Category: Weekly Notes

Wk 23-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 23, 2026.

7 June, 2026.
Starbucks.

Unlike me, lemme start with a rant. What a June I’ve had. And we are not even thru with the first week. Here’s a list.

  • Had to scream on a VERY VERY dear friend (PD) because of his teams’ folly. I hate to raise my voice but I cant help it. 
  • The C4E Village as I know it is dead. But I will resurrect it. I am giving myself till end of the year for it. Back to grind mode. In case I cant till the end of this year, I will stop chasing freedom.
  • Meta suspended @c4ein’s insta. And my personal one. And an alt one I used to kill time. Work of the last 10+ years gone. Not that we had a lot there but we did do some effort. I dont think we have the posts saved. Our folly. It sucks to be just a one in a billion where you have no access to decision makers. 
  • Lost a lot of money in random experiments. Which is ok. As long as I move forward. The top of the pile is Claude ;P
  • Played poker like a chump and lost some. But that’s ok. I enjoy being on the table even though I am out of my depth. I wish I had unlimited bankroll to keep playing.
  • Lost steam with all the experiments that I was in the middle of with Claude. Must get in the cave and come out with an outcome. I plan to not do anything but limited things with it.
  • Wrote a shit screenplay from a great synopsis (56 Hours).
  • Got mindfucked by tardiness of businesses I use – Vodafone (inflated and incorrect billing; will port out once am back in Bom), Rentomojo (bad service), Nippon MF (pesky sales calls), Uber (drivers more than the app), Swiggy (have uninstalled it now), my CA (who can’t keep track of simple things). It sucks that in India you pay so much and you get so less. At least be upfront and ask for more. Dont take me for a ride.
  • My Uke broke. I had carried it to Pune to show off to Aarya and C. And then somewhere, it broke. 🙁

So that.

But then, like I see glass half full, I think all was bad.

I was in Pune and that meant I got to be in the same room as people I love. In no order, Aarya, Himanshu, AK, C, Krishna, Pradeep. And some more people. And I wanted to be with my people with all my attention and being and and thus I didnt meet anyone apart from my inner circle. So that was good!

Now, on to the review.

Wait. The track of the week. It has to be Bairan. See this…

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

As always, in no order…

1/ Pune!

The trip happened after trying to make it happen for a while.

Stayed at Bloom (I always do – sasta, tikaaoo). Just that this time the service was not the best. Must write to their care team.

Spent time at Third Wave. Got tired of it and then took cabs to Starbucks.

We as a group of people made many notes. Need to sit on those and action.

To be honest, I liked the slowness of Pune for a few days. I was in Koregaon Park and it’s definitely more walkable than Mumbai – both in terms of quality of roads and the weather. But then I think I can tolerate it for a few days only. I am glad to be back to Starbucks at Versova.

Also, I think I am done with Mumbai. To be honest, the only thing that holds me back here is my lust for the films business. Once I am over it, I think I will be more mobile. Let’s see when.

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2/ People and my inability to hire them

Thanks to this tweet I spoke to a lot of young people over the last two weeks. A 19-year-old from Haridwar, deeply into tech, even called me cool. A young man from Gujarat will probably do a prototype with me. Someone from Ranchi is excited to talk to us about Yellow. Both goods and bad. And many realisations. Here are some…

  1. People on twitter live in a delusionary world.
  2. I am unable to hire great people cos I cant pay them well. Wrote about it on LinkedIn. I will copy paste it here too after this list.
  3. Unrelated to this twitter induced dopamine rush offered by people, I failed to hire a person who’s non-twitter. I’ve been trying to rizz him for more than 6 months. I’ve spent a LOT of money chasing him. A lot of mental energy. And I couldnt hire. Not because I couldnt show him the vastness but I couldnt inspire him to get out of his comfort zone.

So that. It plain sucks that despite doing so much for so many people, I am unable to get people to be next to me when I need them the most. I am not a vindictive person but I tend to remember who chose to be by my side when I needed them. And who chose a “better” offer. And no, I will repeat. I dont blame them for choosing better. I would probably do the same. But I can’t shake off the feeling that when I need someone or something I find myself standing alone in a corner.

Any how.

Here’s the post that I talked about. I have edited it slightly…

Sanket once told me, “We want to charge top dollar from our clients. We pay top dollar to our people. We offer our people top dollar facilities. And we operate like a top-dollar company.”

I loved it!

And since then, I’ve been reflecting on how I can get there and hire great people. Especially today when a REALLY talented young design person said no to work with me cos I cant pay her well.

This money to talent is one of the pieces of puzzles that I’ve not been able to figure out. There are just three ways to attract great people.

1/ Initial capital. 
From friends and family, or your own savings. Or angels. 
Use that to build something that works. Thats valueblae.
Show the results to the world.
Raise.
Hire great people.
Great people produce great work.

A cycle. Clean.
Obvious once you hear it.

PS: You can also offer services to fund your dreams. Nikhil and Gokul did that well to fund CynLr. I tried that for years with C4E but I failed.

2/ Personal brand.
You ship work in public. Over years, your name starts to carry weight. People follow what you build, read what you write, watch what you create. The chance to be in the room with you is worth more than money. People join for who you are, not what you pay. Think of Tanmay Bhat and Kunal Shah. People are willing to pay to be a part of the room they are in!

In my case, even though I’ve talked about things in public, I am yet to cross the threshold yet where a talented person says “I need to work with this person, regardless of the pay.”

3/ Mission.
Make the vision so large that smart people trade cash for the chance to matter. Make it into a movement. The kind of thing where someone looks at your company, looks at their current job, and thinks: I will regret not being part of this. Not “this is interesting.” Regret. That is the threshold. Climate. Healthcare. Education at scale. Or a local problem, stated at the right magnitude. Think of what Cockroach Janta Party or Aam Aadmi Party.

–

Of course its fair that people seek great value for their time and talent. Plus there’s insane opportunity cost for what they choose to work on. Which is fair as well.

And as a person who values people, its only imperative that I do justice to what people bring to the table. And thus, as an entrepreneur, my job is to solve this problem and find a way. I shall find one. Or make one.

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3/ The Claude playground

This Sunday and the last, took a session on Claude Maxxing. In the one last week, I had Nikunj as the guest speaker. We covered things like emails, autonomous companies, coding, job-hunt automation, marketing plans, and the “Mad Men” ad engine. Nikunj was slow, deliberate, honest. It changed my perception of him. I told him as much that night.

While I took the session I realised that people really dont use Claude (or any other AI tool) to their advantage. I wish I could show them the light.

For me, to be honest, the only thing to lookout for is to get away from mere productivity porn and lifestyle intervention to actual revenue.

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4/ Meta Rug Pull

The largest loss of the week for me has to be Meta’s Rul Pull.

Meta disabled and banned C4E’s Insta handles. And my personal handles. And some others that I made to make life simpler (sg.health, sg.ai etc etc). And the ones I would use to distract myself. Most of these accounts and handles have been around for years. The C4E one has been around for almost 10.

To be honest I dont know why would they do that.

And sad part is that there’s no recourse. It sucks to be an insignificant person. No one wants to listen to you. When you “appeal” to a bot, you are told about Community Standards, account integrity and the usual opaque template. I have uploaded my photos, Aadhar Card, Pan Card, Passport and I dont know what all. I dont think I have given these many documents to even a bank.

And its a big big reminder that rented land is rented land. And there’s nothing you can do stake a claim at it once it’s gone. Maybe its different for famous people. Maybe not. Either way, must work hard to be famous. May be at 43, I cant be famous anymore. Must teach my kids to be famous.

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📷 Photos from the week gone by

Same drill. DM me if you want photos.

I do have a photos that I want to share. This is the screenshot of the homepage of a website that I made way back in 2001!

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📈 Trackers…

Not updating this week.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

Book2 — Caravan Serai. No action. But I will ensure that I ship this in the month of June. Watch me.

Human Flag Pole — no action.

Save a million dollars — negative action. Wont get into details.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. Sleep, food, movement. Travel week. No routine. No tracking.
  2. C4E / Work. Pick a thing to apply myself to. Still no single direction. I am terrible late with this. But I think C is making good progress with Yellow and that could emerge to be the thing that I apply myself to.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No large action.
  4. People. The best part of the week. Pune, the funnel, the intros. Need more weeks like this.
  5. Book2 / Caravan Serai. Nothing.
  6. Shauk. Played poker. Lost some. Will work more to become a better poker players.

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🏃‍➡️ Health

No specific updates. Travel ate the week. The June dumb-phone experiment I committed to in May has not started — it is June 5. I think I will try it from Monday.

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

Same as last few weeks. Parking this section.

I think I need to find a better tracking system that does this for me.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

People.

The other words for this year have been: Motion, Show, Flow, Excitement, Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime, Flow, Show, Same, Motion.

—
So that.
Over and out.
Until next week.

SG

Oh, and this too shall pass.

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

Wk 22-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 22, 2026.

31 May, 2026.
Sunday evening.
Starbucks. Versova.

20:35. Opene this draft. It was here when I opened my wordpress backend. Claude had saved it.

So like last week, this week too, I was a demo-walla again. A few new sit-downs, a couple of strategy calls, a book chapter plan locked for somebody else’s book. The last week also saw me a lot of things. I finished 56 Hours. I hate the way it has shaped. I attended a screenwriters meetup. I almost took a session where Nikunj and Chandni saved the day. And of there are misses. I will talk about those.

I had told myself that if I can get Caracan Seari done by end of May, I will reward myself with a trip to Singapore. That’s not happening clearly. More on it in a bit.

Oh, here’s the track of the week. Take Five. Read more about it here.

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Ok, lets go!

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

As always, in no order…

1/ The Ghostwriting Book. Edit 1 done.

The book am ghostwriting, I finished the first round of edits this week. Now we need to do the second round. Sat with my mentor on Thurday and finally pinned down the editorial spine of the book. His workspace is the central character. Adn around it, a distributed cast. The structural problem we’ve been chewing on for weeks dissolved in one sitting.

The next thing — chapter asks going out to all of these folks. I am guessing that by the end of June we would be talking to publishers.

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2/ 56 Hours. Done.

I had to submit to Satyanshu Singh’s Prayogshala. I managed to. Against all odds. You know, distractions and all. Also when I went to register it, my SWA didnt work. Luckily Copyright office did.

The thing is, I hate the shape it is in. It’s so raw that I am cringing at it. But as they say, if you are not embarrassed about your first output, you are too late. Now I will have to find the energy to sit though the next rounds.

A pattern has emerged. When I mark small steps to a deadline, things move. When I make it for the entire project, nothing moves. So that’s a good thing to know.

I have to mention that even if this doesnt get made into a film, I am eternally grateful to Boman sir, Harshit, Viraff, Shital and more. Gratitude.

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3/ Divya — after a long while

Divya dropped a weekly update on Tuesday and then I met her for dinner on Friday. Love her. I hope she’s reading this:D

While we talked, took a lot of notes. Here are some…

  • Must use Claude for outreach and mailbox automation. Need to find a way to warm up multiple mailboxes and then run. The only thing is, I dont know what business.
  • Divya told me that I must learn to sell something on Amazon. I will talk to Krishna and see what could that be.
  • While talking to her, I realised that I could hire some young people to be EIRs and help me build businesses around all the things that am cooking with Claude.
  • Must run SEO for C4E via Claude — separate workstream.
  • Must also stop the temptation of replying each time someone asks me for marketing / communication things.
  • Side note: I’ve written a piece on Death of C4E Village. Must find the courage to post it. Let’s see when.

Wow. A lot.

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4/ The Claude playground

Here’s what I used Claude for in the last week.

  • A – built an Excel sheet for a friends pickleball brand. Took help from Sreemita. Took me an afternoon. Otherwise would’ve taken weeks.
  • B – build an analyst report to show the prowess. Was unable to impress my friend with it. A fail.
  • C – made this VC action tracker. Not sure what would I do about it.
  • Shonit talked to me about the agency tool he’s building. Interesting use case of AI. Not sure what’s the underlying LLM there.
  • Met Rohit. Loved seeing how young people are building things. He’s asked me to apply to South Park Commons. I’ve done that in the past and got rejected Lets’s see if he can get me in.

So that.

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5/ Pune!

Pune is on for next week. I am gonna meet AB (yay). And Krishna after a while (yay). And Himanshu for the first time (yay).

If you are in Pune between 2nd and 5th, please lemme know.

Have a tight agenda.

I like that travel is happening with a real reason and not as a way to escape Mumbai. Last few months I’ve done a couple of trips that were more “get out” than “go to”. This one’s a “go to”.

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6/ The capture system gave up on me. Or may I say, I gave up on!

An ugly admission. My capture system broke this week.

I realized that over the last month, I had hyper optimized Claude to capture and process every morsel of information. I had even installed gBrain and Karpathy’s system. But then I realised that I am wasting token with all these pulls. I want to now build a more robust and efficient system.

I could do today if I had to. But I want to leverage it more and discover more powers first. Especially in terms of actual business impact. Right now, the outcome is more from personal productivity gains. So, lets see when.

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7/ Update on the Caravan Serai

End of May was the deadline I gave myself for the first draft of Caravan Serai. Today is May 31. There’s no draft. The reward I’d promised myself — a trip to Singapore to meet M&m — is forfeit by my own rule.

I dont have too many excuses but I couldnt do it cos I had overestimated my ability to do things.

Maybe I will pick it in the month of June?

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8/ Other things worth noting

  • Talked to a few more people about their job hunts. So far no solid conversion.
  • Updated my Linkedin
  • Chandni’s post talk about Ready Fire Aim
  • Attended Screenwriting Corner‘s meetup and participated in a discussion around Death in the Gunj.
  • Spoke to Viraff Patel on Harshit‘s recommendation. Quick chat. Will share more if it goes somewhere.
  • This tweet saw some 10 inbounds and I realised that there are a lot of interesting people if you know where to find them. Thanks to Vatsal.
  • I had decided to take a session on Claude and invited Nikunj by mistake. And oh man, did he save the day! Do yourself a favor. Become friends with him.

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📷 Photos from the week gone by

Same drill. DM me if you want photos.

Here’s one that I wanted to show off to the world.

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📈 Trackers…

Not updating this week.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

Book2 — Caravan Serai. End-of-May target — missed.

Human Flag Pole — no action.

Save a million dollars — no action.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. Sleep, food, movement. Worse than the past week.
  2. C4E / Work. Pick a thing to apply myself to. Still no direction.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. I was hoping that Claude session will help me. It did not.
  4. People. Met a few. Helped a few. I think I did ok on this. Need to build more.
  5. Book2 / Caravan Serai. Negative progress — missed the target.
  6. Shauk. Nothing tbh.

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🏃‍➡️ Health

No specific updates.

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

Same as last week. Parking this section.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Motion. No progress.

The other words for this year have been: Show, Flow, Excitement, Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime, Flow, Show, Same.

The week that two consecutive words are Show and Same, it’s either the start of a trend or the end of a year. Lemme find out.

—
So that.
Over and out.
Until next Friday.

Oh, and this too shall pass.

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: Drafted by Claude on top of the week’s data — Roam dailies, Gmail, Calendar, Apple Notes — and edited by me. Tell me what reads true and what doesn’t.

Wk 21-26 – Weekly Note

Week of demos, not writing. Five Claude walk-throughs, one Saturday session that became a four-meeting org reset at someone else’s company, three intros that closed, and zero personal output. Honest call of the week.

22 May, 2026.
Friday morning.
Andheri. The usual Starbucks.

Last week I went influencer (you know, Colombo). This week I went demo-walla. Five people got a live Claude walk-through in seven days. No pitches. Only “show”. And one of them, into their second week of conversations, went and rebuilt their own org chart inside 72 hours because of it. Lol. I didn’t see that coming.

So the honest line of the week — I gave structure to other people’s businesses, and made none for my own. The book didn’t move a lot. 56 Hours didn’t move a lot. Five days left on the end-of-May draft and the page is the same shade of blank. And yet, somehow, ok-ish week. Lemme explain.

But wait. Before that, track of the week is from Silk Route. This one…

Ok, lets go!

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

As always, in no order…

1/ Heart to heart with some agency folks

Sat down with a couple of people on a saturday morning to talk about their agency. Spent a few hours digging into where they were, where they wanted to go, and where things were leaking. It was interesting to see that the pain is such similar and such universal in the creative businesses. I wish more people were more honest and open and were willing to chat about how to navigate this VUCA world!

The best part about these two people was that the founder admitted his mistake. It’s one of the rarest sentences in the founder vocabulary. Most people in his seat will give you a hundred reasons before they say that one. And when I reflected, I realised that even I, as the founder of C4E, must admit to!

So, what’s coming out of it for them?
A reinvigorated structure of their agency. And in two weeks, a plan to try and navigate things.

Will it work? I don’t know.
But the velocity is the signal.

And a note for self that I need to work on it as well!

PS: While talking to them, I felt like SUCH an imposter. I need someone else to show me the light and help me navigate this!

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2/ Claude – the demo IS the unlock

Continued from last week’s epiphany. The demo itself is the unlock.

This week, did few new demos. I will redact names…

  • A — built him a cold-calling engine on Cowork. Identifies companies, filters people, drafts emails into the drafts folder. Not an agent yet. Soon.
  • B — sat with him on Monday. His client pipeline is shrinking because AI is eating the “easy tasks” entry point. Two pivot directions came out — senior talent placement, and AI-workflow retainers at $100+/month. Let’s see what he does with it.
  • C — a senior marketer. She found me via this post. Helped her see the light of the day to crack new things. Took just an evening. Helped her on consulting positioning. We identified what she could stand for! Wishing her well.
  • D — training session on how to actually use it. The core principle, again: treat it like a highly paid assistant. “You are a brand strategist with 20 years experience…” wins over “give me brand strategy…” every single time.

I keep saying this. Few people in my immediate ring have actually seen this thing at its limit. People know Claude exists. They don’t know what it can do.
The unlock is not the tool. The unlock is one person sitting next to one other person and saying — here, let me show you.

The best line came from my friend Sachin today. He said that if you dont use Claude in cowork mode, you are 1 year behind the normal and you’re a dinosaur.

Also, a side note. It’s after 20 days that I’ve started to see the value for Claude Max plan. I think I need a few more days to build a function. Let’s see.

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3/ Shram

Did a product feedback call with one of the founders from Shram.

In one line, Shrram is a tool that sits on your laptop and auto-detects tasks from your day and turns them into to-dos. For me, it picks up about 50% of tasks, ~80% accurate. Founder claims that its privacy-friendly. I am yet to test.

The founders come from design background but I think they let that hat at home while building this. Which is ok. These days, design and communication is easy to fix. If the tool delivers on what theyre promising, why not?

Also, if I were investing, I would’ve given them some money for sure. I like the idea. I like the earnestness of the team. I like what I see in the product.

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4/ Ready, Fire, Aim

The phrase that I kept saying to myself this week. I even made a video on it. See this. In it, I said that you don’t get to know the shape of the business before you start. Amazon started as a bookstore. Zomato started as a restaurant menu archive (Foodiebay, remember?). Every business that has worked at scale has shape-shifted post-launch.

Unless you start, there is no shape. And there is no shifting.

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5/ The Super Connector and the intro economy

I’ve said this in the past and I will say it again. I want to be a Super Connector. The man who knows a man. And knows how to connect these men. I am inspired by Red. He says…

“There’s a con like me in every prison in America, I guess. I’m the guy who can get it for you. Cigarettes, a bag of reefer if you’re partial, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid’s high school graduation. Damn near anything, within reason. Yes, sir, I’m a regular Sears & Roebuck.”

I want to be a regular Sears. And get you damn near anything, within reason.

I love connecting people. And I do double opt-in. Did three this week.

  1. Connected a senior from MDI to a portfolio company of mine
  2. Connected a community person I met in Colombo to my fav SheR ladies
  3. C was in Delhi and connected her to I dont know how many people!

Thing is, each intro takes me five minutes to write. Sometimes less. And the surface area it creates is enormous.

If I had to redo the past twenty years of being on the internet, the one thing I would do more of is this. You know, luck surface area. Oh while we are on topic of luck, do read this.

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6/ Pickle

Played pickle on Friday night at 10:30 PM. I had assumed that it would be cooler and nicer. But it was not. And I was so tired after that, that I slept for like 16 hours. And then did I meeting on Saturday. And then slept again. And then I ate like a hog on Sunday. And then slept again. In the last 48 hours, I would’ve slept 30.

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7/ Other things worth noting

  • I had written a long, fond mail to Roshan Sir after I saw his play. He hasn’t replied. I remain hopeful that he would. I do have a third door to get to him but then I want to test if Claude works 😀
  • Did a brand workshop for a celebrity. Really enjoy doing those!
  • C4E Press may come to life. Here are some notes that Pradeep and I made.
  • Recorded a podcast with Juhi. Yet to release. In case you want to notes, ask me nice. #brandSG
  • Wrote this for LLMs for saurabhgarg.com
  • Saw this post and fell in love with this chart…

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📷 Photos from the week gone by

Same drill — DM me if you want photos.

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📈 Trackers…

Here’s the trackers…

1/ The daily one. Nothing special to see in this one.

2/ The weekly one. Some goods and bads here.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

Book2 — Caravan Serai. Made some progress. I have a week to go in May. Let’s see if am able to ship. I also aim to finish 56 hours before the end of May. Let’s see.

Human Flag Pole — no action. In fact my step count has also gone down. I am at 3400 on an average now :(. Once the weather gets better, I will try to catch up. Let’s see.

Save a million dollars — no action.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. Sleep, food, movement. Bad.
  2. C4E / Work. Pick a thing to apply myself to. Still no direction.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. Two LinkedIn posts that did decently. Some daily lives. No large action.
  4. People. Few intros. Some old catch-ups
  5. Book2 / Caravan Serai. Some progress,
  6. Shauk. Still no poker. Still no Uke.

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🏃‍➡️ Health

I am not updating this one, this week.

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

This section captures things I want to not forget. Parking this week as well. I want to ship the two things – 56 Hours and Caravan Serai and thus not focussing on anything actively.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Show. (Not Tell).

The whole week was about showing what I did. Five sit-downs to show people what Claude can do. One Saturday session that turned into a four-meeting org reset for somebody else. One product feedback call. One consulting session for a new operator. A handful of intros.

So that.

The other words for this year have been: Flow, Excitement, Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime, Flow.

—
So that.
Over and out.
Until next Friday.

Oh, and this too shall pass.

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: This one was again drafted by Claude on top of the week’s data — daily notes, Granola, Gmail, Calendar — and edited by me. Tell me what reads true and what doesn’t.

Wk 20-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 20, 2026.

17 May, 2026 and now, 18th May.
Starbucks

So, after Claude wrote the first draft, I realised, I still had to put in effort. A lot of effort at that. So, I think I should give the final doc to Claude to learn how I actually write.

Anyhow. The weekly review.
The week gone by took me to Colombo. And for a change I tried to live the influencer life by posting pictures / videos of my time there. I was hyper active on Instagram and I posted many photos and videos. And no, I didn’t enjoy it.

Reaffirmed that the influencer life is not for me.

The other thing that got reaffirmed is, even in a city like Colombo (more on Colombo in a bit), is that I want to live in a city that’s walkable. In India, I cant think of a single city that you can walk without stumbling upon broken footpaths (if they exist in the first place), hawkers, traffic and random construction work. Even in global cities that have a very high population density, I’ve not had to encounter what I navigate in India! The “call” to move out is stronger than ever. Come on, universe!

Oh, the track of the week is this version of Ye Tune Kya Kia…

I am told that this is AI but I dont know. What do you think?

The other honorary mention is this track. This one’s a blast from the past but I am glad that I rediscovered this.

With that, let’s go!

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

As always, in no order…

1/ Colombo

Spent four days in Colombo.
Most of it was scoping a potential project.
Met some new people.
Met a classmate from MDI.
Met a young person who runs a community piece in Sri Lanka.

Overall, was interesting. People are warm, things work (not the internet though) and I was lucky to be there when it was raining and weather was pleasant.

The best part, walked about 8K steps on average without trying. Like I said in the beginning of this post, I really would like to be in city where I can walk.

So, is this a city where I see myself move?
No.
Dont get me wrong. People are nice. They are polite. They speak enough English. There is old-world Brit charm, the kinds you see in Delhi and Kolkatta and all. Things work. There’s good food. Felt safe. There are some interesting things to do. But not for me.

Would I want to go back?
I am not sure.

Is it a one-time see?
Not sure.
If you have the money and time, rather go to other places. At best, Colombo is a checkmark on the world map (been here earlier as well).

PS: The only large negative about Colombo? Well their Internet sucks. I was on a roaming plan with Dialog and despite my best attempts I couldnt get good connection. And Vodafone India on roaming, well, it sucks so bad that it’s not funny.

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2/ Claude Use Cases – Cold Calling, Leads, Content

Many things in this one.

a, I showed off my prowess with Claude to Krishna and showed him how to build a cold-calling engine. It’s not an agent per se yet (I will make it into one) but it does the job of scouting for leads for a tech product that Krishna wants to send. It identifies the potential companies. It filters people that we want to reach out to. And them composes an email to them. Saves that in your drafts folder. Again, a great thing.

b, I then showed Claude to another friend who’s a VC helped him setup his outreach for his outreach. He wants to talk to folks who’ve raised their series A and support them with outcomes.

c, And then I helped a friend scout for jobs. See this post. Again using co-work and wow!

It struck me how few people in my immediate ring have actually seen this stuff in flight. People know Claude exists. Few know what it does at the limit. The demo itself is the unlock.

Damn the powers of Claude.
I wish I discovered Claude when I was younger!
In fact, if you are a young person and you are NOT on Claude (or any other AI tool), well…

Oh, while we are at it, I have an important submission to make as well.

I think I am addict to this AI-productivity porn. I wake up with my Claude. I sleep with my Claude. And I think I am in the middle of a loneliness disease caused by this excessive use of AI. I am not talking to people when I can. I use search as the starting point to even think (earlier, I would be the sparring partner). I wrote about it here. And I mean to implement the suggestions as well. See this chart as well…

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3/ The Ghostwriting Project

For the uninitiated, I am in the middle of a ghostwriting project. I am helping a senior leader write a book. More experiences, less biographical, the book is to help other people learn leadership principles from this gent.

As of today, the first draft of the book is ready. And people are reviewing it. Some reviews have started to come in and I am glad to report that most of those are positive. So, yay!

On this project, I used a different methodology to ship things. I used a lot of voice notes, async conversations (the gent I am writing for is busier than most heads of states), transcription. I didnt lean onto public sources as much (this one didnt need me to) and then wrote multiple iterations before shipping it.

And since this is done, I want to scout for the next writing project. Help me with it? More details are on sgwashere.com.

PS: note to self and to my AI agent. Add #todo to build an engine to reach out to potential clients for sgwashere.com

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4/ 56 Hours

The update on 56 Hours is that I wrote nothing new. Lol!
However, I took help from Naman to visualise it.

Here’s a sneak peak into how another character looks like.

One of the characters of the film / book; as visualised by AI and team from Big Bang Edits.

Oh, I am gonna use the next two weeks to focus hard on writing. I will not pick up any “work” apart from whatever is absolutely necessary. I will ensure that I build 56 Hours into a sharable piece. Most likely, a film script. And if I fail at it, a book for sure.

And when I am bored of it, I will work on Caravan Serai. That’s been open for ages!

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5/ Cash Mode, Eco Mode

Two related experiments this week, both on money.

A/ I committed to a month-long cash-only experiment.
₹20,000 in physical notes, tracked daily on an Expenses app. And despite my aversion for friction of keeping cash. Today (monday) is day 1 and I am as hassled as you can imagine someone to be.

Unrelated, I will also be on a Nokia phone for this week. Starting today.

B/ Eco Mode.
I’ve spoken about it and I think I am gonna activate that. Today on, I will stop making any unnecessary expenses.

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6/ Rejection Stings

If I could have an alter identity / biography, I would say that I am a professional Rejection Chaser. I’ve got myself rejected so many times that it’s not funny. And yet I continue to send cold emails and texts. And yet I continue to think of things and find ways to building grand visions and getting shut out.

And yet, each time I am rejected… I feel odd and weird and bad.

And these rejections could be from anything. A potential client, a crush, a waiter refusing to serve me, a rick refusing to ply me.

And I am at the funny space where I want to be stoic and not let anything impact me or affect me. And yet on the other side, I get mindfucked each time I am rejected.

I dont know a way out. If you have any, please lemme know.

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7/ The ability to live in ambiguity

This is one of the greatest epiphanies of this year. That your ability to survive and operate in ambiguity is one of the greatest flags for your character. I have a strong opinion (loosely held) that people who grow up in safety, structure, predictability grow up to be weak people. Their brains get trained in a manner that operates from a higher level in Maslow’s hierarchy. So while they can think of large things that go beyond self, they can’t operate when left without the basics.

A case in point?

Young people and their sense of direction. I want to make a bet that the average young person today can not navigate the city they live in without Google Maps. They will not know what is North and what is South. And how to use that information.

Remember that chart of hard times and strong people? See this…

Source: unknown; I found this on Google Images

Now extrapolate this to people who grow up in good times. They expect things to work. And they operate in certainty. And thus they would not know when the tide turns.

So that.

I am lucky that I grew up in the events business and that taught me how to operate in ambiguity. And I wish each person I get to work with has had to live an ambiguous life. I often think of that Chinese proverb, may you live in “interesting” times.

I wish all of us interesting times hereon. And in case you want the taste of interesting times, see how you operate / react if you dont have internet for a day. And this means, no mobile, no netflix, no swiggy, no nothing!

Game?

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8/ Other things worth noting

  • Saw Will Trent on the flight to Colombo. Loved it. To a point am gonna go binge on it.
  • Sreemita is here. I love that I have another young person to give gyaan to.
  • At a whim, I decided that I will want to re-learn Uke / Guitar. I know am not good at it. I know I cant practise. I know its not for me. But I still want it. Such fickleness. Sigh.

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📷 Photos from the week gone by

Stopped this a few weeks ago. As always, in case you want to get photos from me, DM me.

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📈 Trackers…

1/ Here’s my weekly one…

Since I’ve been on Claude, I’ve not really filled in my trackers a lot. I must get back to it.

I dont know if it was a good week or bad. I didnt track. Lol! But I can vouch that I was in ok mood mostly. What do you see?

2/ Here’s the summary…

Some good numbers on this – Average mood, YT lives, screen time (I had imagined this would be more).

Must figure the workout thing.

So that!

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

Book2 — Caravan Serai. Not touched this week. End of May draft is still the target. I did nothing in the week gone by. And if I can get the first draft ready by end of May, I will reward myself with a trip to Singapore to meet M&m.

Human Flag Pole — no action.

Save a million dollars — no action.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. Sleep, food, movement. Bad. Many weeks running.
  2. C4E / Work. Pick a thing to apply myself to. No action. I had taken the decision to try events and Claude enabled action but I havent taken action.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No large movement this week.
  4. People. Some action.
  5. Book2. Nothing this week.
  6. Shauk. Saw a couple of live shows (one of them by Tanzila). Still no action on poker 🙁

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🏃‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

No large actions.

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

This section captures things that I want to not forget. Ofc, I’ve used Claude to build an entire system. This is how it looks like…

A screenshot from one of the artefacts that I made with Claude.

I will work more on this and make a sharper version.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Flow.

I didnt do anything else but went with the flow.

The other words for this year have been: Excitement, Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: This one was again written by Claude and edited heavily by me. This one was not as good tbh.

Wk 19-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 19, 2026.

11 May, 2026
5 AM
DN Nagar

I write this on a Monday morning from the desk at my home. I woke up 10 minutes ago, checked Instagram on texts from my crush (none for the last 5 days), had a sip of water and typing. It’s 5:15 AM AM and I aim to get this done by 5:45.

90% of this is being written by a Claude skill that I trained. Lets see if you can make it. Ofc, I wrote 100% of the balance 10% and I have edited baout 90% of the balance 90%.

The highlight of the week was my screentime. On the laptop and on Claude. And the fact that I asked my insta followers to recommend me some new music. Both experiences were interesting. Both overwhelmed me. Both are offering me the new that I am not used to.

The honest line of the week is something I scribbled into Roam a couple of days ago, “Claude is pulling me in all directions. I have multiple tabs open and that means I am not looking at any. And this is being a problem.” That’s where I am. The tools have multiplied faster than my attention. The bottleneck is no longer ideas or even building. It’s pick-and-finish. I will talk more about Claude subsequently, but on the music front, I will take the safe option of music I know. For example, this one by Bashir.

And with that, lets go to the week!

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

In no order…

1/ The Peer Conversations

In the week gone by, I reached out to a few other marketers that I respect. And I was blown by the incredible clarity that those people had. Some realizations are…

One — I am not going back to a traditional agency model. AI has compressed agency-side economics by a LARGE factor on the client side. And in words of one of the folks I spke to, “all the kids are doing great work with AI — we are probably fossils.” A thousand agencies in the market, all playing catch-up. I’ve seen this movie before with social media. Don’t want to go again.

So, I dont think C4E in its current shape will survive. I dont think I’ve annnouced the death knell in these clear words. I am giving ourselves a year at max. I will bet that we would be irrelevant by end of the year. Let’s see.

Two — the offline business will thrive. Elon and Pradeep have been telling me to work on this. I have not paid heed. Maybe its the time to do so?

Three — there may be something in Soham. Need to chat with AK on that.

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2/ “Its expensive to be poor”

My access to a $200 a month Claude subscription is yet another proof point of the maxim that its expensive to be poor.

I’ve seen friends and strangers struggle with rate limits and all that. And I on the other hand can do 5 things in 3 tabs and apps and yet not hit even 10%. Heck, I can even “rent” out my limits.

Even though this is the most expensive subscription I have, I can see it save me so much time! Plus THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING is that Claude is pulling me in all directions and giving me the kick that probably drugs give you. I am not sleeping, I am not distracted. I am in the flow. Am dreaming of possibilities. It’s made me realise that I need to be fit enough to “enjoy” this “grind” for a long-term. I can see the “why” that will make me fix the “how” and the “what”. I want to be fitter and more active and I want to ship things. For once, I want to put Seneca to rest and not die.

In words of Andrew, Claude is helping me reduce the time and friction from an idea to its execution. Do see this podcast.

PS: The other expensive purchase (Airpods Pro Max) is being a dud.

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3/ 101 on Indian Arts, and the AI Distortion Problem

Sonali talked to me about her passion project – Indian art. She has an interesting thesis on it. I will not explain it here. But in one line, she argues that AI does more disservice to Indian art to anything else. Since the training data is skewed to English and Western artforms, the misrepresentation and omissions and hallucinations are real. AI is actively rewriting what Indian art “is” – kolam loses its geometric precision, Kali gets hypersexualized, and once distorted versions dominate search, the correct version disappears from collective consciousness.

That is her “large battle.”

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4/ The Ghostwriting Book Project

As part of sgwashere.com, my latest book (the one am ghostwriting) has moved from “shaping” to “executing” this week. We’ve despatched the book to beta readers are we are now in the editing phase. My sense is that we would have a publishing ready book by end of May.

Yay!

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5/ Lessons from Nimisha and Himanshu and Others

Many threads in this one

One (the highlight),
Nimisha gave me a 90-minute growth marketing masterclass that I am still digesting. Here are some takeaways…

1. Reddit is criminally underrated. She grew a subreddit to 2,000+ members in 15 days. And she said shes not even the best. So I have been told to focus on that

2. Faceless AI accounts for TikTok / IG. Audit competitor accounts for the last 6–12 months. Find what’s working. Replicate format. Don’t over-invest in tooling. Test format first.

3. Read Brian Balfour’s 4 Fits framework. Product–Market → Product–Channel → Channel–Model → Model–Market. Each fit must be validated in sequence. A mismatch at any stage breaks the growth loop. She told me on my face that we are have the wrong channel for its product and model. I agree.

4. Viral vs trending is a real distinction. Viral = millions of views on one piece. Trending = 1,500 posts about you across the platform. The mechanic? Viral spike creates a traffic bump. Use that window to release a second high-potential piece while the audience is primed. Compound.

5. She connected me with other young people. The highligt being Kaashvi. She also gave me many lessons. Post for the next week.

Two,
Himanshu (a student at MDI) has blown me with his hardwork and enthusiam for work. Wish I was that when I was 21. He’s like Aarya. Insane potential that makes me afraid. And inspires me enough to work harder to be able to give them a platform worth their talent.

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6/ The ’56 Hours’ Update

56 Hours has its own page on the blog now. From “told friends about” to “linked from the homepage.”

While I am writing the script, talked to Naman on Sunday about turning it into an AI film. He is excited. I am excited. Built character dossiers on Tuesday. Here’s one of the outputs…

Imagined by SG. Created by NG.
Again, imagined by SG. Created by NG.

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7/ People…

Met and spoke with many people.

  • A producer friend who’s struggling.
  • A seasoned entrepreneur who wanted intros to CMOs. I hate when I am used like that.
  • Varsha.
  • Saw Tanzila‘s show on Thursday. Incredible! Bumped into Sampat while I was there.
  • Saw Roshan Abbas on stage. Loved it! I will try to take a leaf from his book and try to become a listener. I may even convert my “daily” soloCast into a live radio of sorts. Afterall, we are all stories. And I love to gather those! #sgtodo
  • Did a long call with a friend who I had lost touch with.
  • A client+friend who made me make this video about commandments for young people.

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8/ Other things worth noting…

  • HelioCoach is chuggling slower than I had imagined. I will push it more.
  • shipshit.in has started to come together well.
  • Read Dr Pradip Jamnadas on hugs and inflammation earlier in the week. Go hug someone.
  • I HAVE to do a TinyDesk clone in India. This has been on my list for a 1000 years.
  • I need to make a list of things that I do NOT want to be associated with. And I want to make a list of people who I do NOT want to become.
  • I need to reduce the gap between my impulse. And my response. Say, I want to check what my crush is upto. I need to WAIT before I take action of lifting my phone and seeing her insta.
  • I want to be able to have intensity drip through my work. The only work I know is writing. And I dont know how to showcase my intensity in this day and age. But I need to think on this.
  • This tweet by Elon…

So that.

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📷 Photos from the week gone by

Stopped this a few weeks ago.
In case you want to get photos from me, DM me.

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📈 Trackers…

Was not a good week. The sleep was all over the place. Worse I didnt track a lot. I am down on all counts. Overspent. Had many Diet Cokes. Sleeping less, walking less, more screen time (on Claude lol), missed trackers etc.

No screenshots this week.

I hope to get back on track this week.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year.

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

Book2 – made some progress. Yet to get to a point where I can talk. But its no a 0.

Human Flag Pole – no action.

Save a million dollars – no action. In fact, last 2 months have seen financial stress.

.

📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Not a good week. Sleep broken. No workouts. ~5K steps. Will work on it.
  2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea to work on. No new ideas. I am running behind on this one.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No large action but I am. started to see some traction. Got a premium X. Started to do videos. Wrote a few pieces. But no outcome.
  4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No large action.
  5. Book2. No large thing.
  6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). Nothing additional.

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🏃‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

This week was bad. Again.

Bad sleep
Bad food
No supplements.
No workouts.
Stress and dissatisfaction – good!

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I add those to SG’s Office.

A few things…

  1. Update C4E’s Culture Book. This is still WIP.
  2. C4E’s website. This is new and WIP. Parth showed me some updates. Lets see when we ship it.
  3. Sparring Partner as a Service. Added this new thing.

I have a suspicion that this list will grow and will become unmanageable in a few weeks. I will find a solution when I get to it. For the time being, here’s a sheet where I track my actions.

Here are the things that I’ve closed previously…

  1. Start a podcast with C and AK. This remains open and will probably get shut. I dont see the excitement in the three of us. 
  2. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. I missed this. And I will do this in March. Maybe on the 28th or the 29th? I missed this again. I dont think am doing this. So closing and moving on.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Excitement.

Love all that I did with Claude this week. Super excited.

The other words for this year have been: Embarrassment, Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: This one was 90% “written” by Claude and edited heavily by me. Tell me what bits do you think I wrote?

Wk 18-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 18, 2026.

2 May, 2026
Started writing this at Silk Road Coffee Company and continued at other places.

Today’s M’s birthday. One of those rare people in the world that I love. And I gave Poo a hug. Again, another rare person that I love.

And I write this from a table where I am with AK, Prak, Naman and C. My people. The ones I want to live with and grow old with. Grateful that I have these people around me. If I were to zoom out, I think I would agree that my greatest achievement has been my mastery over my time. I am able to choose who I want to spend my time with and what I do with that time. I am mostly ok on the money front as well, though it could be better.

So that.

The week gone by saw a lot of action. There are a few things that I even delivered (yay!) and I shall talk about those shortly.

The song for the week is Lucky Ali’s Dekha Hai Aise Bhi. And this version of Iris.

And with that, let’s go.

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Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the week gone by.

In no order…

1/ Bunked a Work Meeting

Some context. I live in Andheri West. I had to meet a mentor at Nariman Point. For some work. And life updates.

Nariman Point is as far as you can go, if you travel South from Andheri. And typically takes about an hour early in the morning. And I had to meet him at his office. This means I had to wear pants. And do more superhuman things like that.

I did all of it.

Wore a shirt.
Wore pants.
Left home at 7:30 am to bear and beat traffic.
Reached a Starbucks close to his office at 8:30.
For a meeting at 10:30.
And then, I didnt go.

And no, I am not proud of it.
And I must talk about it.

The thing is, I had to go there to update him about work I’ve done in the past few months. And I didn’t really have a lot of new things to show him. Which is ok. No update is also an update. But while thinking about what to tell him, I realised, I am a hack. I havent dont anything by myself. All that I had to talk about was other people, doing things that I would have taken credit for. And I would have made pretenses about how I made those things happen.

Yes, ladies and gents, imposter syndrome is a real thing.

No, I dont need. I will be ok.

2/ Money

I will not get into too many details but I have feel the financial pressure. And I dont see it easing in the next few months. And I know that the next few things would be expensive. So, we shall see what do we do about it.

One option is to go extreme eco mode. But then I dont want that to hamper my ability to ship things. Case in point, I put up $200 to buy Claude Max (you will read about it shortly) to help me do more things.

So that.

3/ Spiral Bound

If you are from the films space, you would know Spiral Bound, the screenwriting thing that Boman Irani Sir runs. Last week they held a dinner and party of sorts for the students. And I was invited.

Here’s a photo from the event. Look at that talent on the stage!

Image courtesy: A friend who attended.

And no points for guessing, I didnt go.

And I hate it. This is the second thing that I shouldve gone to but I didnt. I wish I was more social and I had it in me to attend these things.

Oh the highlight was that for this, I had to write 11 pages of a screenplay. Which I did. And I am grateful. I am gonna develop it further into a full feature script. In this month itself. Ofc with the help of AI.

I call it 56 Hours.
Ask me about it next time you meet me.

Also, side note: I am thinking, is this writing of the script a distraction? I should be hyper-focussed on making money and fixing my home before I think about others. But then, that would be the rational thing to do and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it is that I am not rational. Heck, I am not even rationalising.

Also, also, this brings me to my next point.

4/ Film Making and Offline Business.

I love the business of films.

Even though it has changed drastically in this post-AI world (in writing, music, design, even production and direction), the core tenet that we are all about stories has NOT changed. The tools available have. The barriers to entry have gone down even more. And the only thing standing between who you are and what you could do is your ability to actually do!

And I love the business of live events. And while I’ve not done a lot of these in the recent past, I think I must rethink about it. For the sheer love of things that it allows me to do – travel, solve problem, stay in the moment, operate in a high-stress environment and more.

And Pradeep has been insistent that I must do both of these. On the films, he says that I must make one (all by myself) and then decide if I want to do more or not. And on the offline events space, he’s been after my life to get into it head first. The world seems to be moving offline, people are getting lonely and people need a detox from devices and AI.

So, why not.

Let’s see.

5/ Lessons from Kay Khoo

I met Kay over the weekend for a coffee.

Hands down, this was one of the most incredible meetings I’ve had in long long time. For a large part of the time I spent with him, I felt I was out of my depth. Which is incredible. I would love to be in more rooms like that.

Here are some lessons I took away. Words are mine.

A/ Do Large Things
Kay mentioned that when he gets on a project, his mind first expands to figure the grandest picture that he can. Even if its impossible, improbable, unrealistic et al. And then he sets about seeing how to make it happen.

Wow!

B/ Pick things you want to work on
Kay was abundantly clear that he wants to cheery pick projects that he puts his mind to. Ofc, he’s at a place where he can pick and choose things. I am not. But from what I could imagine, he would’ve been like this since a lot of time to come to this point.

A pursuit worth investing energy into.

C/ Have opinions
This.
He comes from the design space and he has opinions. Which is not unheard of. But he had a rational reason for EACH of his opinions. And he could put those forth in simple words.

Unlike me where I say I dont “vibe” with things. Must learn how to be more articulate and clear and have rational, simple explanations.

D/ Choose your words.
I was with him for about two hours and in that time he dint use a single profanity. In a world where we take pride in being “brash” and “bindaas” and “chalta hai”, the man chose his words, spoke well and didn’t have to lean onto expletives to put his point forth.

So that.

I wish I met more people like Kay.
I hope I get to spend more time with him.

6/ Tale of 2 Maxes

This past week saw me “invest” in two Maxes.

Airpods Pro Max for about 50K
Claude Max for $200 per MONTH!

And at least with Claude Max, in the three days I’ve had it, I’ve seen a remarkable shift in life. I am running three tasks at the same time and I can see my brain expanding. Right now, a lot of my usage is about writing and design. I am yet to get to the code part (for that, am using TRAE)

Both are out of aukaat for me (in terms of money) but I think I wanted both. And now that I have put in money, I will see if I continue to be excited about it. Oh, and these two happen to the most expensive purchases for myself in a while. And also, the belief that its expensive to be poor has been reinforced. And thus, must make more money.

7/ The shattered rickshaw

Lemme start this one by saying that I am grateful for my privilege.

So, a couple of days ago, I was coming back from Versova and on one of the intersections, I saw a rickshaw that was apparently in an accident and was shattered so bad that it would get scrapped.

And next to it, crouched, was the driver. I don’t know if he was the owner or the renter but he looked devastated. He had his face in his hands (I couldnt see more) and was shaking. There were people around him but they were all in various stages of helplessness. And like it happens with such incidents, a crowd had gathered.

I didnt see this scene for more than a couple of minutes cos the rick I was in was ushered by the traffic cops but I realised what wa happening. The rick that was shattered was probably the only way for the driver to make his living. More than that, it was probably a large part of his networth and worldly possession. He had his entire world shattered in front of his eyes!

The last time I felt like that was when we were demonetized and there was this image of a old man from a tier 2 (or 3) location with his hands on his forehead. I cant forget that visual. I wont forget this rick person. The helplessness on these people. The shattered rickshaw could probably get fixed but what about the man? In one second, his entire life would’ve changed. You know, when life leaks one strand at a time from your soul, you dont realize. My business has been bleeding for last two years and on a day to day basis, I dont get to see the impact. But when you lose everything you have in one snap, I dont know how that would feel. Like I said, life’s been kind to me and I am grateful.

I remember one time Paras lost that he had built in a fire. Paras being Paras bounced back. I am not sure of this rick person. Neither am I aware of what happened to that old man.

Made me guilty of my privilege. Made me sick. Made me think. Made me question the reason. Made me want to work harder.

8/ HT’s book

Ok, coming back to things that I did, with the help of Claude Max, I’ve been able to deliver a book that am ghostwriting for a mentor. Ahead of time. And yes, I used AI liberally.

As we speak, the book is at the review stage and some folks are reading to give their inputs. Lets see what they say. Needless to say, I am damn excited about it.

9/ ShipShit

I shipped.
Shit.
See it here. I didn’t intend to shit it on shipshit but that was the only domain available that was not being used. And thus I ready fired aim the domain. And it is ready. In some shape.

Oh and I worked on this with TRAE and NOT Claude. Lol!

So, if you are a screenwriter and you want to take the tool for a spin, please lemme know. And in case you dont want to let me know, you can easily sign up and play. In either case, please do give me feedback.

Disclaimer: This is WIP and thus PLEASE do NOT use this for commercial work. There are bugs and you will lose progress.

10/ Work

I dont have a lot to say here. I was to pick a thing to apply myself to by the end of April. I still dont have an answer. I did have a few thoughts but dont think they are panning out. I now have the following options…

  1. Toss a coin (I dont have two options but you get the drift)
  2. Ask my Village and I will do whatever they tell me to
  3. Give myself one more month. But I had decided I will not make my timelines flexible

So, I dont know which one to choose. You help me.

11/ Instagram

I got back on Insta last night (I am on altSaurabh).
And after a month.
And oh man, it is a hellhole. Before I knew it, I had spent 2 hours on it. Doing inane things. Scrolling profiles of my crushes. Getting envious of perfect lives of pseudo-strangers. Thinking about all the things that I could’ve done.

If for the brain expansion that happened with Claude Max, these two hours with Insta were so terrible that I wanted to puke.

But… there’s always a but…

I realised that I need it.
For work.

The world has, for some sad reason, moved to Insta as their primary vehicle for content and news consumption. It’s a necessary evil that you have to live with, to put your point forth and connect with more people.

But is there a way to do it without wasting time on it?
Maybe use it only from a browser?
Are there any wise answers?

11/ Other minor updates

No minor updates from this past week.

.

📷 Photos from the week gone by

Stopped this as few weeks ago.
In case you want to get photos from me, DM me.

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📈 Trackers…

Lemme start from Whoop….

Clearly…

And then.
The steps…

Number of steps I took in the week gone by. For comparison, while in BKK, this number was 15K.

Then, the weekly…

I am glad that screentime is not tru the roof.

Finally, the larger tracker…

I see a lot of red flags. Lemme know what you see.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year. 

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

With Claude Max, I made some effort on second book.
And I love it!
Let’s see if I can carve time to actually write more.
I am giving till end of May to get the draft ready. The best part of Claude is that it can act as a solid research assistant and help me. And even if it hallucinates, I am ok. After all, we are working on a fiction project.

The other two are still sus.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Was not a good week at all. I will work on it in the coming week.
  2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea that I want to work on. I still dont have it. I have one more day on this. And in case I dont get it, then I dont know. And I am sad about it 🙁
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No action on this.
  4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No action.
  5. Book2. I want to start with this. Did some work.
  6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). No action.

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🏃‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

This week was REALLY bad.
Bad sleep.
Bad food.
Bad energy.
I need to put in some work on this.

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⏲️ Reminders from last few days

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 am revisitng htis after a while

A few things…

  1. Update C4E’s Culture Book. This is still WIP.
  2. C4E’s website. This is new and WIP.
  3. Sparring Partner as a Service. Added this new thing.

I have a suspicion that this list will grow and will become unmanageable in a few weeks. I will find a solution when I get to it. For the time being, here’s a sheet where I track my actions.

Here are the things that I’ve closed previously…

  1. Start a podcast with C and AK. This remains open and will probably get shut. I dont see the excitement in the three of us. 
  2. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. I missed this. And I will do this in March. Maybe on the 28th or the 29th? I missed this again. I dont think am doing this. So closing and moving on.

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🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Embarrassment.

Yeah. That’s the word I want to use. I did a few good things but the highlight (the lowlight actually) has to be my conduct with Boman Sir and Arun Sir. I am quite embarrassed about how I conducted myself this week.

And I will fix it.

The other words for this year have been: Blur, Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions from 2026 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: I am not really happy about this update. But I guess we will live with this and aspire to do better in the next one.

Wk 17-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 17, 2026

26 April 2026
Starbucks, Versova

As I start writing this, I dont have any large thoughts. But I do have notes that I want to expand into this post, I do have a track that I want to share with the world, I have my usual list of things that I want to work on, I do have a few things that I want to boast about and I do have many other tricks up my slave. But I dont feel like writing.

And this is strange. Since I can remember Since 2006 at least, writing has been my catharsis. And while there have been periods of ups and downs, I’ve never ever felt like not writing.

But then, we shall prevail. One of the best writing lessons I’ve ever got is this – rather than waiting for inspiration to strike you, make writing your bitch and command it when you want to.

So here we are.

The track of the week is this. I must’ve heard this a 100 times since last week.

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☁️ Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the last week

1/ The Gate of Years

I saw this play titled The Gate of Years by Keneth Desai.
At Rangshila.

And I have to say, it was one of the best I’ve seen ever. And since I was seeing a play after a while, I had high expectations. Needless to say, Kenny delivered. A punch and a performance. So good that I wanted to leave everything and fling myself to the world of theatre.

The play had everything going for it. Based on The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, the story is an exchange between Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a merchant and Bashaarat, a shop owner selling curios from the ancient times. Kenny did a one-person adaption and had me spellbound for almost 90 minutes. I was so moved that I even wrote a Linkedin post about it.

I mentioned on the linkedin post and I want to write here as well.

Of all the inexplicable things in the world, the largest mystery that I am confounded by is the reason why people do theatre. They definitely don’t make money. They are glad if they get audience (for this fabulous piece, Kenny had like 10 people in attendance (and one of the audience members was none other than Naseer Sir)). They are not covered on the front pages of any tabloids. Of all the raison d’êtres that us humans chase, theatre offers none!

Someday, I’d like to ask some theatre folks.

Anyhow.

Lemme talk about Naseer Saab for a bit.

Once upon a time, I was so close to working with him on a film that I could touch the set and feel the air with anticipation. A friends friend pitched the project to Shikha and I. And we latched onto it. We made good progress. We did a few meetings with Naseer Sir (yeah, I’ve been in a 1v1 room with him), spent some money on location scouting (to places like Indore and all that), met the studios (Jio etc), financiers and all that. All in hopes of getting the film. But we couldn’t. There are versions of story on why we couldn’t (and my version is not the most kind), but lets not talk about that.

The point is, if I had run a deliberate life back then, I would probably have had a film with Naseer Sir. If a few years later, I had lived a deliberate life, I would have had a film company. If… would… could… have had… sigh!

Someone needs to slap some sense into me.

.

2/ NMG Grant

Thej announced the winners of NMG Grant for the year. He (and friends) granted a total of more than 5.5 lakhs to 10+ people for projects ranging from healthcare to maps to wikipedia to animals to music.

The full list is here.

If you are someone with some capital to spare and want to support young people with microprojects, do consider supporting Thej and NMG.

PS: At a point I wanted to start a grant of my own (see SoG Grant) but I was not able to put attention / focus to it. It has always remained a “someday” project and each time Thej issues the grant, I am inspired to copy it.

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3/ MJO

This past week I re-discovered my love for Saurabh Shukla’s MJO.

I dont know what is it about this series that I love the most. The Indian-ness (more of UP-ness), animation, dialogues, animation, background score or a combination there of. Or maybe how Saurabh Shukla talks about himself in each video.

Do see it.

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4/ Valuation Business vs Cashflow Business

This is one of those questions that needed an answer.
Lemme start with definitions.

Valuation Business is where you are valued at gazillion dollars, irrespective of the revenue or profit. This is largely driven by investments in the business (either by VCs or by other such parties).

Cashflow businesses are the ones where no one wants to invest but you make a lot of money and use that money to scale. Gravity was a cashflow business. A grocery store is a cashflow business. C4E is a cashflow business. The business throws some free cash flow that is available to folks at C4E to use.

So, all my life I wanted to build a business that create a large impact (you know, impacts a billion people) and I thought an easy way to do so is via a valuation business (after all, if you lean on VCs, you get to deliver to a larger set of audience). But with time I am learning that there could be merit in the freedom that you you get when you work for yourself and work on a business that throws free cash-flow at you. And that ladies and gents is the big revelation of the week.

Ofc it may not allow me to build a thing that delivers large impact. But may be, at this time, I need some freedom and some wings?

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4/ Other minor updates

Here are some notes and updates from the week gone by.

  1. Spoke to a few friends about the idea of being a sparring partner to founders and CEOs. Got some interesting feedback. Will sharpen that.
  2. Talked to my people at C4E about my attempt at finding something to work on. So far, I am drawing a blank (I do have some ideas but none of them is close to fruition) but I remain hopeful. If nothing else, I will pick up events and get to it.
  3. Spent time with Rana Sir and learnt about how large businesses take shape. I am realizing that I dont understand a lot about how to run large businesses.

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📸 Photos from the week gone by

Stopped this as few weeks ago. In case you want to get photos from me, DM me.

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📊 Trackers…

Here’s my trackers…

Tracker from the week 17.

And here’s the mood…

The mood tracker.

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✅ Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year. 

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

No action in the last week on any of these goals.
So, no progress and no update.

Plus I hadn’t seen these in a few weeks. So at least am back to tracking these.

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📌 So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Slowly getting back to a sleep routine.
  2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea that I want to work on. No answer. I have given myself a hard deadline of 30th April 2026. Either I will find an idea or I will work on whatever my people tell me to. So far, no idea. But I am moving in some direction.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No action on this.
  4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No action.
  5. Book2. I want to start with this. No action.
  6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). No action.

.

🏃🏽‍♂️Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

No action again.
I mean I didnt track or actively think about it.
I want to keep this live cos this makes me think.

.

⏳ Reminders from last few days

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 am revisitng htis after a while

A few things.

  1. Update C4E’s Culture Book. This is still WIP.
  2. C4E’s website. This is new.

I have a suspicion that this list will grow and will become unmanageable in a few weeks. I will find a solution when I get to it. For the time being, here’s a sheet where I track my actions.

Here are the things that I’ve closed previously…

  1. Start a podcast with C and AK. This remains open and will probably get shut. I dont see the excitement in the three of us. 
  2. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. I missed this. And I will do this in March. Maybe on the 28th or the 29th? I missed this again. I dont think am doing this. So closing and moving on.

.

🗓️ So, one thing that defines the past week?

Blur. Again.

The other words for this year have been: Whiling, Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions:

  • 2026: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

PPPPS: I am not really happy about this update. But I guess we will live with this and aspire to do better in the next one.

Wk 16-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 16 of 2026.

18 April 2026
Writing this from BKK.
And I am writing this in parts.
From Drink Coffee. And from Bo’s. And from a Pacamara. And of course, Starbucks. Must say, Bangkok has some incredible coffee game. Incredible in terms of looks, taste, hospitality, looks, taste, hospitality and all.

In this weeks, edition, I plan to not use the “structure” per se. Rather a brain dump of all that I’ve been thinking. This will be the closest to my morning pages thing.

Let’s go.

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1/ Skincare Routine

I’ve decided that I am gonna be a man with a skincare routine. I’ve got a shopping list made on Sephora. And since it was expensive, I bought “similar” things on Amazon and Nykaa.

In case anyone is curious, here are the lists. Anyone wants to judge and give me inputs?

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2/ Senior People

A lot of senior people from advertising industry have been impacted by AI. I’ve got frantic calls by friends and former colleagues – each with 15+ years of experience and each asking for opportunities. These are writers, designer, film producers, creative directors and the works. The ones who’ve not called so far are the suits (account management folks). The ones who moved to peripheral work (microdramas, “client” side et al) are ok. And not one has not been impacted by AI and the “efficiency” brought in about AI.

Now, on one side, I can blame my friends for not adapting. And on the other, I can try and help them. And since I recently learnt that when someone is drowning, you throw them a rope and not a swimming lesson, I will throw a life vest and a rope. And I will take an entire barge to fish them out of trouble.

More on this soon.

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3/ Love Language.

First, see this…

From Will Smith’s biography

Now, I will implement this.

I know that I am a dreamer. I know that I like to build and take things from 0 to 1. I have done it many times and I will do it again. And my love language is helping my people do more and see more.

And so far, I have not been able to subject them to grind and sacrifice. And I will change that.

I will demand from my people that they show up and change patterns. And I will change those for myself as well. I will become more strict about timelines, work and money. I will operate with a three strike rule. I will continue to love you but I will not let that love blind me when it comes to work. And while I do that I will not be moved by emotions. My inability to push you to do better hampers my inability to do better for all of the village. And I will remove drain on resources – time, opportunities, money etc.

So, if you see me “change”, so be it.

All I ask for at this time is support and encouragement.

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4/ The next few months

I have some ideas that I will chase in the next few months. These are not large billion dollar ideas but substantial ideas nonetheless.

I will drive Chandni and Aarya to run those. And I will lean onto everyone else in my closest system to help me drive all of us. I will operate in the war-time mode. And thanks to a lesson from Pritam, reorient myself to work on 2-week sprints. This means I will do hard calls and reviews every two weeks. For each project, I want things to move in 2-week windows and if there is no movement in 2 weeks, I will shut.

I will make some fundamental shifts in how I work. I’ve made a list of some principles that will guide me. I will also update work with saurabh page.

Some of these are…

  1. Living a deliberate life. This means that each thing I do will come from deep thought. Right now, I merely go with my vibes. I will continue to do so but I will also be lot more deliberate about each thing I do. And as part of this, I will offer and seek accountability. And I will drive myself and others around me.
  2. Focus and presence (and intensity). I dont know how to focus but I will try. And i will being my 100% presence to each thing I do. If I am playing pool, I am only playing pool and that with the intensity of a man obsessed with it.
  3. Relentlessness
  4. Sense of urgency
  5. Play to win and to win-win. All my life I’ve been a “nice guy” and I’ve of course not been the first. I’ve cut from my heart to let others have what they seek. I’ve tried to please everyone (and may I say I’ve been successful at this) but going forward, I will be ok if I am unable to please others. And, I dont want to be a bad person but I will play to win. And no, my winning doesnt mean that other would lose.
  6. Global life. I want to live a life thats not contained by borders. I dont enjoy flying as much as I did when I was younger. But that’s one inconvenience I am willing to live with. I also need to make money to be able to live ok. So that.

Lemme know what you think

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5/ Comparative Poverty

Gokul had made me realise that all poverty is subjective. Lemme elaborate.

I write this from a fancy coffee shop in a fancy part of Bangkok, the city of angels. And I feel poor. Because the last few days I was with friends from MDI who are now honchos and are in a different SEC classification of their own. And I know each time I hangout with them, I will be and feel poor.

While in India, in a Starbucks and on the road, this class difference is not as visible. But here, it was. And I need to either be ok with this (that I will not get to travel with my friends) or hustle harder to be equal with them.

And no, in friendship the class difference doesn’t disappear. I mean I can not open a 9000 rupee wine bottle for breakfast just because the restaurant is down the road from where I am staying at.

Also, just before this trip with folks from college, I was with folks from C4E. I planned the C4E trip and I did nothing on the MDI one. And I think I liked the one I planned (hotel, city centre, lots of free time etc). I’ve also reaffirmed that I dont like BnBs. I like the idea of a cleaning service and a water-on-call service and the optionality to change the room in case I dont like.

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6/ Walks

I love walking. And even though its hot AF, I walked a lot. I’ve averaged 13K steps over the last few days with at least 3 days with more than 20K steps. I can see a noticeable bulge in the calves.

I must make it a point to walk more.

I dont get to walk in Mumbai because I am not sure where to go. Maybe I will walk on the beach EACH day from 6 PM to 8 PM or whatever. And I will ensure that I dont need to be on any calls in that window.

Lol!

I’ve made many plans like these but none to fruition. Lemme not ahead of myself. I will see if I can keep my walking momentum.

Let’s go.

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7/ What I wrote published in the week gone by?

This is the only “progress” piece that I am talking about this week. More so because I am glad I was able to get these going. Three things…

  1. LinkedIn post on Zone of Genius
  2. Post on Freelancing in 2026, in the post-AI world. Here.
  3. Some copy-tweaks on sgwashere.com

I want to be able to write more. Even in this video-first world. This allows me to think deeper. And allows me to communicate more with more people. Video helps with communication as well. I’ll probably get more active on that. Let’s see.

.

So… this is it for this week gone by. Not the best of the reviews but I am glad I wrote.

As I end this, here’s the “footer”…

One word that defines the week gone by?

Whiling time.
Not the kinds that I would like but the one where I was moving.
Physically.
Which is ok.

The other words for this year have been: Movement, Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions:

  • 2026: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14, 15

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

Wk 15-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts and highlights from Week 15 of 2026.

April 12, 2026
Hotel Room at Siam, BKK
Round 2, at a coffee shop. Again, Siam, BKK.

This note comes from a hotel room in Bangkok. And a few more locations around the hotel room. Am here till about the 20th. At least. Could be longer. But as of today, till the 20th. I love this ambiguity!

Anyhow.
Let’s go.

So, truth be told, I have mixed feelings about being here. I love that am at a new place and building newer neural networks. And I don’t like this temporariness. I also dont like the inability to find a rhythm and a routine to get things done.

Oh on that.
I am a creature of habit and routine. I live such a predictable life that if someone had to map my movements, they could get it to last meter and last second and I would be like a sitting duck.

In Mumbai, you can predict when I would be at a Starbucks. And the seat I am on and the time I am and the order am having. In case I move from Andheri West, I will find another one at a walking distance. And I will find the same 10 things to work on.

I must mention that this tweet really made me think hard about life and work. To a point that I want to change how I operate. I see the merit in the arguments being made in this tweet but I also see the benefits in my approach. Lemme talk about it in a bit.

Right now, it’s the time for the weekly note.

The track of the week is music from Khudgarz.
I cant pick one specific track.
I would link the one that’s playing as I write this.

Tbh, I am so familiar with this one that I can predict the next song they’ll play in the medley. I love this so much that I want to create an ensemble band. I know there are many bands like this in the market but I would love to have my own.

Sigh.

So many ideas.
Such less time.
So few people that I can trust. On that note, if you are a young person who wants to get their hands dirty with life, by helping me do these “projects”, please do reach out. I am on sg@c4e.in. Or use this.

Ok, let’s go…

Lets get to the review.

💭 Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the last week

Last week I made these in an order. This week, I dont have an order.

1/ Travel

I have to start with this.

Ofc.

I’ve been on the road for almost a week now. And I will be travelling for another week, at least. While I love it, I also have some not so love-ful notes and thoughts. Lemme try the good and bad of each thing.

Garmi and Walks
For starters, I dont like the garmi here.
It’s way too hot for my liking. And humid. And muggy. And I dont like it at all. But I think this is better than India. I dont know why.

The good part?
I’ve walked about 15K steps on an average since I’ve come here! Maybe cos there is no dust? Maybe cos the city is very walkable with clean footpaths and shaded areas? Maybe the malls and stores are interconnected with large parts airconditioned?

Either way.
I am not complaining.
I cant tolerate the garmi but I’ve been able to rekindle my love for walking.

Fancyness and Belonging to the Streets
While I was here, I realised that I belong to the streets.

This means that I dont like places that are overtly plush or expect you to operate in a certain manner. I dont like fancy restaurants or needlessly boujee things. Ofc, I love attentive staff and tiny details to things but I dont like the randomly snobbish behaviour.

I also am not the kinds to queue up for anything.
I avoid queues if I can. Unless they are at an airport. And some day I would like to skip those as well. Or maybe someday I will walk in to the empty Benne and relish it so much that I want to queue up. But till that time, I dont think am doing that.

So, I belong to the streets. To the things you can touch and feel that are not behind glass walls. To the grime and dust and hustle that get through your skin and bones to your soul.

Exploration and Focus
Since I’ve been on the road, I’ve been using less and less of my phone. There is so much to do, see, experience IRL that I dont want to be be trapped in a 6.1″ OLED screen. If nothing else, I am sleeping better (may be its the walk?).

I know that I need to have a GREAT digital presence to attract opportunities but I see the merit in not being online.

The fact that my screentime is like 5 hours?
I love it!

I am now thinking, do I completely disown the mobile phone? I love the convenience that I get with a mobile phone in my hand. Its unparalleled luxury but then so is uninterrupted, peaceful sleep.

I want to experiment with not using mobile phone at all. Only use a dumb one. In fact, this month, I’ve been away from Insta and X and all that. And I will be, till end of April. May be I will do one month of insta and twitter and linkedin, one month of abstinence. Or maybe 15 days of guilt trip and then back to sanity for a month? I dont know yet. Lets see.

Staying on this exploration and focus thing, I have realised long ago that I am unable to work while I am on the road.

I had imagined that if I get couple of hours in the morning, I am mostly ok. But this trip has (and many others have) proven to me that I work best when I have my life defined by routine. If I have to embrace a truly nomadic life, I MUST find a way to balance work.

City Centres and Groups
This trip is with a group.
And these are people I love.
And ofc people I work with.
And a couple who’re not current colleagues. And each of us is eclectic AF. And as different as chalk and cheese. And yet we are together. I love it!

So, I’ve been the planner-in-chief of this trip. Which means I chose the part of the city we’d live in. The things we’d do. And who all will do what. Today’s day 3 of the trip and so far, I think I’ve done a pretty good job, considering all things and all the people. But I am sure there are many opportunities to do better.

Here are some…

  1. I booked a hotel and not a BnB. I think the decision was a blessing in disguise. Now that I’ve lived a few days, I think a managed place like a hotel was a good idea. We dont have the flexibility of the bnb but thats ok.
  2. I didnt book breakfast. I dont eat breakfast and I assumed others wont eat either. Big mistake. Next time I do a group trip, I will 100% book breakfast.
  3. I didnt define a budget. The trip has gone 40% over my expectations. Which is ok. I will live in the eco mode for a quarter and we’d be ok. Next time, I will inform this upfront.
  4. AK says that booking tickets and planning travel is my zone of genius. May be there’s something there?

There are more lessons but I think I will park it for the time being. Maybe I will wrote more of these once am back from the trip.

So that was travel.
Moving to the next thing.
People.

2/ People

A lot of notes about people.
Lemme list some.
I will remove names. For obvious reasons. I will create anonymous initials for them.

Lets go…

AB
This person is about 25.
One of the most talented, smartest people I know. To a point that I am envious of their talent. And ambition. And drive.

However, this person is inspired more by fame (than by creating impact) and aims to get famous and chase vanity metrics. And not delivering value. And not growing or learning.

And its not wrong. It’s just that at this age, you rather build something tangible. I wish I could put sense into them.

If youth knew…

CD
This person is my age.
One of my oldest friends.
Am grateful that he reads my notes and gives me honest, unfiltered advice. The kinds that you typically dont get from anyone. Love that I’ve got some real estate in his head. I nee to find more like him!

EF
This person is like AB above.
Young. Ambitious. And yet wants to take it easy. You know, make money. And chill.

I understand how this person wants to live life in a certain manner. However, my thought is, why would you throw away your gift in chase of an easy life? And your very life could become a role model for the rest of the world to follow. Why would you not do that?

GH
I know this person for 12 years.
And he’s been a mentor of sorts. And he and I spoke at length about where I am headed and how I would go there. Grateful that I have him. He’s promised that he would try and hook me up with some. Let’s see.

3/ Ego

This past week I let go of a client. Or maybe the client let go of us. The point is we are no longer working together.

Now that I am sitting by myself and thinking about it, I realise I made a mistake. It was a 100% salvageable situation. Many people were at fault. Starting at me. I was wrong. So was my team. And my collaborator. But it was not something that we couldnt have fixed.

I could’ve been strict with my team and told them to pull their socks up. I could’ve mentored them better. Heck, I could’ve replaced my team. May be I need to work with project orientation. In fact I had decided earlier as well that I need to think about projects more than I think about people. But I didnt pull the plug on that. Maybe I should’ve.

Anyhow.

What’s done is done. Lesson learnt. I hope to do better with the next ones.

The silver lining is that the client went away while giving us full marks for our effort. I just wish I wasnt spoken in a tone I was talked in.

4/ Routine

I started this week’s note with this tweet and I want to rethink how I operate.

I see the merit in the arguments being made in this tweet but I also see the benefits in my approach.

So I’ve always believed that luck is something that we can create. And I want to maximize my luck surface area. But then, I dont really do a lot of unfamiliar things. Like I said above, I go to the same cafe, at the same time, meet the same people, eat the same things. To a point that I am the most boring man.

I will change this.
Though, I need to first figure where my work will take me.

So that.

PS: I had imagined I would have a lot to say about this. But I dont. Lol!

5/ Work

Again, many threads in this.
Lemme try and articulate.

Deliberate life.
I was talking to SM yesterday and I told her that I want to live a deliberate life from here on. I dont know the shape it would take but I know some variables. I will try to articulate those here.

  1. I dont have a distinction between work and life. There is a significant overlap between the two and I will not have any other way.
  2. I want my work to a global business that takes me beyond borders and allows me to a “richer” life full of many experiences.
  3. I want to find many many ways to intersect with (and cross paths with) interesting people. This means
  4. I want to be very selective with what I work on and who I work with and what I charge for the same. More importantly, I want to do things that I enjoy. With good people who I really want to be with for the long-term. And some of these must challenge me and push me to do more.
  5. I want to use my time here to do things that I enjoy. And the act of doing those things must make meaning.
  6. I want to be a part of a cult where all of us have a similar mindset towards life. If I am unable to a part of some cult, may be, make one.
  7. Operate from trust and faith and freedom

I know this wont be for everyone.
I know a lot of these will sound vague.
I know most people wont relate to this.
I know this is extreme. But at the extremes is where you make things that are not ordinary.

Lessons from Pritam
Pritam has shown up many times here in the last few months. This week is no different.

This week, he taught me that I need to take hard calls and if need be, fire people who are closest to me. If I have to. And once I’ve tried everything.

And “incentivize” more people to do more. Even if I dont want to.

I also need to be more “real” with people. I must give negative feedback fast. Learnt this from Mihir as well.

He also told me that I need to be sharper and demand more from people. And if that means I need to do more to earn the right to demand more, I must. I also must go closer to outcomes and not stick to just inputs and outputs. Unrelated, when I delegate, I must implement this.

Lessons from Routine, Travel and The Client I lost
I MUST ask for more.

For me and C4E, this is as war-time as it gets and I MUST start to operate like a war-time CEO. And I have to be the warrior and not a gardener. And not create easy times. See this…

And this means I would change the shape of how I operate and work.

Wait and watch.

PS: I’ve been talking about this for a while but I havent acted on this. I guess time’s come to show myself what am capable of.

.

6/ People Connector

I need to be a people connector.
There.
I said it.

It’s my zone of genuis. It’s my play while others find it exhausting. I can do this for the rest of my life without thinking about it.

There are many examples that I can cite – Interesting People, NS, DMC. HT and Sanjay Mehta often talk about their annual trip with their friends. I’ve also attended one by Ajeet Sir. Bux talked about doing something similar. And I can see a GREAT value in it.

I must do this. For self. My own version. With my people. For all of us to live a deliberate life. And then, offer it to other people. For them to see the magic that such networks can create. Filing it in #someday column of notes.

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📸 Photos from the past few days

Stopped this from the last week.
In case you want to get photos from me, DM me.

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🈺 Trackers…

Here’s my trackers.

Tell me what you see.

I love how everything is in green.
And there is a lot of coffee.
And ofc I hate that I am back on coke.

Also, here’s the weekly one…

Again, I love how steps is higher, screentime is lower and mood is consistent at 1. Yay!

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🈺 Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year. 

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

No action in the last week on any of these goals.
So, no progress and no update.
Hopefully from May onward, I will have something to show for.

.

☑️ So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Better than last week. Walked a lot. Slept ok. Did some pushups as well.
  2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea that I want to work on. I am still not closer to an answer. The deadline of 30th April 2026 stays.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No action on this.
  4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No action.
  5. Book2. I want to start with this. No action.
  6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). I took some of my people to a trip to Bangkok. I love it. I wrote a part of this from a breakfast table where two of my kids were eating. Yay!

.

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

Last week, I did do any deliberate action per se but I did walk a lot more than I would typically do. So that counts something. Rest nothing tbh.

.

🧠 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.

A few things.

1/ Update C4E’s Culture Book. 
This is still WIP.
I have a suspicion that this list will grow and will become unmanageable in a few weeks. I will find a solution when I get to it. For the time being, here’s a sheet where I track my actions.

2/ C4E’s website
I may not want to work on C4E per se but it’s about time we fixed it. And I have taken it upon myself to do that. So, added this here.

Here are the things that I’ve closed previously…

  1. Start a podcast with C and AK. This remains open and will probably get shut. I dont see the excitement in the three of us. 
  2. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. I missed this. And I will do this in March. Maybe on the 28th or the 29th? I missed this again. I dont think am doing this. So closing and moving on.

.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Movement.
Not the kinds that I would like but the one where I was moving.
Physically.
Which is ok.

The other words for this year have been: Blur, Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions:

  • 2026: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13, 14

PPS: Please do point typos.

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

Wk 14-26 – Weekly Note

Notes, thoughts, reflections and highlights from the 14th week of 2026.

6 AM.
NOT in Versova ;P

Here’s the note from the week gone by.

I am sipping onto Iced Americano as I write this. I have not put my music yet and I am letting the day come to me, rather than rushing to it. And since I am on the road, my schedule will be all over the place. I want to figure out if I can stick to my morning routine (reading, writing, reflections, check lists etc) while I am on the road. My sense is that if I get 2 hours each morning at a table and a chair, I would be ok. Today is an experiment in that direction. Let’s see.

Edit note. I took about two hours to write this and I am glad to report that I think I have a hang of the day! Must make this into a daily habit!

Another thing about travel is that it forces you to break your patterns. I am used to a hot Americano with butter while I am in India. Here, I cant ask for butter. I mean I can but I know they dont have. Maybe they do. I will try the next time I get a coffee. I am used to a table and a chair with a certain height. I dont have that here. And ofcourse, the unfamiliarity of the route you take, the sights you see and the people you meet. Good. And bad.

Then, while you are travelling, there’s so much context shifting that I am unable to get any work done. I know some people are good with it. You know, digital nomads and all? I wish I was like them. My best work comes in when I am in a routine. In fact, if I had my way, I would live in a new place for a month, spend a few days walking around where I live and then spend the next 3 weeks pushing for some output.

Finally, on travel, the best part is that you leave behind all the things that you dont like and choose things that you do. For example, in India, I avoid walking. Because, well…

On the other hand, when I travel, I can pick a hotel / bnb that’s in a part of the city that’s walkable. Oh, on that, when I travel, I like the idea of getting the acco in the middle of the city. And never on the edges. If I can choose, I will pick a tiny place in the middle than a large one on the outskirts. And the good part of most modern cities is that they offer many many middles.

Ok, this is becoming a travel blog.
Lemme get back to the weekly note.

The last week didnt see a lot of action tbh. It started on a high note (many meetings on Monday, many emails and conversations thru the week) but there wasnt any concrete outcomes. The week was all about activity (and no action / achievement). But that’s ok. Some weeks we do things. Some weeks we dont. As long as we dont lose sight of where we want to reach, all these are cool and part of the process.

So, the track for the day week has to be Bryan Adam’s Cuts Life a Knife. Here.

There’s way too many things that I like about this. Here’s a list in no order…

  • The way its been shot. I would love to do something similar with some artist. Love black and white and play of metal, wood, darkness, silhouettes and all that
  • The track itself. I love it. And the lyrics, uff!
  • The way semi-acoustic sounds sound like. Music to my ears. Lol.

So that.

Lets get to the review.

💭 Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from the last week

Last week I made these in an order. This week, I dont have an order.

1/ Pune

On Friday, I went to Pune. I had no reason. Just a feeling that I wanted to go and meet couple of my people.

Unlike other trips where I announce out loud, I didnt tell anyone that I was going to be in Pune. And truth be told, I didnt enjoy this trip to Pune. I dont know why. May be I would’ve liked to meet more people? I dont know.

But, the two people I had to meet, I am glad I could meet them and spend time with them. Each time I meet my people in different cities, I wish I could move all into one place. I know its wishful at best. I know most people wont want to uproot themselves and their lives to be around me. Some may. But most wont. So I need to make peace with that.

2/ A Book on Better Habits

Staying on Pune and Pune people, Aarya has given me a gift. A first draft of a book on building and sustaining habits. Of course there are many books on habits but this one starts where others end. More on this in the next few days.

So, Aarya did it as part of HelioCoach and she used a lot of Claude and I love how shes been able to program it to deliver an effective outcome. I read the first draft of the book on the flight and I like what I read. It needs work but it’s a good first draft for sure. So proud of Lord Aarya.

I need to now find someone who can polish it.
Do you know someone?

And in case you wish to read an early preview, please lemme know.

3/ Apply myself to a problem

I am dying to apply myself to a large problem that leverages my zone of genius and create value for people around me. And the world.

I’ve been trying to find an answer and a solution for this for sometime now but I havent had any brainwaves. I’ve asked my BoD as well but answers havent been forthcoming. May be I need a better board ;P

Or maybe I need to do deeper soul searching?

Thing is, I can find work easy. I am reasonably smart and connected and if I asked some people, they would give me work. It may not be rewarding enough (financially or emotionally) but I know that I can find work. But that wouldnt give me joy. And I would do them as lip service. I mean I will do a great job but I will not be excited about it. Plus, I’ve decided that I want to work on things that are uniquely mine and give me joy and allow me to apply myself with all my might.

So, need to find something. Any brainwaves anyone?

4/ Gratitude

I must say that I am grateful for the life I have.

5/ Pushpa 2

In the flight, I saw about 60% of Pushpa 2.

I had seen Pushpa 1 long ago and I remembered the story vaguely (sandalwood smuggler and all that). And I thought the story was weak AF. But the screenplay was good, the acting and direction was top notch. I think it would’ve been fun to watch on a larger screen.

Also made me aware that you can make good films if you tried ;P

Anyhow, the point is not the film. The point is the lessons I took from this.

One. The film made me realise that Entrepreneurship and Films are same. You work all your life to be able to build something that brings out an impact, you are betting against all odds, you are obsessed (and passionate to the extent of being mad) about what you do and one “lucky” strike can give you disproportionate outcomes!

Two. That I would love to be a modern day Robin Hood. You know, take from the ones who have in excess and give to the ones that need. But then, I need to either become an outlaw. Or make a lot of money.

6/ Money

The financial year closed in March.
And while I’ve spoken about the goods and the bads, I realised that I need to learn more about money.

Parking this here.
No large thoughts.

7/ Misc Things

Not too many come to mind TBH.
Like I said the week was truncated of sorts (two days of trip to Pune and then one day to recuperate and then a long flight yesterday). Some are…

  1. My best thoughts come when I am in motion. I distinctly remember talking to AK about a lot of work things and I was surprised at myself for coming up with those. I must do more of commute chats.
  2. I must get a car. First I need to know where am gonna live.
  3. The US-Israel-Iran situation doesn’t seem to be dying down. I am so keen on exploring Dubai and GCC but I am unable to. I wish I could be that person that could deescalate things!
  4. I continue to be away from Insta. I miss the mindless banter with people there. I must say I do miss some people too. IYKYK.

Ok, onto other things.

🈺 Photos from the past few days

Stopping this from this week onward. In case you want me to restart, lemme know. However, here’s an image…

From the flight yesterday.

🈺 Trackers…

Here’s my trackers.
Tell me what you see.

🈺 Action on LARGE objectives for the year

In this section, I will capture my progress on large objectives for the year. 

In 2026, I plan to do the following three things…

  1. Book2
  2. Human Flag Pole
  3. Save a million dollars

No action in the last week on any of these goals. So, no progress and no update.

This has been the thing for many weeks now. Must change this.

☑️ So, what did I get done last few weeks? And what will I do next 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.

So, this year, I want to track the following…

  1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Not a good week.
  2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea that I want to work on. No answer. I have given myself a hard deadline of 30th April 2026. Either I will find an idea or I will work on whatever my people tell me to.
  3. Brand SG / Distribution. No action on this.
  4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No action.
  5. Book2. I want to start with this. No action.
  6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). No action.

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

I added Health as a key section last year. 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.

No action again.
I mean I didnt track or actively think about it.
I want to keep this live cos this makes me think.

🧠 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.

A few things.

  1. Update C4E’s Culture Book. This is still WIP.

I have a suspicion that this list will grow and will become unmanageable in a few weeks. I will find a solution when I get to it. For the time being, here’s a sheet where I track my actions.

Here are the things that I’ve closed previously…

  1. Start a podcast with C and AK. This remains open and will probably get shut. I dont see the excitement in the three of us. 
  2. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. I missed this. And I will do this in March. Maybe on the 28th or the 29th? I missed this again. I dont think am doing this. So closing and moving on.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Blur.

The other words for this year have been: Activity, Movement, Regular (again), Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

—
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. Previous editions:

  • 2026: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (missed these three), 12, 13

PPS: Please do point typos.

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