Tag: Hareesh Tibrewala

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.

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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 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.

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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 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.

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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. 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.

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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…

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.

.

🏃‍➡️ 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 39-25 – Weekly Notes

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

Sunday the 28th.
Starbucks, Versova.

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

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

So that.

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

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

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

Ok, let’s go!

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

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

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

I think I will change that.

More on this as I think more. #sgtothink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Prak.

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, see this video of Steve introducing about podcasting.

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

.

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

Ok, this is it.

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

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

.

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

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

So that!

.

This is it for this week. More next week.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

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

The cover would be this…

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

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🈺 LARGE objective from the week gone by?

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

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

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

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

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☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

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

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

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

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

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

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

People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.

Book 2. Nothing.
So, -1

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

So the overall score for the week is 0

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

Watch me.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by…

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What trends do you see?

I see…

  1. Consistent unhappiness.
  2. Bad food.
  3. Sleeping late.

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

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

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

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

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

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

4/ Community
No large movement on this.

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

6/ Movement
No action.

: (

7/ Meditation
No action.

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

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

Here are some…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • you should be able to sleep on floor, no matter how rich you become
  • dilute stakes at peak to use the money at extreme lows and stay afloat
  • business is an emotional ride and very bumpy, be prepared
  • if you can move to Dubai or US make some money quickly then expand in India
  • always have 36 months of money for family security

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

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

🧠 Reminders from last week

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

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

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🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Grind.

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

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

Oh, and this too shall pass!

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

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

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

Wk 36-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from the week 36 of 2025.

Sep 6, 2025
Starbucks, Versova

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

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

Let’s continue.

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

Nahi Rakhta Main – Lucky Ali

So, let’s go…

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sent the following to some friends…

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

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

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

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

Age, sigh!

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

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

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

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

The few that I want to highlight are…

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

2 – Bored People Quit.

3 – Minimum Viable Curiosity.

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

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

This one lesson is worth its weight in gold!

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 36.

The highlight is this one…

Reminded me of Pale Blue Dot

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

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🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

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

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

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

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

☑️ So, what did I get done last week?

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

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

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

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

C4E. No action from my side. 0.

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

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

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

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

So the overall score is -2

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

I see…

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

What do you see?

🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6/ Movement
No action.
🙁

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

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📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

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

1/ This piece from Samarth.

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

3/ Advice from someone who turned 42.

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

5/ Alan Watts on Game of Life.

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

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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.

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

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Routine.

This is how it was last week as well.

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

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

Oh, and this too shall pass!

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

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

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

Wk 23-25 – Weekly Notes

Weekly update from weeks 22 and 23. This has Saurabh Garg’s notes, thoughts, reflections and everything else.

Hi!

I am back after a break of a week. I couldnt write. I was on the road. No, I am not beating myself over it (unlike past times). But I am acknowledging that I am not being consistent. I will try harder.

Now with that motivational self, pep-talk, lets get back to business.

The update for the last two weeks.

From the top of my head, a large part of update would be about Bangalore trip, health, personal brand and village. Lets see what else do I write.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past two weeks

A/ Anurag Sir
I want to start from here. You know, how heroes fall? That! I love the guy. I love his films. I love his storytelling. A large part of my life has been dictated trying to be what he and Vikram Sir have been.

But, the guy’s falling. Hard. I can say a lot but I dont want to. I just want to catalog that I am sad about him falling 🙁

PS: In case I forget in the future, note to self, read about what he said about Netflix launching in India with things apart from Sacred Games.

Staying on films, saw Khosla Ka Ghosla, at an event organised by Balram. Each time I see the film, I am amazed that the film captures Delhi nuances so well that I am inspired to do similar things!

And staying further on films, I really want to be in the films business. I know AI and all is gonna disrupt how this business works (we are already making short films using all the AI tools) but there’s something about visual storytelling that still moves people. I need to be a player in this space. Come on, universe…

B/ Bangalore
Many notes from this one. Lemme write in bullets.

  1. Played poker. Enjoyed it. Must play more. Met some really incredible people on the poker table. Must do more to be around Poker
  2. Realised that my personal brand needs a lot of work. I orgniased a meetup and I was unable to meet a lot of good folks. I HAVE to work on this
  3. Spent time with Sonam and each time I meet her, I want to be able to afford person like her to work with me (either at C4E or at Meru)
  4. Met a couple of really interesting folks (you know, the VC, startup kinds). I realised I enjoy meeting these people. I had this VERY strong urge to move to Bangalore, just for these connections. But I realised that I am chasing vanity and I would do well staying away, keeping my head down and building.
  5. Saw collective-thinking in action at a couple of places. A new fancy coffee shop has opening in Bangalore. I try to not go to these fancy places. And while I was not keen on going, I was taken there. By folks who apparantly “boycott” these places. Plus everyone famous at Bangalore seems to be there as well. It’s like how socialites want to flock the fancy places? No, I will not rant about it. Merely saying.

Ok this is it?
I thought I would have a lot to say about this trip to Bangalore. I clearly do not.

C/ Counter Strike
Recorded a video where I talked about how I am inspired by Counter Strike and how each thing their echos how I have structed C4E. In case you want to see, it’s here.

D/ Life Manual for the your 30s
On someone’s request, I wrote this manual where I talked about what . You may read this here.

The Life Manual for your 30s

On this note, please give me prompts that you want me to write on. I work the best when triggered!

E/ Build a new format to track what I am working on.
Each few days I have something new that I track. This time I have copied this from what I saw on screens of my new team at Meru. I’ve been at it for a few days now. Let’s see how long this lasts.

F/ FOXO
Got myself a FOXO subscription. This is the most expensive thing EVER that I’ve got for myself. Prior to this, the most expenisve thing was sgElectra.

So far the only tangible thing I know is that I can hold a plank for a minute and I am a diabetic. Oh, thrown in a gym, I can do 10 pushups. Plus my balance seems to be good and calcium in my bones seem to be ok as well. So, apart from my diabetes, most things are ok. I need to figure why and how do I have bad skin and less stamina. I need to work on my lower back and improve my posture. Let’s see what more I discover.

The other related thing is that I read this thread about Ray Kurzweil and one of the thing he says is that we will probably live forever. He says that “death will be optional” and there are three things he talks about – a, science seems to have learnt the secret of aging, companies like Neuralink seem to have found success in Brain Computer Interfaces and then the digital twins are already around (thanks to FOXO).

So, if we can live for the next few decades, we can be immortal. This is the frontier that no one knows (except Ashwatthama or may be Trivedi :D). Let’s see.

PS: I am an investor in FOXO. And C4E does some work for FOXO.

G/ Getting the AI FOMO
On a day to day basis, I have this HUGE AI FOMO. I have written about this in the past. And its all over my twitter. I think the only way to go about this is by actually doing this. I think the only way to do this is to carve time (now that I have agreed that I wont find anyone to work with me and support me). And I need to probably cut down on a lot of other things.

H/ Broke “H” on my laptop’s keyboard.
I tried to fix C’s laptop’s keyboard. I had fun. I was bored. On a whim, pried open the H on my keyboard and now I can’t fix it!

Grrr…

I/ Recorded an episode of The Optimist’s Manifesto Podcast with Subendhu (of FOXO).
He’s had a stellar life and has such a wide range of experiences that I want to be him! Spoke to him for two hours. I need to build a life where I have similar richness of stories!

J/ Jayant Mundhra
One of the conversations in the last two weeks was with Jayant. He’s an incredible writer and over the last 2 years, has built a community of about 100K folks that read general purpose advice from him. While I dont about each person I meet, Jayant is special. He’s doing EXACTLY what I want to. And he’s doing a GREAT job at it. And he’s consistent with it. If I could be a shade consistent of him, I would be elsewhere in life!

He also told me about Zero1 network, again something I want to be able to build. But unlike the Kamaths I dont have a lot of FCF. Maybe I will build a corpus as I go along? Let’s see.

K/ KP got hitched!
This means Pooja ka bachcha is growing up.
Poo saas ban gayi ;P

L/ High-Performance Org
One of the latest lessons from Hareesh Sir has been that I need to be a little more strict with my people. The idea is to build a high-performance organization that delivers on the promise to the stakeholders.

This is similar to the riff about idea people and people people from the last update. In fact this is something that I lack in my life.

I am way too kind when I work with people and I need to learn balance. I dont want to create weak people. May be that’s what I had done with other businesses? That in my unwavering support, did I create weak orgs there?

Lot to think!

M/ Mountain Goat
Thanks to J, discovered a new retaurant in Lokhandwala. Mountain Goat. They serve Wai Wai Sadeko. I think I will go there a lot (went there on May 28th and havent gone back, lol) if my sugar doesnt spike.

So this is it from the last 2 weeks. Lemme know what is interesting and what is not. And what would you like to see more.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 22 and 23. A lot to be honest.

The one that I would like to plaster on my blog is…

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

Book 2
I didnt get time to even think about thinking. The person I was working with seems to have a lot on her plate and thus I am unable to move. No, I am not leaning onto her and blaming her for my inaction but I didnt move on this at all.

PS: Dropped 2025 Plan a few weeks ago.

☑️ What did I get done last two weeks?

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

At this point, the following things are important to me (I know too many but…) and these are IN ORDER.

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. Got FOXO membership. Now I have a CGM (for a few days) that tells me how I recat to food and all. I am more aware. No action. No done. So a 0.

Meru. Was an ok week. Moved the needle. But still far from where I’d like to be. Thus, a 0.

C4E. No action. 0.

Brand SG. No action. The trip to Bangalore told me that I remain an insignificant person in the large scheme of things. I need to get more active. I want to give a -1 but one a day to day basis, in my world, I get by ok. So, a 0.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. No large things. Bangalore trip, FOXO, Poker. So, a 0.

So the overall score is -1 for this week.

Trends from the previous weeks: 3, 0, -4, 0, -4, -5, -5, -3, -2, -1
The max I can get is 7 in a week. Let’s see when I get to it.

📊 The tracker from the last week

This is the tracker for the last 2 weeks.

 

I really need to pull my socks on this. I cant be missing.

PS: I have noticed that each time I am on the road, I miss updating this. And once I am back to ground, I take a few days to get back to speed. And that causes the chaos. May be I need to find a way to do this better.

📖 Interesting Reads from the last week

Some links that I want to share…

  1. Rahul on Obvious – here
  2. Mary Meeker’s report on AI – here. Do not miss this.
  3. Derek O Brian was in a flight that got damaged in the hail. In this video, he talks about his near death experience.
  4. On “choice”, from David Ogilvy. Here. Thanks to Pradx for sharing this.
  5. From the top person at Snapchat – how to build companies – here.
  6. V told me about Navagunjara (no I did not know about this even though I claim to be a fan of Mahabharata)
  7. This is a great list of superpowerful maxims about life. From founders. The ones I love are as follows…
    • 1. Money comes naturally as a result of service.
    • 4. Be a professional opportunist.
    • 7. You don’t need to be a genius; you just need to collect more information.
    • 12. Mute the world, build your own.
    • 17. Make yourself easy to interface with.
    • 18. Relationships run the world.
    • 20. Quality of your life is the direct result of the quality of your decisions.
    • 23. Problems are opportunities in work clothes.
    • 31. Actions express priorities.
    • 32. The public praises people for what they practice in private.
    • 36. Business is problems; the best companies are problem-solving machines.
    • 40. Always more audacious.
    • 44. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active.
    • 46. Incentives rule everything around you.
    • 50. Intensity is the price of excellence.
    • 51. You can’t save souls in an empty church.
    • 61. Imitation precedes creation.
    • 63. Optimism is a moral duty.
    • 69. Repeat, repeat, repeat; volume and consistency win.
    • 72. The hard way is the right way.
    • 73. Be intolerant of slowness.
    • 74. Hire a professional critic.
    • 79. “Action solves everything.”
    • 88. Avoid boring people.
    • 90. All good things in life come from compounding.
    • 93. Have pride in creation, not consumption

PS: Are these useful? Do these help in any way? I read a LOT more than what I share here but these are what I think people I know must read. Skewed towards startups, hard work, deliberate living etc etc.

🧠 Reminders from last week

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

Here are things from the past few weeks that I want to remember. And no, this may not be a comprehensive list. In categories.

  1. Long term
    • Professional pool / snooker / poker. I played poker in bangalore and it was fun. I dint win a lot but I was able to read some players. So that’s cool. Other thing (pool) saw no action.
  2. Health
    • Kitchen setup (incomplete)
    • Gym membership (incomplete)
  3. C4E things (I will stop tracking these things and have C do these)
    • C4E Base
    • Design
    • Borderless agency
    • Adding films
  4. Shauk / Personal
    • Use of money to buy time – doing this already.
    • Better dressed – lol
    • Find love – lol!
    • Demand more from life
    • Speak better!

In case you know me, lemme know if I have missed something.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Grind.
That’s the world I would use for the last two weeks.

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

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

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. The previous editions are here: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (missed), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (missed), 16, 17 (missed), 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (missed)

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

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

Wk 20-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes, thoughts, reflections and everything else from Week 20 of 2025.

Adding additional content (Saurabh Garg) for SEO ;P

May 18
6:34 AM

I started writing this yesterday at a Starbucks and then life happened and I moved along. And then I am back in the morning today to get this done. Oh, and I am listening to this as I write this.

Let’s go!

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the week.

A/ TDL Accountabiltiy Group
I have joined a WA group of some folks who post their daily todo list. And then at the end of the day, check on things they’ve done. I am starting it today. Made my list. And let’s see where it goes.

Here’s the list from day 1…

B/ Lessons from Hareesh Tibrewala
I will make a seperate page on this, tbh. I get to learn so much from him that I curse myself for not being with him sooner.

Here are some lessons from this week alone…

  1. Any team member, how so ever bad their sitaution be, if they dont contrinbute to the team, they are better removed. Of course you must have empathy and support and everything else. But you need to think team first. This also echos with the idea people vs people people thing that I read elsewhere. Also, see point C.
  2. Ask for accountability. As a leader of a team, my only job is to ask for accountabilility. Everything else follows from there on. All you need to is ask “what” and “why” and enable your people to deliver on those.
  3. Stop sharam. He asked us to focus on the outcome and leave behind the sharam and all that. This also coupled with this video from Gary Vee. Must be more shameless when seeking work. In fact this is one of those earliest things that Suvi taught me – never ask for work from friends and family. And I will have to unlearn it. I will have to learn the skill to seek work. One life, man!

C/ Idea People vs People People
This is the biggest lesson from the week gone by. And thanks to Thej for sharing this link. While the context and meaning is tad different in this piece, I am taking away something else altoghter. Which is as follows.

I know that the world is a tansient place. This too shall pass. And I know that in grand scheme of things, all pursuits are purposeless and with our lifespans in double-digits, whatever we may do, as a collective, will all not amount to much. You know, Pale Blue Dot.

At the same time, I also know that the journey is all we have (thanks, Naval). I thus try to invest all my time, attention and energy in to being present in the phase of journey I am in.

Wait, I am rambled.

The point is, I can either work towards caring for people or for caring for ideas. All my life, I have cared for people, at the risk of reputation, work, money etc. However after I read the post, I have made this mental switch where I will focus on ideas. No, I will not stop caring for people. But I will become a lot more ideas oriented.

D/ Start with Hi
This is the greatest life hack in the world.

All the things you ever want and ever seek are on the other side of a simple hi. If you make a goal to say hi to 10 strnagers everyday, you would be unbeatable. Reminds me of this talk by Jia Jiang.

Thanks to AD for this.

E/ Reflections from a Life Coaching Call
A person from MDI is taking up coaching as a profession. She wanted to complete her hours and to help her, I spoke to her.

While I spoke, a lot of things came out. I am listing those here.

  1. I am in flux. A lot is changing about me – work, age, emotions etc etc
  2. Deep down, I have become a stoic. Mostly. I still have a long way to go.
  3. I am not motivated by money or anything. But by access.
  4. In life, most things happen in tandem. If I am doing well at one part of life, I am doing ok at most parts.

F/ 15504 Steps
I made a bet that I will average 12K steps per day in 2025. As of today (day 137), I have averaged about 7500 steps per day. And if I have to get to an average of 12K, I need to do 15504 everyday for the rest of 228 days of the year.

Looks tough. But I know that we would hit the baarish mausam soon and I am hopeful that would help.

G/ I need a faster laptop
Even though this is a “new” machine (I use a M1 that got for a colleague and I took it from her when she moved on), it has started to give me trouble.

H/ Toughest thing first
I was talking to C abotu something yesterday. I told her that if you have a task list, start with the toughest one (not the longest one). The one that you are dreading the most. Do it. And the dopamine you get from that, take it to the second toughest. And so on and so forth.

I/ 5 pushups
Inspired by Shruti, I did 5 pushups today! If I can do this for a week, I will get into the habit. Someone inspire me!

In fact, I will stay on this thread. This week, I was talking to Mihir about how we need to change our identity as that of a “healthy person” and then build a life around it. And then I reaslied that it may be easier said than done.

I am gonna make tiny changes in the way I operate. And that means I will not eat anything crappy and I will walk (lol) and I will be more disciplined with food and I…

Lol!

J/ Parallels between C4E and CS
Yesterday, I recorded a solocast and I drew parallels between CS and C4E. Ambition, Aim, Resources, Team, Strategy, Execution and all that. And I realisesd that sports team, armies, event teams etc etc can become very effective tools to deliver lessons to people.

K/ Excuse as a roadblock 
One of the biggest lessons I “gave” out to NG and VM is that they need to stop hiding behind an excuse.

Heres the back story…

I gave them a small project to work on, and when they were working on it, they came back to me saying they didn’t have the footage for that product. They told me this after 3 days, and it took me 3 days to know that the project is not moving forward.

Essentially, they were hiding behind an excuse to get their work done. Which is not something that we can live with because we are a small company. In life, I think we could either have excuses or progress.

L/ C4E – Past.
While wandering thru Roam, was looking at my notes and spotted this email I wrote to a friend in 2017 about how I look at C4E as a business. As of today, 8, 9 years have since passed and nothing seems to have changed. Except that we are no longer an events agency. And that’s a good thing and a bad thing! Anyhow, in case you want to read, ask for access. 

M/ Here are other things that dont fall in any category.

  1. I am still looking for someone to join me at Meru. See this post. And this one.
  2. The time has come for the kids to go back. I hope they learnt a few things while they were here.
  3. I want to start some mini-IPs that are clones of Sofar Sounds, TED talks, My Next Guest etc.
  4. I am mindfucked with all the garmi all around me and I dont know what do about it.
  5. I see the importance of having a large group of friends – at work and elsewhere. I’ve been shy about it and I want to get good at it. If you are reading this, how do you make new friends? Especially when you are in early 40s.
  6. I want to get memberships at all exclusive and boujee places like Soho, MCA, Quorum etc. I dont know if I will even go to these places but I want to have the option of going!
  7. Made a tiny investment (~1 lakh) in a friend’s startup. Its a tiny number but this is my attempt to show my confidence in the friend.

So that was from the week!
Phew!

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from the week 20.

I thought I had clicked a lot more. But clearly I was wrong.

🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by? And the next week!

2025 Plan and Book 2

I have dropped the plan.

On book2, despite multiple attempts, I’ve not been able to make any progress. And no, I dont want to let go of that. If you are reading this, please stay patient. Let’s see when I am back.

☑️ What did I get done this week?

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

At this point, the following things are important to me (I know too many but…) and these are IN ORDER.

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. I’d say I would give myself a 0. I didnt work out but I was mindful of what I ate. The week saw me struggle with garmi but I think I was ok more or less.
So, 0.

Meru. Not so good week. I moved things but I am not happy with the progress. Two critical tasks that I had to do – website and hiring – are open. And that means this was a step back. I will give myself a -1.
So, a -1.

C4E. No action from me. In fact, I saw the team struggling in my absence. C is doing what she can but we are not moving. So another -1.
So, a -1

Brand SG. No action on this either. But some action. So a 0.
0.

People. No action on this. Last week I had a lot of friends and family. This week nothing.
So, a 1

Book 2. Sigh!
-1

Shauk. 0 action. And thus a -1.
So, -1

So the overall score is 0 for this week.

Trends from the previous weeks: -4, 0, -4, -5, -5, -3, -2, -1
The max I can get is 7 in a week. Let’s see when I get to it.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Tracked most days! So that’s a win. Here’s the tracker…

Lemme know what you see.

📖 Interesting Reads from the last week

I spent a lot of time reading and reflecting. In fact, I would say that this was a good week when it comes to reading. Here are some pieces…

  1. Utsav on Taste. Link.
  2. Vivek and Molly on People over Ideas.
  3. This conversation between Jony Ive and Collision.
  4. Seth on systems.
  5. The “other” Saurabh Garg on How to Start a Startup.
  6. This post on X that talks about how Qatar happened to become what it has become.
  7. Someone compiled Kunal Shah’s content. Here’s the list. Since this is a compilation, this will not attract as much attention as a scarce piece would. Go figure why!
  8. This thread (old but worth it’s weight).

I had thought I would have more than 8 things to share!

🧠 Reminders from last week

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

Here are things from the past few weeks that I want to remember. And no, this may not be a comprehensive list. In categories.

  1. Long term
    • Professional pool / snooker / poker – no action.
  2. Health
    • Kitchen setup (incomplete)
    • Gym membership (incomplete)
  3. C4E things (I will stop tracking these things and have C do these)
    • C4E Base
    • Design
    • Borderless agency
    • Adding films
  4. Shauk / Personal
    • Use of money to buy time – on this!
    • Better dressed – lol
    • Find love – lol!
    • Demand more from life
    • Speak better!

In case you know me, lemme know if I have missed something.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Regular.
It was a regular week with regular work and regular things and regular inputs and outputs.

Oh and in the previous weeks, it’s been Getting back to action. Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

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

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. The previous editions are here: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (missed), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (missed), 16, 17 (missed), 18, 19

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

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

Wk 10-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes from the 9th and the 10th week of 2025.

Hello hello!
I am back!
I missed week 9. I was unwell and thus I didn’t publish. I could have but it takes like a few hours of active thinking to get this going and I didn’t want to a shoddy job at it. No, I am not for perfection but I am definitely for putting in the effort and I know I was in no shape to put in the effort. So that.

The other thing, no one asked.
So much so for writing in public, and attempts to build an audience!

Anyhow. The point is, I am back to writing.

A lot seems to have happened in the last 2 weeks. And yet nothing seems to have moved. You know what I mean? Everything is happening at once and nothing is happening at all.

More in the next few paras…

🈺 What I was supposed to do in the week gone by. And my report on the same.

A/ 2025 plan.
This remains open. We are now officially in the third month of the year. I’ve never been this delayed with this plan. May be I will take a day off this week and do this?

B/ Health
I have a LOT to report in this department. I got myself kitchen things. After I think 7-8 years. The last time I had a semblance of a functioning kitchen was when Sonali and I lived together in Ghatkopar. Once she moved on, I haven’t had the kitchen things.

I am building it back. I don’t like it to be honest but I need to live long and be healthy while I live long.

I am also adding some more ingredients to what I eat – things like Protein, Oats, Almond Milk, Sattu, Turmeric, Chia Seeds, ACV etc. I’ve built a habit of blending a lot of these things in a grinder and eating / drinking what comes out of it.

Been doing it for 3 days now and so far it seems to be ok.

Oh, the trigger for this was the latest episode of food poisoning. I fell sick and missed a few events. And that’s when I decided I’ve had enough of this life. Oh, I have activated this channel where I will upload EACH thing that I eat. And do read this from my clone.

I just need to add a gym and workout and I think we would be ok.

☑️ What did I get done this week?

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

At this point, the following things are important to me (I know too many but…) and these are IN ORDER.

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health – Started to set up the kitchen. Will try and get a cook. And like I said, will add some workouts. I’ll give myself +1 on this.

Meru – This is new. I am adding this on top of C4E. At the time, we are setting up the business and this means there’s a lot of work – team, processes etc. On this a lot is getting done, thanks to Hareesh Sir. I will give myself a 0 on it.

C4E – I am not very active on this any more. The only thing I do now on C4E is take care of my people (mentoring, coaching etc) and service long-term relationships (clients that are now friends and I am invested in their success). The other critical areas (running the kitchen etc) have been taken up by others.

Over time, I want to stop reporting on this. But I may not be able to. C4E is the only thing I’ve created and probably the only thing I am attached to. With or without my running it like a business. Think Berkshire and Warren. I will give myself 0.

Brand SG – Recorded many conversations. For C4E, for Adulting, and for Meru. The first guest for The Otpmist’s Manifesto is decided. So good overall. I will give myself +1.

Now, need to find a way to build distribution.

People – Did nothing. -1

Book 2 – No action. I just need to carve out time to send prompts to Cluade. So, -1

Shauk – Nothing on this. So, another -1

So the overall score is -1 for this week.

The max I can get is 7 in a week. Let’s see when I get to it.
Added this to my tracker too.

📊 The tracker from the last two weeks

Here’s the tracker.

You’d spot a lot of reds. And greens. Blame it on food poisoning. I mean I think it’s food poisoning. I didn’t really go to a doc to check. My aversion to doctors is a well-known thing!

The point is, I was unwell. And that left me with some down days. And that affected how I live and work.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos.

This one is a mix of app screenshots and photos that I took. Do check out some of the sunset pics and videos. Absolutely bombs.

📖 Interesting Reads from the last two weeks

I know there are more things I read and saved. But this is all I have to share at this time.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the week.

A/ Starbucks
I am at a Starbucks as I write this. And I love that I am in the zone while I am here. I just need to build a space like this. At times I think I should start a coworking space. Other times I don’t want to. I may as well say, fuck it, let’s do it. And I may open it up. Anyone wants to partner up?

B/ Love
This is a big one. I think I am ready to find love. If I can find love. I mean I’ve been that romantic who believes that love just happens but it clearly hasn’t happened to me. I am unlucky like that (no am not crying about being unlucky – am VERY lucky otherwise).

Oh, and why do I want to find love?
Well cos apparently love is the fifth ingredient that you need in life to live long and thrive. Read this.

C/ From C4E to Meru
A large part of my time will now be spent on building Meru. While I do that, C4E will be run independently by Chandni, Anshika, Fareen, Kaushik and others. And they will be helped by our friends, colleagues, partners and well-wishers. I need to write a separate post on this someday. Not for others. But for self.

Oh, the other thing that has happened is that I now open Meru’s email before I open C4E’s. If this is not moving on, I don’t know what is.

D/ Spiritual SG
Lately, I have found myself to be very very spiritual. I find deeper meaning in the music I listen to, the actions I take, the people I meet and the decisions I make. I don’t know what this means or where I am going but this is new to me. I’ve been a transactional person all my life. I look at things from a problem-solution lens. And then I move on. Once I add spirituality to things, things change. So that.

I’ve been reading a lot of Kabir, Baba Farid, Buleh Shah, Rumi etc. I am not sure what school of devotion, spirituality, bhakti etc they belong to. But I like what I am reading.

E/ This tweet
I saw a couple of people I love get what they want. And that was incredible! This was easily the highlight of the week gone by. Do read it. Please 😀

F/ Films
While I was unwell, I saw a lot of films. Jack Reacher. The Runaway Jury. I don’t even recall the name of, or the story of the other 8-part series that I saw!

While vegetation is ok for a few days, I remembered that I wanted to make films. I will get back to it. I am not sure when I will find the time with all that’s happening but I will add this to the shauq column and get going.

G/ Mumbai
Here’s a thing. If you are young, ambitious and want to grow, you HAVE to be in Mumbai or Bangalore. No Delhi. No Pune. No Goa. No remote. While on this, read these two by Paul Graham – Ambition and Cities and Hubs. Of course, if you can go beyond India, look at places like Dubai, NY, SFO, Singapore and such places.

I know the world we live in is very connected and all that. But there’s some magic that happens when you shake hands and look at someone in their eyes. Hubs create magic that nothing else can replace.

Oh, this trigger came to my head because in the last few days, I’ve spoken to two really sharp young women who’ve expressed their desire to move from their cocoons to large hubs. In fact, I saw one really smart person move to Pune to join some startup that sells cheap Chinese knock-offs and it broke my heart. It could be a great career move but its life harakiri.

You will get limited as a person if you goto a place like Pune, Nasik, Kochi, Chandigarh, Indore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad (C4E Labs is based out of Ahd, btw) and all that.

Of course, if you are not ambitious, you can continue to “enjoy” the “quality” of life in these second-rate cities. But if you are ambitious and want to make something from your life, consider moving to a hub. Move to epicentres of action and not pine for the relaxed, remote life. You can relax when you’ve done what you’ve been sent here to do. And while the remote things may work for a few exceptional people, in general, for average folks, remote life is not worth it.

And I say this with all my disclaimers (edge cases, exceptions, strong opinions, power of youth, opportunity, privilege, life conditions, family etc etc).

And yes, the fuckery that “hubs” impose on you (bad infra, pollution, “fast” life, “struggle”) is 100% worth it.

H/ Space. Trust.
I realised that I want to have a large space for self. And then some space for my friends and family. You know, sai itna dijiye?

And thus I need more money. To be able to have a large space. And no, not on rent. But own. India sucks like that. Pesky neighbours look down upon you and question if someone is staying the night with you. I don’t know why we are such a low-trust society. And here I am – I put my faith and trust in even strangers.

So I need that. I will work towards that.

I/ Impermanence. Of loss.
Something happened at C4E that made us lose money (about 3 lakhs) and our reputation. As a team, we could’ve done better. We’ve taken our lessons. The largest for me is that I need to listen more to my gut and not give into emotions.

The biggest thing for me from this experience? Ensure that people directly involved are ok. And I second, do not add random processes so avoid such things from happening in the future.

No, I don’t want to get into too much detail. But the last word on this is, this too shall pass.

J/ Other things that I want to capture but I may not spill too many words…

  1. Looking forward to the workshop on Taste. On the 22nd. More here.
  2. The fact that I live away from my parents continues to eat at me. I don’t know what to do about it.
  3. Loved the connection between Baba Farid and me.
  4. Met a friend and gave him gyaan on how to manage life. I wish I could do more such sessions. Anyone else needs to put a structure to their lives?
  5. Plants remind me of Sonam. Starbucks reminds people of me. What else can one be reminded of? reminded by?
  6. I put this tweet offering help. Spoke to a few people. Must do this more often.
  7. cerebralquotient.com is gonna be live soon!

I think this is it. Was good to be back and writing! I really missed the joy this simple activity brings to me. Must do more of this.

🥡 So, one large takeaway from the week?

Survive. Survival. Surviving.

I think this is how I would summarise the last few days. This is what defines my week

In the previous weeks, it’s been Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

—

Ok!
This is it!
Lemme know what you think.
Gotta go.
See you around.

Oh, here are the previous editions: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (missed)

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes.
PPS: Added emojis!