Tag: Paul Graham

The Evocativeness of Elon

Been reading and thinking about Elon’s team catching that rocket in midair. See this…

While everyone acknowledges that it’s a marvel of science and is that tiny step for a team that would mean a giant leap for humanity, the event did a lot more for me.

It has thrown my thinking about life and all in turmoil. I have way too many, too conflicted thoughts. Here’s an unfiltered, unedited brain dump.

If I slay some sacred cows, I am guilty.
If I ruffle some feathers, I am guilty.
I am in a funk and I need some shocks to get out.
Would appreciate some feedback and inputs.

Let’s go…

1/ Is Paul Graham’s founder-mode really a good place to operate from? What if the cost of human progress is to be not-nice to others?

Context – I’ve been nice all my life and I have nothing to show for that. This is when most of my idols have been not-nice to others (Steve, agency guru, etc) and have been very mission, outcome and outcome oriented capitalists! The nice ones that I follow have been mild successes at best. The wild ones are the ones that were not so nice. So there’s some anecdotal evidence there.

With C4E, I had set out to build a culture-first, nice place and almost 4 years in, we are still not close to any sort of success. We struggle to meet our payroll each month. People are happy but the org is not thriving.

May be I need to shift my stand and let niceness and humanness and culture go to hell and do whatever it takes to go win.

Assuming I can do that!
Assuming I have it in me to be unkind to people to get things done.
May be I should accept that I will never be a wild success and go sell stupid courses on Topmate 😀

2/ Do I double down on respecting the art and ignore the artist?

Context – I am often able to abstract the outcome from the people who make it happen (most of Bollywood and agency business is that in the first place). I try to spot lessons even in the worst personalities. With this rocket (live streamed via his Starlink!), and my money to get Twitter premium and my want of getting a Tesla some day to my admiration for his speed with xAI and my fascination with neuralink and many more “signs” (see Huang talk about Elon, couple it with Munger talking very briefly about Elon), do I index more on output, progress? Or do I continue to be nice? And accept that I will never be successful and all that? And get that topmate account 😀

3/ Do I stop investing in people? And get mission-oriented, project-oriented, money-oriented, outcome-oriented only?

I often think of myself as Karna and Yudhisthir – an irrational fool when it comes to giving, even to strangers. And in the case of loved ones, give while harming self. And all this giving and investing has happened only because I am long-term greedy. I have hoped that today am ok to live like a pauper and have others live like kings so that tomorrow, it will be a king-like life for all of us and more. You know, compound.

But in life, I’ve seen that when I need people, they, sort of, don’t show up. I understand that they are not obligated to. But even the basic “am with you” narrative changes once they get into ivory houses and look down at my rundown tent with disgust and indifference.

I can’t forget a time a couple of years ago when I was down to my last 500 bucks and despite knowing this, my best friends called me for a rando party at some shady bar where we paid crazy money for alcohol that I anyway dont drink. After that incident, I didn’t commute to even meet clients cos I didn’t have the money on me. And I have stopped going to parties with that group unless there’s M.

No, I am not sore.
I am merely old. Lol.
No jokes apart, I write this with equanimity and I know life and things and people change. I haven’t stopped investing in people. I haven’t stopped supporting whoever I can. I know I am being taken for a ride and I play along. If I can be that ladder that they can use to get ahead, why not? Life is supposed to be grand for all of us. There’s so much magic around us. Abundance!

Again, I am not complaining about people and the change. I am merely saying that I’ve lost business, opportunities, money and more importantly time by being nice.

Do I stop being nice and start being a bitch?
Or accept that my fate is that of a failed coach who sells courses?

4/ Do I have it in me to take a shot at grandness?

This is the most important one. Do I have it in me to even take a shot at greatness? A classmate (he’s not a friend) from MDI Gurgaon told me some 10 years ago that he had accepted that he would never be a CEO and thus he will do whatever he can to get a great life.

Today, he and his family are in the US, and have an easy life of a Silicon Valley DINK executives (last I checked, his wife leads HR for THE payments company of the internet).

Should I just accept that I will never be the one to make that ding in the universe? I will never send those rockets up there and catch them. Wait, I dont even want to send rockets up there. Lol. I am not inspired by space as the space. I’d rather make life beautiful, engaging, full of experience and better for people here or wherever we are. Mind it – not happy. But engaging and all.

The thing is, Elon’s solving for survival and making us interplanetary. I was and I want to solve for us living “better” – you know, the one where you are free, have the freedom to do whatever. And you choose what is life for you – you could be like my friend (who wants it easy and is going for hikes and runs and pickleball and concerts and holidays and all) or you could be like me (always on a treadmill and remain unidimensional about work and all) or anywhere along this spectrum.

You choose.

Ok, and thanks to this vagueness, I dont know what the output would look like. And thus the fuckery.

5/Maybe I will stop talking about the ding and find my tiny little hamlet where we make a better life for people who choose to be there.

You know the village.

Where we invite nice people to live AND work with us. We create something that people really value and are willing to “give their lives” for – both for creating and consuming. I can think of people like DHH (and Basecamp), Shashank (the creator of The Whole Truth), impact investors (maybe – I have a very cynical view of impact as the space) and others.

These people are at the right intersection of things – build “good” things that they love to build, create a “free” life, sell to a LOT of people on their terms, and care deeply for their customers (to a point that they’d shift business strategy if they hear a lot about it) and continue to chase and optimise for personal growth.

Some of these people find balance.
Some remain on the treadmill.
May be that’s the way to go for me?
May be I need to double down on C4E Labs?
That will mean I move to Ahd.
I dont know if I want to go there 😀

TBH, apart from the location constraint, nothing stops me from pivoting to C4E Labs. At least I would have the freedom to create things that I want to. And hopefully, at scale! And I would be living around nice people who do nice things for the world at large to live a nice life!

The trouble is, this would mean quitting C4E in its current form – and at a time when things seem to be looking better for us – we have some reputation, some clients, some really engaged, great people doing great work with our tenets of reliability. We are looking at expanding the team and getting more clients. Etc etc.

Or maybe I can run the two. I dont know. What if I run both into the ground? But then this is also not akin to making a ding. This is at best a good compromise for the failed attempts at making dings. If not C4E Labs, maybe find something like what Tons Valley Shop team is doing.

However, there’s no product that I am uniquely passionate or excited about.

Maybe something in the health space?

Lately, I’ve been invested in that – thanks to work. I had a co-founder opportunity that I let go cos I didn’t align on vision and people. If Elon had caught that rocket earlier, I would’ve probably joined it 😀

I have a founding team opportunity that I will get closure on either today or tom. It will still not be a ding but it will solve for problems at scale.

The best part is that if it pans out, C4E would benefit. And it would be a nice thing where I don’t need to be in the founder mode :D.

So may be that?

If not for Labs, I can even think of faith-based orgs. You know, churches, temples, Hare Krishna etc. Faith becomes paramount and everyone is happy. No, I can’t create this. At best, I can think of Vipassana folks.
But no. HARD NO!

So that.
Ok, I have vomited a word salad.
PS: I first wrote this on Twitter / X.

Now that I’ve written. Must write more.
I know that I need to move on from people-first.
I also know that I may not be project-first.
I also know that I will need to find a “compromise” I probably need to unlearn a lot and learn more lots.
At 42.

Sigh!
Chalo onto work.

Oh and disclaimers. This really is an unfiltered stream of thoughts. This is unedited. This is not how I would publish a lot of things. But living in public, FTW!

250321 – Morning Pages

A quick post about ambitions, expectations, hurt, bitterness and COVID.

6:46 AM. I woke up a minute ago. Made my bed. Opened the window to the world outside and put on some music. I felt like listening to this one. And here I am typing this morning meditation.

Yeah, the morning pages need to be rechristened as morning meditations. That’s what these are. Thoughts from things that are clouding my head. For example, I slept last night thinking about how humbling the entire idea of life is. About how success is the only way you get to make great friends. About how the action (and not perfection) is what makes the world go round.

Something happened and I was fucked in the head last night. To a point, I thought I would quit things that trigger it. You know, social media. More than that, expectation from people. But then I don’t know if it was Louise Hay or Morgan Housel or Seneca or even Prof. SG that told me that all misery is in expectation. And once you stop expecting things, you are sort of free. So that happened.

The other thing that caught my eye is this tweet from PG. He postulates that people like me are “bitter and highly effective at realizing that bitterness.”

From Paul Graham. See this.

Now, I know that I am smart.
I also know that I am ambitious.
And I have yet to achieve anything, leave alone “very much”. If PG says such people are bitter, they ought to be. However, in my case, I am anything but bitter. Rather, this non-achievement makes me do more. Push more. Open more doors. May be, secretly I am. Maybe this bitterness is that part of my life that I don’t know that exists. You know, the ‘unknown self’ of Johari Window. So I need to think about it.

The other thing I am worried about is rising COVID cases in Mumbai. Now we officially have more cases than we ever had. More than when the pandemic was at its peak and we were banging bartans and lighting candles and chanting mantras and all that. Yesterday we had more than 5000 cases in Mumbai alone (out of 40000 odd that were tested). When you look at the number, it looks small, considering we have almost 2 crore people in the city. But when you juxtapose (I love this word) on people like me that are super-social (even if I am pseudosocial) that meet thousands of people, the risk gets real.

So that.

I think this is about it. There are more things that I’ve written on my echoChamber about the thing that I was fucked in the head about. Someday all of it will go in my biography. If I ever become someone whose story is worth telling the next generations. Lol. Everyone wants to be immortal.

Anyhow, that’s it for the short post. At some point in time I need to get back to writing till my heart’s full. May be when I actually start waking up at 5. Or when they start a Starbucks that opens at 5. Morning is the best damn time ever.

And here’s the streaks…

  • Morning Pages – 104
  • #aPicADay – 84
  • 10K steps a day – 0
  • OMAD – 0 (ate 4 full meals – damn stress eating).
  • #noCoffee – 15
  • #noCoke – 15
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0
  • #book2 – 0. I still haven’t been able to wake up at 5.

130321 – Morning Pages

Update on what’s on the top of my mind. Guess what?

6:35. Thane. Ashi and Parry’s place.

I am in Thane. At Ashima and Parry’s place. I had a meeting this side of the world and I decided to stay back. Ashima is by far the best cook chef I know and if I want to eat good food, I make the trek to Thane to get fed. That’s as far as my indulgence with food takes me. Oh, yesterday I decided that I would fast for 48 hours and reset my gut. I had forgotten that I am going to Ashi’s place. I can’t eat when am with her. Plus the weekend typically is a time when I get to meet friends and that means that I am forced to have something or the other. So it’s impossible to not eat on the weekends. I will try the gut-reset, 48-hour fast from Sunday evening onward. So that.

This is the shot from her window.

Gotham-eque!

In other news, my father got the COVID vaccine. To be honest I did not want them to take the vaccine. For multiple reasons. A, the vaccine is still in the clinical trial and no one knows the long-term effect of the same. B, the shoddiness around the way it is managed in India (the announcements, production, etc) was disheartening. But when I spoke to Kunal and Ashima (the two ports of call for everything medical), both of them affirmed that we must take it. And that’s when I consented. No, my parents don’t really need my consent. They are far more intelligent and aware than I. Plus they know a lot more people and their advisors are even more learned. So that.

This is around the same time that pandemic hit us last year. I remember the biggest thing that came out of the pandemic to me was that I could attend Anjum Sir‘s session on writing. Even though it was on Zoom, I really learned a lot about the process of screenwriting. This piece on Hero’s Journey came as a result of that and the piece made me make friends with so many people!

He’s doing those again but I am unable to attend those this time as I have a lot happening and films need to take the backseat.

Which is ok. I need to consolidate how things are going. I know that all the work I am getting is a knee-jerk response to all the pent-up demand in the businesses. I just need to capitalize and deliver a great output so that these could translate into long-term gigs. I just hate that there’s just 24 hours in the day.

I am also gonna change the way I live and work. I don’t want to talk a lot about work but lately, it’s on the top of my mind these days. So here it goes. Since I am working literally all the time now, I will have to get even more particular with how I spend my time. There’s not a single minute to waste. I have to figure an office space (my productivity goes 100X when I am not working from home and Starbucks tend to get noisy for all the calls that I am supposed to be on). The thing is, a large part of my work is now attending calls (because no in-person meetings) and I often speak and make presentations. Most days I do good with those. That’s not a challenge at all.

The problem is that if there’s some background noise when I speak, it becomes tough to get the point across. There’s anyway a lag imposed by the internet. On top, there’s the speed at which I talk. So I need to find a quiet place where I can talk from.

If I could predict these meetings and other things, I could get into the Maker and Manager (by Paul Graham) zones but most of these are ad-hoc and thus it’s impossible to plan time. This is against the very principle with which I have lived my life. I want nothing more than the independence of time. The gigs that I am on, there’s some flexibility but I’d want more. Lol. When I did not have work, I wanted work. Now that I have work, I want flexibility. 😀

So that. Let’s see what I decide. Maybe I’ll just get a fancy house (now that I can afford it) and turn one of the bedrooms into a co-working space! Or get some bungalow in Aram Nagar and convert it into a cafe. Lol. Wishful thinking ka raaja! I really have hazaron khwahishen. And that, ladies and gents, is the track of the day. Here!

Track of the day?

So, as I end this post, in terms of streaks, I did all but the walking one. I had a busy day and hence I could not walk a lot. Here’s the list.

  • Morning Pages – 91
  • #aPicADay – XX (will count at some later date)
  • 10K steps a day – 0
  • OMAD – 2
  • #noCoffee – 4
  • #noCoke – 4
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0 (adding this from today on)
  • #book2 – 0 (I REALLY need to start on this!)

That’s about it. Over and out. See you guys tomorrow.

170221 – Morning Pages

A longish post where I have dumped all that is clouding my head. I talk about Mumbai, Goa, Money, Work, Shah Rukh Khan and more!

7:43 AM.

Am at a Starbucks. The Powai one. This is where I wrote most of #tnks from way back in 2013. Or was it 2014? Whatever it was. I used to love the early morning grinds (this one opens at 7 AM) and flurry of words that would come out. Truth be told, I miss it. I mean I still live a tiny hop away from Starbucks (4 of them!) but for some reason, the one at Powai feels like home. Things have changed – your know, ambiance, people, staff partners, what I do in life but for some reason, the Powai Starbucks feels like home!

So, the morning pages. I have quite a few things to dump on paper. I am not sure if I would have the time. I have a LOOOOOOOOoooot of things to work on. Actually, lemme start with that.

Work. So thanks to COVID and the general fuckery with which I live my life, I am struggling to make ends meet (no wonder! Mr. Garg, you are wasting 500 bucks on average coffee, you dumb-wit!) and as a result, I took on everything that came my way. Most of these things are where I need to create make. And that means I am left with very little time or energy to do things. And that means I am unable to make things move. Remember what I spoke about movement the other day? And what Sheba told me as well? That!

So, I need to find more work where I am paid well for being a mere manager. You know, not invest a lot of time and get paid for experience and expertise. Right now, I am slugging it out like a modern slave. I am paid for my time. I exchange money for time. I am not getting rich while I sleep. The hourly rate that I charge can continue to go up but at the end of the day, I am paid for the hours that I put in! And that has to change. Naval has talked about this so many times that it’s impossible to miss it. I just need to find a way to get to a point where I no longer need to charge for my time. So, that.

This is also related to what PG has been saying for years – Maker and Manager. PS: PG is probably the best essayist that we have on the Interner right now. Do read his stuff. Gold.

So that’s first thing I need to work on. Someone, help me please!

Moving on. So this trip to Mumbai (wow, did I say this trip to Mumbai?), I have been indulging – you know, watching TV, spending money and all that. And you know what I realized? I like love to spend money. The only pair of shorts I have, it was housing dirt and muck and I don’t know what else from at least 3 months. And since I don’t have a washing machine or help or even the time to let it dry after I wash it, I had to buy another one. I bought the exact same one and I loved the feeling of swiping my card on a machine at an almost fancy store (Marks and Spencer). And I am wearing it today. And I feel good about it. In fact, I was out with a friend last night (well, thug life) and while talking both she and I agreed on the following relationship between money and happiness. I call these ‘SG’s Rules of Scarcity or Abundance of Money‘. These are not really my original thoughts but a mere articulation of what I’ve read and what I understand about it.

Here we go…

  1. While money may not buy you happiness, it definitely makes your life comfortable. If you are indeed sad, you’re better off being sad in the comfort of your plush home (or the backseat of a Merc) than being sad at a place that doesn’t offer you any privacy. You know, in shared accommodations, large families, Internet (lol!), etc.
  2. While money may or may not make you happy, not having money will definitely make you sad. I am the biggest living, breathing, moving, thinking testimony of this. I operate at my best when I am comfortable.
  3. Money gives you the freedom to do what you want to do. And this ability (or inability) to do things that you want to is often is the root cause of happiness (or sadness).
  4. Money allows you to control your time. You become the master of your time and this mastery is what drives happiness or sadness in large parts.

Am sure, there are more. I will write them in a separate post and publish em here. But one thing’s for sure. I love money. I love earning And I love to spend. I can’t wait for the achche din to be back. Come on, Universe!

So that’s that. The next thing? Happy Accidents. At the Starbucks, I bumped into an old acquaintance. This is what I love about places like Mumbai and Starbucks. These places allow for serendipity to happen. Plus, there is something about a hug that a Zoom can never make happen. We are social animals and while we adapt fast (and we will), at least for me, the handshakes are as important as breathing. I just hope that I am not obsoleted to a minority that still wants to meet IRL. Sigh. That’d be sad.

Once I understood the power of living at hubs, I have tried hard to find those and move there. The move to Andheri helped me like mad. If only I had some passive source of income, I would have done a lot more. Wait…

Wait.

Epiphany just happened.

I just dawned onto me that I love Mumbai WAY too much to not live here (#facepalm). Even though I don’t have anyone here that I can call my own. Even though I hate the dirt and the filth and mess and all that. Even though the place is expensive af. But I love the convenience of living in a big city. I love that I can dream here. Unlike in other cities. I like the idea that people are open. For ideas, conversations, business, work, and all that.

But then I like the idea of being a rootless bird as well. I loved the time I spent in Goa (for all the fuckery around the Internet) and I am getting serious about a cafe in Goa. I’ve made a few phone calls, have connected with a few folks, have started to do the maths! Again, I am not sure about it. I will let it simmer in my head and see where it goes.

The point is, while I was in Goa, I loved it. Now that I am in Mumbai, I love this. I am easily swayed I guess! Let’s see where I go life takes me and what I choose and what’s in store for me. To be honest, I am very very ok with the ambiguity and randomness and all that. Just that I need to be comfortable 😀

There’s one thing though that I’d like to know. How would the world change with WFH and all that? I tend to believe that places and things that thrive on IRL human connection will continue to remain in vogue. You know places like Mumbai and businesses like films. And things that do not need you to be in the same room as others, may change radically. Places like Silicon Valley and things like technology and software.

So that. Any ideas?

Before I move to the next thing, am at 9:47. Been writing for two hours now! And I still have a lot to write about! Lemme use bullets to take notes and I will probably pick these up tomorrow. And in case I don’t, at least I would send these to my Roam.

  1. SRK (who else but Shah Rukh Khan). I dont know where to start talking about him. Or where to end. He is, well, one of his kind.
  2. Met Sid Saahil from TID Podcast yesterday and shared notes. Learned that despite him coming from an affluent background, he hustles 10X harder than what AD and I engage in at Podium. We have to pull our socks. Such rude shocks are required once in a while to keep us on course. Will write a Twitter thread about the lessons from the meeting.
  3. A documentary on Aram Nagar. I was at Aram Nagar yesterday. Realized that someone needs to make a documentary about it. I mean it is as iconic a place as any and the contributions of Aram Nagar to Bollywood has been immense! I wonder why it’s not been captured so far? May be it has been, just that I haven’t seen it yet.
  4. Writing Tips. A few days ago, I started a series of writing tips. Primarily to friends that are nonwriters. Here’s the first one. You can join the no-spam, admin-posts-only WA group here.
  5. Someone asked me what was I doing when I was 31. I had no answer. When I asked her to tell me the year (I was 31 in 2013), I could remember with great clarity where I was! I always thought people operated in terms of ages but I realized I operated in years. Dunno what to make of it. I just found it interesting and amusing. Here’s a question for you. What do you remember better? Age? Years? And what were you doing when you were 11? 21? 31? 41? 51? Do tell me!
  6. Another conversation yesterday made me realise that you need to find underserved markets that could be immensely boring! Cases in point? Recruitment for young startups, digital marketing for mom and pop shops, content farms etc etc. These are really boring and non-sexy businesses and yet they deliver exceptional opportunity!

So yeah. That.

I know it’s a lot for a day. Guess this was a long time coming. Am glad that I could finally pour things out. I just need to continue with the flow and get going on #book2. And no, I am clearly not working on #book2 today either 🙁

Day 6 – I don’t know what to write about…

A journal of sorts of how I spent my day on the 4th of Nov 2020.

But I will.

After all, I am on this trip where I am hoping to write every day for 30 days for 30 minutes. Today’s the 6th day. On the trot. Yay!

As the entire world awaits the outcome of the US elections with bated breath, here I am, in a corner of Mumbai, thinking about what to write about. While I do have a million things on my mind and I could write about those, there’s no one thing that’s popping in my head as a clear leader.

So, in absence of anything specific to write about, I will just do a recap of sorts for the day.

9 AM

I started my day with a meeting that got canceled. I was up all night, last night preparing for this meeting!

The spare time I had, I used that to speak to one of the people I talked about in yesterday’s post. I sort of “coached” him on productivity and gave him simple tips about how to do things better. The biggest tip I gave him was Paul Graham’s Maker Day and Manager Day. In case you don’t know about it, go read it. It’s worth its weight in gold!

10 AM

The other big thing that happened today is that a friend connected me with one of his friends and wants me to give gyaan on effective notes. Notes is another thing that happened to me just because I wrote a post about it. The post went to a lot of people and some of those implored me to “teach” them the methods. And when I did talk to them about the methods, they seemed to enjoy it!

So, a clear case of how the work you do in public has unintended consequences! The lesson for you? Do more public work!

1 PM

Next, I met a friend for a coffee (and I had green tea) and he gave me dope about, well, me!

He told me things about me that I could not see and yet everyone around me could! You know, things that you don’t know that you don’t know?

If I talk from the lens of Johari Window, he showed me my Blind Area.

It was quite a revelation. He actually pointed out things that I was clearly unaware of. And these things are deterrents, to say the least. And I need to clearly work on those. I also need to clearly work on not using the same word in three consecutive sentences.

10 PM

Lastly, I just finished a meeting with my writing group. We met via Twitter and we try to help each other with writing.

In fact, this series of posts is actually an outcome of an idea that someone threw at me in the group. No, my notes don’t have that person’s name. Good that I don’t. The kind of writing that am creating, I am so embarrassed!

1137 PM

So yeah, I think this is it for the day.

Again, this is not one of the best posts I’ve written. But I wanted to get the words out of my system. And I wanted to write for 30 minutes. I think with this summary, I’ve done both. And that means, its an over and out from me.

Take care!

This is part of the ’30 posts in 30 days’ project. This was Day 6. Other posts are at 3010, 3110, 0111, 0211, 0311