Reddit about how to build wealth as a young person. Here.
Cheaper by the Dozen. Here. Funny that English language paperback version is not available. The Marathi edition is.
An interview of Brian Chesky where he reflects on his IPO conversation. I love him! Also, I love the quote – “your culture is often forged in the darkest moments”.
This thread by Tim. On investments and money.
Taleb on Stoicism. Here. I love the guy. Sad that he’s blocked me on X. This video reshaped how I thought about stoics. I realise that I have much to learn! In fact, you must subscribe to Picking Nuggets – one of THE best channels on YT.
Mahesh Murthy’s interview. TBH, I havent watched this in full and I know he may not carry the cleanest reputation. So that.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

So, I’ve been skipping this for the last few weeks. I am skipping this week as well. Havent had the time TBH to work on this. Again, this week is tough but I will get to it soon.

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

Today on, I am introducing a new categoery. Health.

I will track it here as a seperate section.

A/ So few things that are at the top of my mind.
I am 42. And probably with a body of a 50-year old. And thus I need to work on it.

I am not getting younger and since I love the idea of living, I really want to do something about it. See this photo that a friend sent me.

I’ve been tryin to be 31″ since 2012. We are on the 31st week of 2025. 13 years. And I was supposed to have climbed Mt Everest by 1 Jan of 2026. I cant climb my bed most days.

So that.

B/ sgHealth
I plan to share some updates about my life and all on this WA channel. You are welcome to join. Here. Expect frequent updates. At least once a day.

C/ Crowdsourcing my health
I’ve often said and believed that getting healthy is easy for rich people. And I’ve never had the money. So, I could stand on the sidelines.

And I can no longer do that. So, to test my thesis, I approached some friends with an offer. Give me 10K each for 3 months. If I can get tangibly better (health wise), I will goto even more people!

While the two people who’ve agreed to help me can pay 10K today, I’ve told them that I will have lost 2 KGs by end of August (I was 91.3 while naked) on 30th July. If I am 89ish, I will take their money for OND and see how it goes.

D/ Use of AI
I wrote this following query to help LLMs help me with my food.

Hi, you are my food ordering guide and companion.

Each day I will give you places where am hanging out at. I need to know what should I order there which is low in calories and high in protein, with high satiety.

Please note…

1/ Give me a list of gluten free, low carb, no daily, no oil foods that I can eat as someone living in india.

2/ Please know that I am a diabetic, lactose intolerant.

3/ I want this to be made without oil. Not even ghee, no butter.

4/ Please know that I am gluten intolerant and I am lactose intolerant.

5/ I dont eat non-veg. I can eat eggs, though.

Here are more details..
a/ Cooking methods: I dont want no oil. I am okay with steamed, boiled, grilled (dry), or tandoor-cooked items.
b/ Nuts and seeds: I am okay with almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc
c/ Legumes: I am comfortable with dal, chickpeas, black beans, etc. but I will try to give you more details as we start.
d/ Sweeteners: complete avoidance of sweeteners

When I give you a restaurant name, please browse the internet, find menu from reputable sources, analyse macros of promising menu options, find 5 most suitable menu options, and suggest a reasonable 1 line simple request for each which I could convey to the waiter or chef to either lower calories, increase protein, increase satiety of that particular menu option

For each meal, I want to eat portions that are at max 400 grams. And I want a lot of fibre and protein. Followed by fat. And then if in case, carbs. I am ok with spicy.

Finally, before recommending, check your recommendation against the 5 things that I have told you.

Also, I will tell you what I fianlly ate. I will also upload the photo. keep a tab of the time am eating, whwat am eating, macros and all that. And then give me a weekly report.

Ask me any questions that may help you do your job better.

Thanks!

Let’s see what comes out of it.

So, that.
Let’s see if I am any better.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Stress.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Numb, Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 30-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from Week 30 of 2025.

Jul 28, 2025, Monday, 8 AM
I am not in the best of health but I have to write. Am trying to be consistent. And since I couldnt write yesterday, it had to be done. Also, if I dont write now, I will not be able to and that means I will have to skip. And that’s not happening.

So, lets go.

As always, some sections that I will talk within.

Oh, and listening to this. On loop.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

a/ Anshika + the muscle to ship.
Read this.
See this.
And I wish I could show you a 100 things that AK shipped in the last few days. I need that energy around me. The kid has been so good with juggling all balls the last two weeks. It’s incredible. She’s eating healthy, going to the gym, showing up and all that.

That’s it. Nothing more to say.

b/ Session at IIM Mumbai
Took a session for some folks at IIM Mumbai. These folks are from some MSME board and this was a continuation learning program for them. I didnt really enjoy taking the session but I think it was interesting for them. I could see that they were engaged. Just that it was tough to get folks to open up and talk.

Oh, I showed these two videos to the participants.

Also, I realised that I love teaching. And for more than anything else, the questions that come my way are the ones that I cherish more than anything else. This slide from Vishal Khandelwal on Dr Feynman defines the why and how…

I need to find more opportunities to teach. But then I dont want to not work either. So, the conundrum. Sigh.

But I would love to teach nonetheless. Come on, universe.

c/ Chatter on longevity
Since I got myself a FOXO membership, I’ve been reading and thinking about longevity. Plus I read this long piece on Bryan Johnosn. And this online chatter on twitter. See two tweets.

It’s incredible that all it took was one person to literally spawn so much chatter. It’s probably these unreasonable people that move moutains and push us forward.

I need to learn how to become unreasonable like that. Any clues anyone?

d/ Poker
Have put about 2000 bucks on online poker the last few days.

More than anything, I find it insanely enjoyable. If there was no chase of largeness or greatness, I would just do this! I’ve played micro stakes cash games and some micro stakes tourneys. I continue to suck at cash games. In tourneys, I’ve got to ITM a few times.

Oh, I also trained a chat on chatGPT into becoming my poker coach. No, its not helping. Cos I’ve lost most of the 2K I had put in : D

e/ Events
Wrote this on Twitter.
Reproducing it here with minor edits.

Overshare coming.
I’ve had one of the most transcendental moments of my life.

Last time I felt like that, it was in 2021 and I was en route to the Everest Base Camp. The sight of the sun rising from behind the clouds, mountains, early in the morning left me awe struck.

Coming back.

I normally dont cry.
I escape.
If I have to, I walk in the rain.

But today, since I woke up, I’ve cried twice. Both to the music of ARR. I dont know if it’s caused it or it was the last straw on the camel’s back. You know, causation or correlation. A lot’s been happening lately, and just say whatever is happening is not routine for me, and I know a lot is bubbled inside of me.

So, this happened as I stepped out of the shower. I had put on some music. And the algorithm of YT played ARR’s Berklee piece. And it played Kun Faya Kun.

.

The first time, I was listening to the aalap about Ali (see from 6:28 for about a minute). The aalap is followed by one of the greatest lines ever written about spirituality, bhakti, devotion, submission, ask, request or whatever you want call it.

It goes, “mujh pe karam sarkar tera, araz tujhe, karde mujhe, mujh se hi riha”

This “mujh se hi riha” is like the epitome of self-actualisation. I dont know if I will ever be there. But in those few seconds I didn’t have pain, didn’t have a want, dint have a worry, dint even probably have a self. I was probably what they call “the one”. I will never know.

The second time was when YT played Vande Mataram after a bit. And this happened around the lines, “tu hi zindagi hai, tu hi meri mohabbat hai, tere hi pairo me jannat hai, tu hi dil, tu hi jaa” etc.

This time, the lines were not important. Important was the way the two performers looked at ARR.

See this first.

.

These ladies looked at him not once, but probably for all the time they shared the stage.

In their eyes and body language, and the entire being, I saw awe, devotion, respect, want, love, submission and everything else that you can imagine. All for ARR.

When I was growing up, I’ve always wanted to have that North Star to submit to. To guide me home. Or a large super nova to suck me towards it (astronomy nerds, please tell me what is the strongest force that pulls you? Black holes? Supernovas?). Never found one.

Rather, I took comfort in many many stars, all shining bright, and I navigated through those. I still do. I am glad and grateful that I have many folks who’ve agreed to be my guiding lights. You know, shoulders of giants. I am nothing without them. I would have never seen what I’ve seen if I didnt have their shoulders to stand on.

And as I grow up and start to think about the meaning of life and the universe and my life of potential (jiska aachar bhi nahi dal raha) etc etc, I realised that I have this insane need to help others see the light.

I dont know why.
I dont know if I am capable.
I dont know if I am good.
I dont know what it even means.

But that.
Phew.
Glad I wrote.

Oh, and no I dont think I let out 100%. I will need more such sessions. I dont know when it would happen next time. The last one was almost 4 years ago when I was in a different funk (life’s much better now and I am thankful for that). But I know I need at least one more such outpouring.

And yes, I am ok.
100% there.
I haven’t lost it.
I still want to make a billion dollars (should upgrade to trillion) and impact the lives of a billion people. And I still want chaand taare and all that (thanks, SRK, Abhijeet and others).

f/ long term games
C read TNKS and reminded me about the thank you page.

And it stuck me that the page dates back to 2013 or 2012 or something. And even though it’s been 10+ years, I am still in touch with a lot of those folks that I’ve credited in the book! Talk about long-term games. Naval would be proud of me.

g/ Gravity Crew. Mrs Mohan. Anna and others.
Recently, Anna’s son got married. And the team from Gravity went to attend the wedding. While I was aware of it and had seen some pics, I was amazed to see a pic of Mrs Mohan and Anna on Roshan Abbas’ insta!

I have nothig but fond memories of the kindness of Mrs Mohan while I was there. She operated with grace, took care of the entire mad house and was one of the glues that kept the “greatest force known to mankind” ticking.

h/ what ChatGPT / Claude thinks about me.
The other day, I asked some LLMs what they thought about me. Here’s what they had to say. Here – Claude. Perplexity.

I am embedding a few things…

i/ the second screen
So, I use a second screen at home. And I think, the additional monitor is game changer. To a point that I am thinking that I will get another monitor (so, two extra screens).

But then, I dont work from home. Or may be I will start to work from home? Actually, the thing is, more than work or home or screens, I dont want to be tethered. I dont want my things to end up owning me. So, I want to take a hard look and rethink. The easy answer is to avoid attachment in case I have to leave. But the investment and the thinking that goes alongside.

So that!
Ok, moving on.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 30.

I would like to post the following photo on the blog. This is the homepage of a website. 100% marks for the copy. Thanks to Nimchan for letting me know about this. I love that my community tells me about things that I need to know about.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

Book 2 – no action. I will not drop this. I know I am gonna be busy I think I love the feeling of writing things. So that.

PS: Dropped 2025 Plan a few weeks ago. This is after probably 10 years that I dont have an yearly plan!

☑️ What did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. No action. I will give myself a -1 on this. I am starting a new regimen from today. Let’s see how is the next week.

Meru. Was busy. But I dont think I moved the needle as much as I would have liked to. -1.

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

Brand SG. No action. And no action does not mean 0. It means a -1.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. I started with poker. So a step in the direction. But a 0.

So the overall score is -4 yet again for this week.

📊 The tracker from the last week

I did not fill this in this week.
So, no updates here.
Not even sharing the blank one.

📖 Interesting Reads from the last week

Few interesting reads.

From Seth Godin. Here.
From AK. Here.
About Bryan Johnson and pursuit of immortality. Here. Oh, I want to do such long-form, deep-dive interviews. May be on The Optimist’s Manifesto?
This from DHH on life and death. Here. A quote from in it, “That life is long enough if you spend it well, but spending it well requires embracing life’s shortness.”
This from Jason. Here. On craft. On fulfillment. On meaning.
This is not a read per se but I see this video often.
This tweet from Erik. Here. I love this line, “My favorite relationship advice is to do whatever it takes to become more secure and positive-sum.”

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates.

So, I’ve been skipping this for the last few weeks. I am skipping this week as well. Havent had the time TBH to work on this. Again, this week is tough but I will get to it soon.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Numb.

This went past by too fast. There was a lot of work and very very long days at Meru. Need to find a way to streamline those.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Blur, Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 29-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from Week 29 of 2025.

Jul 20, 2025.
Sunday.

I normally start writing this on a Friday evening. And by Saturday I have a vague draft in my head. And then by Sunday I polish it. Today, I am sitting on this at 7:15 PM on a Sunday. So, I will not be able to do reviews and edits. And thus, if you spot any errors or bugs, you know what / who to blame.

Also, this week has been the fastest since the beginning of time. Days blurred into each other and it came to a point where I lost track. I wanted to take a breather on the saturday (very unlike me) and I planned for it. But I couldnt. So, I havent had the time to reflect.

Without further ado, lets dive in.

Oh, am listening to this – Forever My Friend.

I discovered this at a Starbucks. Far cry from the world of Terence where says, and I quote…

Parker’s a young kid, pretty good on the sax, gets up to play at a cutting session, and he fucks it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he’s laughed off stage. But the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices, and he practices with one goal in mind: Never too be laughed at again. And a year later he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage and he plays the best motherfucking solo the world has ever heard. So imagine if Jones just said “Well, that’s okay Charlie. That was alright. Good job.” Then Charlie thinks to himself “Well, shit. I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying. I’ll tell you, man – and every Starbucks “jazz” album just proves my point, really – there are no two words in the English language more harmful than “good job”.

Anyhow.
I heard it.
And I love it.
And here it is for your viewing / listening pleasure.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

1/ The F1 Film
I am yet to watch this film. VG has told me to see this a 100 times and I havent been able to find time to do so.

Each person I talk to seems to be raving about it. And I havent had the time to see the film. Let’s see when.

2/ The #TNKS film
Staying on films, its a well known secret that I want #tnks to be adapted into a film.

I’ve even written a script. I shopped it around a bit and I realised that no one is as interested in it as I thought they would be. Plus I didnt want to invest time, energy or effort into chasing and pushing. So, the project went on a backburner.

But lately, with AI, I think it may be possible!

Naman and Vishal have taken my bait to accept it as a challenge and work on it. They’ve even made a teaser. See the teaser here.

What do you think?

I’ve given them a 6 month window to see if we can make a film out of this. The best case scenario? We would have a film. The worst case? They would learn.

So that.

Ready. Fire. Aim. FTW!

3/ Walking has been a challenge.
I have said this multiple times and I say it again. Mumbai and India is not built for walking. I know people who do it despite the dust, heat, strays, traffic and all that. And no, I am not those people.

While in a different country, I can easily get 10-12K steps in. Here, despite all the concious effort, I cant get more than 6-7K.

I know folks in Bangalore and Pune and Goa and the hills find it easy. But again, I am not there and I dont see myself there either in the forseable future.

But then I want to be fit and till I snap out of my slumber to start lifting weights, I need to start walking. Any tips / ideas anyone?

4/ Figo Mag
Balram showed me a copy of this magazine (see it here – Figo Collective) that a couple of people put out. Love it.

Reminded me that I’ve wanted to create something tangible that people can touch and feel and play around with. Brought me to another point that I told C while walking around. People who chase one singular passion all their lives end up creating things that move you so much that you start questioning the meaning of your life and all that. Just that while you are in the questioning zone, you are comparing your life of a generalist who’s going wiht the flow with someone who’s chased things with a singular passion!

I have three images for this. Here.

5/ AI experiments
I tried to learn n8n and I found myself struggling with it. And, its not a great feeling. to bes honest, I dont want to learn how to code but I want to be able to take advantage of things. Especially these tools that are now lot more accessbile to us. The things that enable us to do more!

6/ Speed and Urgency
Life is anything but predictable. So, sooner you do things, better it is. And I am unable to rally people around me to run with a certain speed. Even when I push for things, I’ve seen that I am unable to bring about a change. I need to learn how to be more convincing.

7/ Writing Cohort
As part of Meru, been running something for active seniors where am assisting them in writing their biographies. I have one person right now and its a brilliant place to be. Each interaction teaches me new things, makes me challenge my existing notions and at the same time enriches the repotoire of my awwareness.

One of the lessons from a session was to not hoard books. I was told that since there’s only little time, you will probably not re-read some of your favorites and thus its better to give those away and help people discover your favorites.

Today, I met Parth for lunch and gave him a couple of books.

Oh, fun fact, when I met him, I told him that I was once fascinated by Kurutoga pencils and I could see on the Amazon page that I bought one in 2018!

PS: In case any of you wants your elders to write their biographies, please let me know.

8/ Health.
Multiple concerns.
More spots. More headspace.
Seem to be forgetting a lot. See this.
Unable to control what I eat. Wont talk more.

9/ Personal Brand
I have to find a way to build my personal brand. I think in the times we are alive it has to be in shape of video. And may be text. For someone who’s hated his face all his life, this is a tough one.

With Adulting, I have started to release some of my words. I need to now accelerate it. I want to start doing things like MFM where they routinely get to talk to interesting people. I have the machinery and the meachnism and all that to manage the release. I just need to shoot!

Come on, Mr Garg!

Maybe I will ready fire aim at this and record some. The only times I have is towards the evening, post office hours. I want to cram in workout, reading, experiments and all that in it. I will have to find a way to record these too. Adding to my TDL for the week.

Let’s see when.

10/ Three Cups of Tea
Datar told me about Three Cups of Tea.

I will save you the effort of clicking. From wikipedia…

The book’s title was inspired by a saying Haji Ali shared with Mortenson: “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family…”

The point is, recurring games with recurring people.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 29. The one I want to post on this blog is…

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

Book 2
ISTG I want to pick this again.
I dont know how.
I have way too many things happening to think about this.
May be I will drop this as well?

PS: Dropped 2025 Plan a few weeks ago.

☑️ What did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

PS: I have skipped this for the last few weeks. I HAD to bring it back this week. So, things that I work on (in order) are…

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. No action. And I’ve not had the best last few days. I will give myself a -1 on this.

Meru. Moved the needle a bit. However it is not enough. I need to do more. I will give myself a -1.

C4E. No action from my side. But things seem to be ok there. All credits to folks at C4E. So, a 0.

Brand SG. No action. HAVE TO PUT IN A LOT MORE EFFORT HERE. At this time, I will give myself a -1.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. Nothing. So, a 0.

So the overall score is -4 for this week. Need to buckle up.

📊 The tracker from the last week

I missed this last few weeks. This past week I have been deliberate in filling this in. Here we go…

The first couple of days were good. I slept well and had great recovery. And then life happened. And then work took over. And then it went downhill. I’ve also had many more days in the red / yellow zone compared over others!

📖 Interesting Reads from the last week

Couple of reads.

1/ Seth Godin on Terms of Service.

2/ Naval on Arena. He says, “So the right way to learn is to actually go do something, and when you’re doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done.”

3/ From Sahil Bloom -A very useful list of things that you could immediately act upon, especially if you are young.

🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates. I will also add these to SG’s Office.

Skipping this week as well. I will get back to this next week.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Blur.

This went past by too fast. There was a lot of work and very very long days at Meru. Need to find a way to streamline those.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.