Tag: Prof SG

Untitled – 1 Feb 2024

Random musings from a bored mind at 8 in the morning.

So, I woke up early and I had a bit before I had to leave (Starbucks opens at 8). So I thought I would write (cos I want to get back to writing and anyway journaling things is a good idea). And here we are. Talking about things at the top of my head.

These are in no order.

1/ Everest
I realised today that my Everest shot is less than 18 months to go. And I am not really in the pink of my health. And the way things are, I will miss it. It has been my biggest goal, dream, public claim, etc etc since I can remember (I cant remember too much to be honest) but this has been a big one on my list (other two are a billion dollars in cash and an impact on a billion lives).

2/ AK
AK’s shareholder letter for Jan 2024. Read here. I have so many thoughts – public and private. One public thought is that I am so much very proud of this woman! I wish I was her when I was 22. At 22, I was getting fired from a job (I can see now that I was wrong), on my way to get in to MDI (thank God, I did) and I was in general a clueless person (am still as clueless but I know more things than I did back then). Life has a way to sober you up.

Also, a note to self to write a letter. Maybe on weekend.

3/ Blue Tokai vs Starbucks
I hang out a lot at Jamjar Diner at Versova. Right next to it is Blue Tokai. And I have come to build a theory about the kind of people that hang out of a Blue Tokai. Lemme don my planner hat and sit on my privileged ass at a Starbucks (am writing this part from a Starbucks) and write about it.

Lemme give context. All three places – Jamjar, Blue Tokai and Starbucks tend to not ask you to leave if you are respectful to their staff and other guests, you don’t occupy too much space and you understand that it’s a restaurant / coffee shop and not a park. In terms of perception, Jamjar feels the most expensive, followed by Starbucks and lastly, Blue Tokai.

I’ve seen similar kinds of people hang out at Starbucks and Blue Tokai – the ones wanting to make films – writers, directors, producers, crew members and more. At Blue Tokai, I spot more actors than I do at Starbucks. But you get the drift.

So, for some reason, the people who hang out at Blue Tokai tend to be more dreamy than the ones at Starbucks. And I don’t blame them. I think everyone wants to find their ilk and I’ve seen conversations at Blue Tokai to be more earthy, more grounded and more dreamy at the same time. At Starbucks, these chats are a lot more in the air. Plus, I’ve realised that people at Blue Tokai tend to thrive in their “struggle”. You know, they assume that a movie is being made on their lives and when they are big, the audience would applaud the effort they made to reach where they are.

While this may not be an emotion that they are aware of, each time you speak to them or overhear conversations, you realise that they are looking for an end goal to be famous. And they are unable to see that this day-to-day life of freedom, control, chase, grind is what success is supposed to be! You may not have fancy cars or gorgeous bags or a million followers but you have your freedom and your dreams and no one can ever touch those, leave alone taking away from you. And that is something that most people tend to miss and that is what causes misery. And that misery is what they want to be captured when the film on their life is made.

So that!

This cartoon explains this the best…

4/ SG’s Clicks
I clicked some REALLY kickass photos at the beach yesterday. Here. No, I cant figure out a way to embed Insta on WordPress. It sucks to be old.

And staying on old age, see this vid and see the raspiness in his voice. The good part, he’s still got the rizz but you can spot that he’s not really, well, young. Sigh!

5/ Modern Day Gurukula
While walking on the beach yesterday, I told AK and C that at DD, they need to cut the umbilical cord to C4E for their own good. And then I gave them a few reasons why. And then I explained them that they need to discover their life themselves and not live a reflection of mine. And then I told them about how I’ve learnt from Raj, Suvi, Rajesh Sir and others and I have picked the best things they did and made them into mine. And while I did this esoteric chat, an epiphany happened.

And that is that I would REALLY love to replicate some sort of a Gurukula where we have sharp young folks interacting with people who have been around. And these exchanges help both the sets of people. May be Base would be that? May be not.

Let’s see.

Bas itna hi for the day. Work beckons. Hopefully, more tom!

16 Lessons from Tim Ferriss and Matt Mochary

Notes and lessons from a conversation between Tim Ferriss and Matt Mochary.

Hi! Context.

I saw this podcast where Tim Ferriss spoke to Matt Mochary about coaching and all that. I thought it was brilliant and I thought that the wider world must consume these. While I heard the talk, I took notes (as always) and here they are.

Before you read, here are some disclaimers…

  1. These notes are my attempt to distil learnings into short sentences / lessons 
  2. The transmission loss (in their narrative and my understanding) must be attributed to me 
  3. The notes are coloured by my personal experiences and biases. 
  4. For the unfiltered notes, please see this thread I wrote while I heard the podcast.
  5. If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter

If you want to see the podcast, here…

Lesson 1 

Most people operate from fear and anger. And often the root of all fear / anger is your ego.

If you can eliminate fear and anger from your life, you could become more effective. Think of the last time you were not happy (or even ineffective). You can trace back the unhappiness to either fear or anger. 

Lesson 2 

The base of everything we do (love / business / one-time transactions) has to be trust. 

Nothing else.
No contracts.
No paperwork.

Plain old trust.

You will get taken for a ride but think of those instances as the tax you need to pay to build a life of more abundance and more growth. 

As you go along, try and make your reputation and word so strong that people dont even think about asking you to sign a paper. Think of how you talk to your spouse or best friend. That! 

The beauty is this behaviour compounds. Once you become someone that people can trust, you will attract more people that would want to trust you and most of them will also operate from the lens of trusting you. Collectively, like a spiral goes up (thanks to Gokul from CynLr for this concept of the spiral), everyone collectively becomes better. 

Lesson 3 

As your stature becomes bigger in the public eye, you’d attract a lot of people with a lot of ulterior motives.

Contrast this with lesson 2 and you need to find a middle ground and a filtering system that detects behaviours from the other party

Lesson 4 

Start to think a lot more in terms of likelihoods (odds / percentages etc). This doesn’t come across as natural to people even though they know about it. 

What are the odds that a certain deal will convert?
What are the odds that the next flight you take will crash?
What are the odds that your business partner of today will remain a partner tomorrow?

And then work to maximise these odds 

I still do it. But need to amp it up.

Lesson 5. Most Important.

Convert conversations into action items.

Create a bias for action.

And this means you need to write down action items.
Put deadlines.
And do. 

And the cost of not doing must be you letting yourself down in the eyes of someone that you dont want to! Your parent, spouse, best friend, team, clients etc.

This is one of those things that MOST entrepreneurs lack. They dont add an action item. At least I dont. This is one change that I will bring in.

Lesson 5A

Accountability beats elaborate planning all the time. Enough said.

Lesson 6

You get angry or you are in pain when some personal boundary gets crossed.

You need to understand those boundaries and then communicate to self first and then to others.

When you talk to yourself, try and unravel – what boundary was crossed. And then when you talk to others, tell them that they’ve crossed a personal boundary.

Will make you more effective. 

Lesson 7

Work becomes better / easier in the physical presence of others. MM pays people to just sit on a couch and read magazines while he works.

While this talk of remote and async work is great, there are people that may need an office environment. 

On a personal level, as someone whose boundaries in terms of work and personal life blur a lot, I can vouch for this. On multiple levels. 

a, I <3 offices! 
b, I <3 coffee shops to work.
c, I love seeing others around me working on their dreams as I work on mine.

In fact, this works for others as well. 

On the writing cohort that I run (#lfwc3), @adisave came up with the idea of #rozwrite where we log in with cameras on, and mics off and do our own writing. The ones that participate get a lot of writing done!

No wonder. We are after all social creatures.

Lesson 8

At any company, it’s a human you are optimising your work for! 

Think of any business. They are in the end optimising for a human being. Could be customers / investors / employees / even the head of state! Even in your personal life, you are optimising for yourself!

Once this is internalised, decision-making changes. And so does the trajectory of your work!

Lesson 9. Second most important.

Separate decisions from implementation. 

Remember how they say that you suffer more in imagination than in reality? That! 

MM talks about how you fire someone. You are dreading the decision to fire because the implementation of that (the conversation with who you are going to fire) will be tough. Similarly, when you want to get fit, the decision to get fit is an easy one to take. You delay it because you are dreading those sweaty gym sessions and abstinence from your favourite food! 

This coupled with converting conversations into actions should see you getting a lot more done!

Lesson 10

People have three pillars in life – the home they live at, their most significant relationship and their job. 

If any of these three gets impacted, it creates a big trauma.

As a leader, your job is to help your people prevent these traumas. Often you would be able to control just one of the three. But can you expand your influence in other areas as well?

Lesson 11. Important. 

Help people eliminate fear. Especially in a work setting.

Respect is great but fear is not. Your team must NOT be afraid of you. 

One way to do this is to showcase to your people by setting an example through your conduct. Each time that team could be scared, you need to show to them that they dont need to. The best way to do this is by doing. 

For example, you have to let go of someone. While one person is losing their job, others are also scared about theirs. So while you fire that one person, you tell that person that it’s not them that is the reason. And do whatever it takes to find that person a replacement. Treat that persona as a human and not as a number. 

When you fire like that, the ones that are working with you see the humane side. They see that you have been kind and you have actually gone out of your way to get the outgoing person hired, they will not operate from a place of fear. 

A good way to reflect could be by asking these questions… 

  • Last time when you had to fire someone, how did you talk to the person you had to let go?
  • Last time when an irate customer yelled at you, how did you handle them?
  • When people dont agree with you fundamentally, how do you talk to them?

Lesson 12

Antisell the role / company when you are hiring. 

This is counter-intuitive but works.

You paint the saddest scenario to the incoming talent. And if they are still willing to work with you, you know that they are aligned with the mission! And they are not in it for free catered food or whatever.  

Lesson 13. Very important. 

Do energy audits.

After each interaction, try and take note if that left you energized or drained. Over time, find patterns. And then double down on things that energize you. Stop doing things that drain you.

TF talk about how he gets drained (and angry) when he has to do legal paperwork. 

What about you? Does a chat with your team energize you? Or drains you? What do people tell you? Do you energise them? Or do you drain them?

Lesson 14. Very important. 

Good communication is a marriage of writing and talking.

It’s imperative that each person builds the muscle to write. And then talk. 

Oh, and take notes!

So when you write, you get clarity of thought.
When you speak, you can add nuance.
When the two tango, you create magic.

Most great speakers and influential business people run on this secret combination. 

Side note. I must offer coaching sessions like note-taking, writing, thinking, building teams, and speaking. To people that want to get more effective. No, I am not an expert on any of these but this is the only way I would learn and get better. Does anyone want to pay me for this?

Lesson 14A

Must give feedback in a sync mode and in person. As much as possible. Even though you could be the best writer / speaker / manager. 

It’s ok to send long emails or texts but if it’s going to be an unpleasant conversation for either of you, please do NOT escape. Ask for a time when the two of you could sit together and chat and then bring it up. Take your notes. Let the other person bring notes as well!

Lesson 15

The secret superpower to effectiveness is to get an effective EA / CoS. No, not to get your grunt work done. But to shadow you and do things that only you can do. And give that person the freedom to run operations while you just think and use your brain. 

This is similar to what Ali Abdaal calls sparring partners and what we at C4E call a chain of mentors. 

That’s about it! Hope this helps.

22 life lessons from 2022

A list of 22 life lessons that I learned in 2022. In 2023, I hope to leverage some of these to ensure that I do better.

So my fetish for making lists does not seem to be stopping. Here is another. And this time, I have 22 life lessons that 2022 has taught me.

In no order, let’s go and dive into the list of life lessons…

1/ The world does NOT owe you anything. While you need to keep the faith and keep trying, you need to know that you will HAVE to work hard.

2/ The world is a mere reflection of your true self. Depending on how you are, the world is an incredibly kind place. Or an unkind place. If you are kind, the world will be kind. If you are unkind, the world will be that. If you feel that the world doesn’t care for you, and leaves you lonely and miserable, in all probability it is you who’s not caring for others, who’s leaving others lonely.

3/ People are lazy. People typically will revert to mean to their general level of laziness. You know, entropy.

4/ People are incredible. While there are lazy people, some are incredibly good! And your job is to identify those people.

5/ Ethos is everything. This year I picked up a project that paid me ok but made me work closely with people that had very different ethos from mine. If I were a mere contractor delivering things to them against a predecided structure, I would have done well. But I was expected to do more and I failed. So, when working on long-term, fluid projects, always check for alignment of ethos.

6/ Sunk Cost Fallacy is a real thing. I am still unable to come to terms with this. I need to work on this #in2023.

7/ Show people the vastness of the sea. If you manage a team, the whole drumming up and showing them the vastness of the sea works wonders. The team at C4E is a testimony.

8/ Start writing. For writing opens doors that you did not even know existed. Thanks to my writing, I could meet two dollar-billionaires this year (one IRL and one online). And another that manages a fund of more than a billion.

9/ Youth will surprise you. Even though am a big believer in “if youth knew and if age could”, my interactions with numerous 20-something-year-olds have left me spellbound. Each has surprised me beyond belief and I know the world is in better hands.

The old ones that dismiss these young ones as frivolous, inexperienced, unaware, are in for a rude shock. Even Steve famously said…

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. Yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.

It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. 

Steve Jobs, link

10/ There are wartime people and peacetime people. You need to understand who is who and surround yourself with the right ones. This is inspired by Ben Horowitz‘s Wartime CEO and Peacetime CEO riff. Read it here. See it here.

Also, this life lesson is probably the most important as it will allow you to not choose the wrong shoulder to lean on when you need to lean. I made the mistake of considering a good friend as a wartime one but then he was clearly a peacetime one and because I relied on him, it caused me a lot of pain.

11/ Your heroes WILL fall. So rather than blind adulation of your heroes (aka Hero worship), learn the art of abstracting the Heros from their heroics. What you find enthralling in a Hero could merely be the act.

12/ The life of constant hustle is NOT for everyone. If you are someone that believes that you are not “feeling” it while you grind away, it’s okay to go back to a 9-to-5 and enjoy a stable salary.

On the other hand, I need to not judge people for the lack of it.

13/ The ability to design has to be the SINGLE most important skill that a person can acquire in this day and age. This may sound counter-intuitive when there are apparent high-value skills like coding, writing (copywriting), coaching, speaking, sales, presenting et al.

Thing is, the world we live in will increasingly become more and more “visual”. Text will become commonplace and tools like chatGPT would make it easier. No code will make it easy to do pilots. Sales team would be easy to hire in remote locations. But the ability to doodle well enough to communicate an idea would remain in short supply. And it will become the single largest differentiating factor.

I wish I was not 40. If I wasn’t, I would drop everything and learn how to do basic design. And no, what you do on Canva is NOT design.

14/ The iPhone 14 Pro’s screen is NOT unscratchable. Sigh!

15/ Remote work is a farce. Nothing replaces a handshake. Or a pat on the back.

In fact, you need to live at the very epicentre of activity for the profession of your choosing.

You may argue that there are people that have found freedom of location and are travelling. They are exceptions, edge cases. And most of us aren’t that. So, to maximise the odds of success, satisfaction, life expectancy, opportunities and all that, we need to live at the epicentre. If you want to do a startup, be in Bangalore. If you want to make films, Mumbai. A chef? Paris. Dont have the money to make the move? Hustle!

16/ Live music is the best form of music.

17/ Ready, Fire, Aim is the best DAMN strategy to get things done. Most great things that happened to me in 2022 happened as an outcome of this. In fact, if there was one life lesson that I would want you to take away from this list, it would be this.

Lemme repeat.

Ready. Fire. Aim.

18/ Mimetic Theory is a great place to start if you want to understand people. Even though a lot hasn’t been said about it outside the startup circles, it is probably the single most important thing you can learn if you want to understand what moves the world.

While mimesis has been discussed a lot in philosophy, from whatever little I’ve read, I like what Girard has to say about it. I may be merely recommending him because he reaffirms my worldview. Nonetheless, this is a brilliant video if you want a primer.

19/ Your body can be trained to do whatever you want to. This year I was able to do a 40+ hour fast without putting in any specific training / preparation. I want to be able to do a 12-day fast at some point in time in my life. Let’s see when.

20/ People that are not in your boat will never be able to empathise with you. You are the only man in the arena and you are there by yourself. So when you share things with others, even if they are your best friends, they will not be able to relate to the pain you are going thru.

In 2022, I’ve learnt that a good way to get over the disappointment of your close one’s inability to get your grief is to journal. In private.

21/ Action speaks louder than words. Nothing new in this. Found this truer in 2022. With friends, clients, team, strangers and everyone else.

22/ This too shall pass. Each of my list starts and ends with this. Good times dont last. Bad times dont last.

And this brings me to the end of the list. Of 22 life lessons that 2022 taught me. Of course, I learnt these the hard way. The intent of capturing these here is to save you the pain and the grief. How benevolent, Mr Garg!

What are some lessons you learnt in 2022 that you’d like to share widely?

PS: Like I said in the beginning, I love making lists. Other lists that I have published here are…

  1. Guide to freelancing career in 2023
  2. 40 things I want to do in my 40s
  3. In 2027

PPS: Here’s a few disclaimers…

  1. These come from the personal experiences that I gathered over the last year.
  2. Some of these may have been with me for a while but they sort of solidified over the last year.
  3. I have obfuscated some facts and events for obvious reasons.

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.

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

May you live in interesting times!

A rant on how “interesting” the 5th day of ’30 minutes of writing for 30 days’ project was. Read at peril.

This is the 5th day of this new project where I try and write every day for 30 minutes. As I start writing this, it is 11:17 PM (ended at 11:54 – well over 30) and I don’t have a lot of time (have some work) and thus I may not get 30 minutes under the belt. Plus, what I have to say is anyway not going to take much. So let’s see.

Today was an “interesting” day. For a lot of reasons. Lemme see if I can describe the reasons for interestingness in an interesting manner so as to do justice to the grandeur of this day.

A. The Helping Hand

For starters, three different people asked me to help them today.

One wanted help on writing, second on managing time, and third on reaching his life purpose. I know these three people from three different circles (one from MDI, second from Twitter, and third from work). Each lives in a different city.

And yet each of these people thought that I could help them with their respective predicaments.

While I am not sure I can help them, but I am glad to know that people have started to recognize me as someone they could reach out to when they need help. This is definitely a step in the direction of my #lifeGoal! So, yay!

B. The Good and The Bad and The Resolve

I have recently picked a few gigs where I am giving away fixed hours in exchange for money (counter-intuitive to every advice that I have ever held dear about how to get rich). And even though its not even been a month, I can clearly see why its a bad idea. And why its a good idea. Lemme elaborate.

Bad

I believe life is far larger and far meaningful than wasting time by doing things that don’t matter (to you!). Such as, wasting an entire day at an office, only to pick a laptop! And spending your night, working on a presentation that did not require any urgency per se.

Good

I had to pick these gigs cos the work that gave me the money to live a fairly good life? That has dried up (thank you, COVID. And thank you, SG for some really stupid decisions). And if I did not have these “stable” businesses wanting to hire explorers like me, we’d die hungry.

And I also appreciate that there may be people that like the idea of “stable” work that sucks their soul, in exchange for money that allows them to experience grand things in life on the weekends. Even though it is not for me, it’s not a bad tradeoff if you ask me.

So yeah, bad and good.

The resolve?

Well, I promise that I will get back to a point where I work for anyone but myself. The way things are, I don’t think that will happen before a year and each day in the year would be, well, interesting. I’d ideally love to run away from it as fast as a rat runs away from a ship that has hit an iceberg!

But I promise to myself that I would stay for at least a year (if not more). And I will use each “interesting” day to make my resolve stronger. And my hustler, harder. All in hopes that I don’t ever have to see these interesting times again.

C. The Notches

I wore denims and a formal shirt and sports shoes. My typical work attire. Or any formal occasion attire for that matter. And while I did that, I also wore a belt and I realised that I have put on so much weight that I need to add a notch on the belt.

While I should be gunning for removing notches from the belt, here I am, growing (quite literally) in the other direction. When this lockdown thingy started, I had resolved (where did I hear this word recently?) to lose weight, learn guitar, finish #book2 and I dont know what else. Of all the goals, I was fairly confident of losing weight. After all, I am not a foodie. Wait, lemme munch onto this Egg Roll that I just ordered. So, yeah, I am not a foodie and I could have lost weight but I put on weight! And I need to do something about it.

That’s it. That’s the third part. Nothing more. Nothing less. A reminder to self that I need to lose weight.

***

So yeah. This is for the post of the day. A ranty one. But at least I shipped. After all, real artists ship! Even on interesting days.

PS: If someone wishes you that “may you live in interesting times“, you now know what to do. Don’t you?

This is part of the ’30 posts in 30 days’ project. This was Day 5. Other posts are at 3010, 3110, 0111, 0211