Tag: Balkrishna Agarwal

Morning.
I am perched at the community table at my local Starbucks. And I have my headphones on and I am writing this. As always in parts.

Oh, as I write this part (at around 11 AM), I dont have the headphones and and AK is standing behind me.

And as I write this (at around 10 PM), am at the Starbucks and staring at a wall.

This has been one of the most “regular” weeks where I did regular things. For most days, I was up and about between 6 and 8, and then I came to this Starbucks where I am at, and then ate home made lunch, and then slept, and then done some work. And I thought about a lot of things and been thinking about things and avoiding things. And of course, I have a lot to talk about.

So, lets get with it.

Oh, the song of the week is this.

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Ok, let’s go ahead with the review.

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💭 Highlights, reflections, updates, notes and thoughts from Week 8, 2026

As always, these are not in any order.

1/ What did I change you mind on, in the last week?

This one is thanks to Krishna.

For all the differences and frustrations I have with him, he remains one of my closest people. He makes me think, helps me when I need anything and is around, in general all the time. Plus most of my conversations with him are not about mundane life things (you know, school and clothes and all that). Rather about where we could be and all that.

This past week, he and I were talking about certain someone, lets call this person A, and he pointed to me that my opinion about him are biased and I must not give him as much attention.

But then, I have my reasons for being such a fan of him. I’ve seen him grow from being a young boy to a man he is, I’ve seen him hustle thru college, startups, relationships and life. I’ve seen him do things that I can not even dream about.

But Krishna pointed at anecdotes and examples of inconsistency. And then he threw in weight of his experiences and gave me specific data points that made me rethink my perspective. And by the end of it, epiphany dawned onto me and I was able to change my opinion.

I am glad that I continue to have strong opinions loosely held. And no, I am not kaan ka kachcha. So, a win!

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2/ SG’s Performance Mode

I was talking to AD about something and then I said, lets record it so that we’d have notes and all.

And then he said something interesting. He said that moment I have a camera on, I get into the “performance mode”. As if I am talking to an audience and measuring my words. And that doesn’t bring out the real, unfiltered me!

On one side I wanted to deny it and refuse. I know that I dont get into one.

On the other, I dont want to say no to AD’s third-party opinion about me. Even Pradeep mentioned that he felt that I am in performance mode when I speak with him.

And I know that I dont want to ever be into a performance mode. For me, my authenticity and persona are the most critical. I will never ever put a face or a facade. But if AD’s pointing it, and Pradeep is validating it, I want to fix it. More so because in the times to come, I plan to be lot more vocal and visible and all that.

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3/ Burn The Paper

In some cultures, they say that if you want to forget about something, you should write on a piece of paper and burn it. This is a part of our rituals that we get thru to mourn over things that we dont want to lose.

Ofc, despite these elaborate rituals and processes and mournings, people dont get over things.

In my case, I am the opposite. I get over things fast. I tend to not hold grudges. But I ensure that I dont get into a relationship / transaction with people who I feel have wronged me. You know, I tear their page. I panna faaado them. Thank you, Nath Saab for the lesson.

I also forget about and get over things once I write about those on this blog (or on my Roam and lately on my YT live).

For example, last week I talked about Chalta Purza. Till I reviewed the last week’s notes, I had no recollection that I even wrote about it. In fact, when I “wander” on my notes and on my blog, I often discover things that I would’ve liked to remember but I have since forgotten. Another case in point, Riya and another person asked me about who I talked about in the last week’s blog and ISTG I dont recall who I wrote about.

On one side, this is a good thing – I dont fret over things that most people will ruminate over, for days and weeks. Plus, this blog, journaling has become my emotional anchor.

And on the other, its not so good thing – I dont let my emotions process. I dont grieve. I dont celebrate. I dont let my environment shape me as much as I would want it to.

So, maybe, I will try and find a compromise. May be I will use AI and all that to help me remember things and take lessons from and build myself on top of. May be I will double down on my personality and ensure that I become even more immovable.

What do you think?

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4/ Paddling to loved ones

Now that I have chosen to live and communicate without filters, I have started to see things that I otherwise missed.

Last week was epiphany that people use me. This week, I have had a couple of incidents where MY people are paddling things to me.

These are MY people. The ones I would kill for. The ones I respect. The ones I’ve grown up with.

Lemme talk about a story. I remember long ago, one of my friends from MDI had tried to sell a gold coin MLM scheme to me. I walked away from it but it left an indelible impression on me. That attempt to sell to me is probably why I am not comfortable selling to friends and family.

But then when I read about how the world works, I find that most people sell to their loved ones, their connections, their alum. And I find that weird. Supporting your friends, voluntarily, is ok. But using them to build your life? Unacceptable. I’ve always been the kinds to not charge anything from my friends and family. In fact, if anything I’ve tried to go out of my way to help them. And if someone’s tried to sell to me, I’ve been ok to accept their need (and may be greed) and if I could afford, buy from them.

So when this week, when I saw at least two examples where my people tried to sell to me, I could recognise the pattern and realised that may be that’s the way of the world and I am not meant to operate here?

Thoughts?

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5/ SongKran for C4E

I think SongKran is one of THE best experiences that us humans have invented. Each person must experience it at least once in our lives.

I wanted to have as many of my people experience it. And I offered everyone at C4E that I could take them there. I was willing to pay for it. But after a quick poll, I realised that my people weren’t as excited about it as I was.

Which is ok.

So this becomes one more addition to the long list of things that I’ve wanted to do for my people but I havent been able to.

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6/ FOMO with AI

I am falling behind.

That’s it.
That’s the emotion.
I said it.

Before I launch into a rant, lemme get something out of the way. I am not afraid. I am not scared. I am not worried about a “job loss”. I will survive that. I am a cockroach. My worry is my shot at greatness. My ambition of being the richest man in the world. My impact. And no, not cos I want to leave behind some legacy.

So, I have this overwhelming FOMO about the AI revolution transforming the world. And I am being a passive observer as the world rushes past me. I belong to action. I am for doing things. I am built for motion. Movement defines me. I want to move things.

And yet, am twaddling thumbs and merely nodding at other people.

The funny thing is that I can spot patterns from previous tectonic shifts and my inability to participate in those. When the world shifted to crypto (and then to web3), I had zero participation. I am maximalist and HODLer (if I had any coins, I wont sell those) and yet I dont have no money/investments/assets.

And if I were to go back even more, I was unable to capitalize on the social media boom. Before that I was unable to participate in the software boom.

And more recently, I failed at learning how to use Vercel, Cursor, Claude etc. Heck I couldnt even install clawdbot! Plus I am not sure if I can learn coding at this age.

So yeah. Big FOMO. I must do something about it!

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7/ PIMA session for the world

So, Sajith Pai has this concept of PIMA. See this. And ever since I heard about it, I’ve wanted to get a PIMA team for myself. More so in this day and age.

And thanks to Pradeep and Aarya, I have finally found some semblance of structure.

We have a WA group where we share links and lessons with each other. And then we read it at our time. And then each Thursday, we sit together to jam on what we read. And how it applies to our lives. And how can we leverage that.

No, we dont get into any specific instructional workshop or workalongs. We keep it like an edutainment piece and jam on it from a more philosophy lens. For example, on the last week’s call, we talked about…

• how SAAS is not dying (but distribution is getting harder)
• how the brain is overloaded (and not lazy)
• how you can build taste

And it was probably the best 30-45 mins session!

So, encouraged by that, I want to open my PIMA calls to others.

Here’s a place where you can put your name in case you want to participate. And then either Aarya or I will get back to you.

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8/ Misc notes that are worth capturing

Here are some that I want to capture here.

1. I am thinking a lot about my personal brand. Though I dont have a lot of action. One sub-action is that I need to write more.
2. I have been thinking about focus and deliberate work. Again, no large thoughts. And while we are on focus as a subject, here’s Dandapani on Focus. Here.
3. Anu’s recent essay on Stability. Link. For a change, I dont agree with Anu. She’s no doubt one of my favorite internet writers and each time she writes, I read the piece a few times till I internalize it. And then challenge my thinking. However, I dont agree to a lot of things shes said in this one but it’s worth a read for sure. I wish I knew her to be able to debate with her and get clarity in my thinking.
4. Dan’s video on The Future Of Work (& The New High-Income Skill Stack). Link. In words of Pradeep, “[Dan] is talking about a shift from the creator economy to the meaning economy where people will increasingly pay for perspective, opinion, and curation rather than just labor or output. He talks about skills needed to provide this meaning – Agency, Taste, Perspective, Persuasion, and using AI tools.”
5. Naval released a new podcast on AI. Link. Yet to consume. But I do love how it calls it “A Motorcycle for the Mind”
6. Made a spreadsheet of all the LLM accounts, logins and all. Across 6 LLMs, I have like 18 accounts. And a lot of those are paid. I also had decided that I would name my LLMs but I havent had the time to.
7. Boman sir has announced a contest for his students. I want to send an entry to it. I have an idea. I will work on it as part of my Guru Dakshina to him for teaching me so much about writing in the COVID-19 lockdown.
8. Saw a play on Rashmirathi. This one by IDEA. Realised how much I love theatre. And I want to see more of it. And no, I dont like grand performances with elaborate sets. I want intimate ones where you can feel the breath of the actors and the texture of what’s happening behind the scenes.
9. This post by Seth Godin on freelancing is worth it’s weight in gold. Do read.
10. Saw a very interestingn hardware company – Antimattr. And their first product, a wearable. Do check it out.
11. Read about Allostatic Load. See this.
12. Read more about Bayes’ Theorem. This is one of those things that rule the world in plain sight and as someone who wants to be impactful, this is a critical one.
13. Saw this tool that gives you meta data about how you use WA. See this by Nikunj. I used it and it made the following chart for my use of WA.

Needless to say, I love data!

And with that, I will end this week’s notes.

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🈺 Photos from Week 8

Here are some.
Again, not too many.
I must take more photos. Taking a note to self.

And maybe I will stop sharing this section if I am able to write more about photos that I click.

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🈺 Trackers from Week 8

This week on, I started with a weekly tracker.
To be able to see trends.
Before I get to those, here are the highlights…

1. Screentime on mobile phone is down to 5 hours. Took a lot of effort. I think getting it to 30 minutes is not possible in this day and age. May be I will aim for sub one-hour.
2. Played lesser pickle. And I see my pickle sessions dropping in the coming weeks. I need to find new players. This means I will have to socalise. And this mean I will have to put in superhuman effort. Sigh.
3. I need to add some fitness regimen. This has been on my lists forever.
4. No action on words.

What do you see?

And here’s the tracker (here, no access)…

The amber ones are where I did bad compared to the previous week. The green ones are where I got better. With time, I will evolve this tracker to present a more solid picture of how I am doing.

Also, I maintain a daily pen and paper tracker. Here…

While I love the pen and paper, at some point in time I will move to a purely digital one. I want to be travelling a LOT more and thus the need for a digital life.

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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. I had wanted to build a system but I was unable to. This will become my number 1 task over the next few days. Coupled with my use of AI to seek help and save time, I may be able to do. Will keep posted.

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☑️ So, what did I get done last week? 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.

This year, I want to track the following…

1. Health. I will work on sleep, food and movement. Last week the highlight is that I had a green recovery for 7 days on a trot!
2. C4E / Work. I want to shortlist some idea that I want to work on. I am still not there.
3. Brand SG / Distribution. No action on this. I remain away from social media. Dying to get back. I think I am missing out a lot on by not being on X.
4. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc). No action.
5. Book2. I want to start with this. Lol!
6. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc). No action.

Made comments in italics. Do read and give inputs.

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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.

Like the last few weeks, no action. I did play pickle four times this week, if that counts. And my daily health updates WA Channel is live!

Plus like I said, I had 7 ays of Green recovery. See this…

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🧠 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. 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. Closing this. Couldnt make progress.
2. Update C4E’s Culture Book. This is still WIP.
3. Storytelling presentation for the session on the 7th March. WIP.

These few come to mind as I speak. I have a suspicion that this 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.

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🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Regular.

Again.

The other words for this year have been: Regular, Easy, Journey, Downtime.

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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

PPS: Please do point typos.

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