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Wk 38-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes, thoughts, highlights and other things from the week 38 of 2025.

Sunday the 21st,
Starbucks Versova,

The week gone by was interesting, to say the least.

Health was all over the place and this is when I am trying to be more conscious of what I eat and how I eat.

Work was ok – no large complaints but hectic for sure. On other things, I wasn’t as consistent as I would have liked to be.

Also, this review will be a short one compared to others.

Like I said, I am not 100%. I had the choice of skipping it or doing a half-hearted shoddy job.

I chose later. I am trying to be consistent even if quality goes down the drain. Plus this (my consistency) has been my Achilles Heel and thus I want to not stop with it.

So with that, here we go.

Wait. The song of the week. This.

Chalo, let’s go…

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order. And this week, please expect these to be a tad less than previous ones.

A/ How people use ChatGPT
Open AI released this report that talks about how people use Chat GPT. I am sure you have seen it. But if you live under the rock and you havent, here’s a chart.

Chart from openAI on how people use ChatGPT.

These are very interesting tidbits. I would love to get even more granular data on this to know more. I love how large companies that mine data are able to predict human behaviour so well!

B/ ChatGPT as a therapist.
I found this prompt and I think I will use this to get chatgpt to be my therapist.

“ask me 10 – 12 questions to identify my limiting beliefs and what is holding me back.

Ask the questions one by one and ensure you get to the root cause and not just surface level answers, provide insights and rationale on aspects of myself I am not currently aware of.

After the 10 questions, use advanced Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to wire my brain to push past these limiting beliefs.”

WARNING: PLEASE try at your own risk

C/ Why do you do hard things? Who do you do hard things for?
First, read this post. And here I am, quoting some words from it…

I thought I fought for a cause but I realize I fought because he fought. Because one afternoon he let me witness his humanity.

It has been a long time since that afternoon but that hour changed me permanently. You do hard things because of the people who you do it with and they do it with you because you do it with them. I know to let people around me see the cracks. I remember that I need to witness an d be witnessed.

In my life I’ve wanted people to succeed and I have worked for that. I’ve worked with them at my own cost and at the cost of building opportunities. I dont take names normally but there are some people who’s ambition and dreams are unbounded and I want to be shoulder that enables them to do more! Aastha, Anubhab, Pritam. Shikha and Prakruti in the past. AK and C lately. The ones who put their faith in me. The ones that allowed me to steer them. I failed in most of those. But I did try.

I know when (not if) most of these folks reach the altar, they probably wouldn’t remember me. And that’s ok. I dont seek to be the person who gets to ring the bell on your IPO but I want to be around in the trenches when you need me. I want to be with the underdog. I want to be the person who has the honor to sit in the mud with you when the chips are down.

D/ Rocky
Saw this. And I want to run. Lol!

E/ Management Lessons from Mahabharata
While talking to Riya the other day, an idea popped into my head. What if I could divide Mahabharata in smaller chunks and created some lessons for young people. If I were to offer this as a cohort, how many of you would want to take this up?

PLEASE do let me know!

F/ SG Patrons (#sgPatrons)
I mentioned a few weeks ago, I now have three patrons.
I need 997 more.
Need to work for those.

G/ Aint No Sunshine on Jazz
I said last week that I am listening to a lot of Jazz lately. Here’s a cover of one of my favorite songs of all time. Here’s another cover (this one takes a bit to start). Oh man, I love listening to various versions of tracks that I love!

H/ H1B row and Apple in China
In the last few days the world for Indians in the US seems to have turned upside down. There are new regulations on H1B Visa. While I am not as well read (reminds me of this from Calvin and Hobbs), I can understand the pain and anxiety in the minds of people.

Also, I am reading Apple in China.

And I am thinking and reading about global business and all that.

All three things are very very very unsettling to me as a person. On one side, I want to live as borderless, free life. And on the other, I am contained in India. And then there are stories of countries and economies closing their doors. And then there’s this thing where I know am growing old. And fast. And to a point that I dont know how long do I have! To a point that I dont even want to get on to a plane – why give fate even a fleeting chance?

Ok, I dont know where am going with this. The point is, kaafi khichdi hai. Lol!

Ok, this is it.

📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

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

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

🈺 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 not in the pink of health last week. So -1.
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.

Health
Meru
C4E
Brand SG
People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
Book2
Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. Was unwell. No one or nothing to blame on. Just life. Lol. I even tried to cook but that was a disaster. So, 0.

Meru. Apart from other things, did a session with some folks about how to write their biographies. Doing another one on the 5th Oct. Details here.
Still a 0, TBH.

C4E. No action from my side.
September looks tough. Let’s see.
C tells me that the pipeline looks ok but let’s see.

Brand SG. No action.
Nothing to be shared.
-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 is -2.
Has been -2 for some weeks now.

📊 The tracker from the last week

Here is the tracker for the week gone by.

What trends do you see?

I see…

Terrible recovery. The last five days have been like less than 50 and one day it was 9!
Food’s all over the place.
Emotions are all over the place.

Lol, life’s all over the place ;P

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
In one word, last week was FUCKED!

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

3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
Was terrible.

I tried sprouts and boiled eggs and all that. But didn’t work out. I think I will give up on it and get catered meals. I will pay more than I can afford but I will not have to waste headspace.

4/ Community
No large movement on this. It’s as ok as it could be. Nothing great, nothing bad.

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

6/ Movement
No action. Even the steps are down 🙁

7/ Meditation
No action.

Overall, the last week has been terrible. The first half was bad cos of work. The second half cos I ate something bad.

📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week

Since I was not working a lot, I had time to read a lot. And I started reading a book as well (Apple in China – see this). So, here are some links that I want to share.

1/ This LinkedIn post talks shows the income of Indians across tax groups (only the ones that file tax). The surprising part was the number of people making more than 10 lakhs is like 1 crore only (assuming 10 crore people file tax and 10% of those are in this category)! What does this mean for us?

2/ Interesting post about how the Aggarwals cant seem to find enough brides. More pertinent cos this is the community that I come from.

3/ This tweet implores you to find your Spartans. Like I said, I have 2. How many do you have? Oh, while on Spartans, please see this video to get the real meaning of what Spartans mean!

4/ I saw this tweet and I want to take the no-smart phone challenge. I will probably do this towards the end of the year. #sgtodo

5/ Read this tweet on swimming. Gold!

6/ Read this post about who would you like to be without an audience. Very very deep and inspiring and interesting. A conundrum that I have faced for a long long time now.

7/ This tweet by Kunal Shah is very interesting. I would love to get into some sin business. Any ideas?

8/ This long post on how twitter / X algo works. Do read. I am yet to implement this in my work but I plan to.

9/ Re-read this long post (from 2014) on why Bitcoin is doomed. Some of the reasons are no longer valid in 2025 but some are! Do read and lemme know what you think.

I want to share more links but this week’s update is a truncated one. So may be next week?

🧠 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.

🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Sad.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… 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

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.

130121 – Morning Pages

Conversations with friends and strangers. About Ikigai, writing, life purpose, success, failure, and more. Oh, and scarcity of time!

7:22. This one should be ok (unlike the last one). I have no pressing agendas today. Just the way I like it!

I think these morning pages have found a rhythm. I talk about what I did the previous day. Pick on a thing from what I spoke about. And then try to think more about it, while I write. And then I write a para for book2. The entire thing takes me about an hour and it is enough to put me in a good mood, to be honest, even if I wake up with a shitty one. In fact, as I type this, I have a smile on my face.

So, lately, I have found comfort in music from Suits. People have made a playlist of tracks from Suits and even though I don’t understand half of those, I love em. In fact, I have been discovering new music here in Goa. Like the other day at a hotel, I heard this track called Jerusalema. Since it was playing on a shitty speaker, I thought it was in Hindi (really) and even when I put my head to it, I could not make it out. And when I Shazam-ed, I realized that it’s in one of African languages!

The other thing was that I got to meet Karl yesterday. He’s been one of those that I look up to in life. He had a couple of interesting things to say about things that I thought i had a deep understanding of.

A, Ikigai. You know, the Japanese concept that helps you find purpose? I thought I knew where I want to (which is to enable and inspire others with what I do and create opportunities for them) but when I was talking to him, I realized that I need to sharpen this. My notions are idealistic (something Rashi also tells me all the time) and are not practical at all. He said (and I agree) that no one would pay me to inspire them unless I become a motivational speaker or something. My personality is anything but that! So, need to think more about that.

B, On account planning and strategy. He said that as a planner you have to get into execution as often you get sucked into Blue Ocean thinking and you don’t know shit about how your strategy is translating into actual work. This is very similar to being a management consultant where you don’t have any skin in the game. Now, I want to be anything but that. So, next time I get a gig, I will try and be a part of actual execution and implementation as well. This is a very very important lesson for me. #sgP1.

The other unintended consequence of my chat with him was that I read that Gaurav Jani passed away last year. I did not know him at all and to be honest, his passing was more news to me than a personal setback. But he has been one of those people that I have been incredibly inspired by since I can remember. When I was young, he did something that I would have, well, killed for. He rode to Ladakh on a bike and made a film about that. All solo. I mean imagine taking shots of your bike, all by yourself. How’d you even do it? And he did all this way back in 2006 when all this was not even known, let alone be cool. Plus there was no ubiquitous Internet, phones, mounts, cameras. I cant even imagine how’d he charge batteries and all that. The dude must have been another level shit.

Lesson? Time is a bitch. You gotta do things now. Err on the side of action. #lifeTheme!

Moving on. On another work call, where I was giving my opinion on how things ought to happen, I was asked to shut cos what I said was in direct contrast to what apparently Kunal Shah, the grand-daddy of all start-ups folks in India, had said. A, if he has said what he apparently said, he needs to be taught. B, even if he said what he said, it may have worked for him but in the specific case, it would never work. You can’t use one-size-fits-all with startups. Of course, this is not about him. This is about me. The conversation hit me like a tight slap on my face that you could be the most educated, well-read, opinionated, caring person in the room but unless you have tangible success to show for, no one gives a fuck about what you have to say. Your opinions are not important. They are invalid. You are asked questions that, well, question your credibility.

No this is not the first time something like this has happened to me. But thank God it happened. I am inspired. Need these bouts often. In fact, I am so so so much inspired to create a fucking massive success that when someone asks me such questions, I can tell them that I’ve built massive shit and they are fuck off.

I know revenge and being sore is not a good emotion (#note2self – Pale Blue Dot, This Too Shall Pass, Seneca’s lessons) but I am human. And I hate when people I care for do this to me.

Anyhow. I think I am ok now. Last evening I was seething in anger. To a point that I could not operate. The world thinks that I am a loser and that’s ok. I have no complaints. But when the ones that I am close to think like that and operate from that place, I hate it. Really.

Lemme talk of something good. Spotlight is finally taking shape. We are gunning for the first edition of the event on the 30th. More here. In case you want to pitch your startup to Dr. Malpani, here.

So, today on, thanks to the kick in the butt by Karl and this nameless-faceless person that told me that am useless, I will try to be a lesser loser. I’ll try harder.

The other thing that I want to talk about this party with some strangers that I was in. The host introduced me to some people as a famous author. For some reason, I felt like an imposter. I mean, all I have is one book. That too has failed to make any dent in anyone’s life. The kinder reviews say that it’s average at best. I don’t even want to read honest or negative ones. The second book is nowhere. Been on it for like 10 years and have nothing to show for that. I hated it when I was introduced like that. Yes, please do introduce me as a creative consultant, creative producer, writer (not just of books), marketer, podcaster et al. I am ok with that. But I don’t want to be just a “famous writer”. I want to be the person that tried. Not the person that rests on laurels. That too, not well-defined.

So that’s that for the morning pages.

As I edit, I realise this has become dark and harsh and ranty. But that’s that. The smile on the face of having typed all this is still around. So that’s some comfort.

So, on to #freewriting for book2. So, for this one, I have talked Prak into giving me a prompt every day to get me started with my thinking.

Today’s prompt is…

Red. The color of love and hate. Of life and death. Blood and rivers, hellfire, and heaven song.
– Prakruti Maniar, Jan 2021

Here we go…

Red was a funny choice for the color of the gown that she wore. Even though the host had clearly mentioned that the theme for the evening is white and blue, she wore red. Red stood out. What was supposed to be a party where dreams were to be talked about, futures were to be looked at, she chose Red. The color of love and hate. Of life and death. Blood and rivers, hellfire, and heaven song. She did not choose red on purpose. She did not have a choice. This was the only gown she had that could pass off as a decent dress into the party where the invite cost her a night with that old bastard, Paul. The party has been the talk of the town for a while now and who’s who was expected to be there. Together they were going to plan the future of the sleepy state of Goa. There were talks of taking the casinos on land, thereby greatly reducing the costs for the owners. One of the proposals was to allow for new high-rise construction near the beaches. They wanted to make coal mining a priority for the state. The coast was going to get opened for large scale music festivals that would get the who’s who of the world down to Goa.

The gates were being opened for the world to make its home in Goa. And at the same time, those very gates were being shut on the faces to keep out the ones that rightfully could call Goa home. The promoters blamed the locals for their lackadaisicalness. The locals wanted to be left alone. The two sides were never going to find a common ground. And this party was an attempt in the direction. In attendance were going to be socialites

Ankit Paul had put all he had and pulled all the strings he could to make this happen. His entire fortune and the reputation that his family had earned since forever was at stake. More so, after his father passed away, his personal credibility and integrity was being questioned. No, he did care for what people thought of him. He had more skeletons in his closet than the ruler of African countries had. But he did care about his bank balance. The power he wielded. The political ambitions that he couldn’t seem to find a route to.

This party was going to change all of that. Hopefully for good. And give Paul the respect that he’s craved for since he was a child. Respect that his father never accorded him. Respect that he had to fight hard to get. Respect that made him do all the things he did. Respect that mattered to him more than life or death.

***

Damn tough! But I like how it has come out!

What do you think?

And over and out. Hope it’s a great day!