Hello!
1 PM, 17th Aug, 2025
Versova Starbucks.
The week gone by was a moderate one. It was a week with a lot of chuttis and thus there was less chaos on the roads (except the one caused by Dahi Handi). Plus, it was after a while that I was in Andheri West for three days on a trot.
I did some work (at Meru we shipped our first thing). I played some (Krishna was visiting). I had some brainwaves (thought hard about where I want to be in life) and all that.
Overall, an interesting week.
Will talk more about it in a bit.
Oh, I am listening to this as I write.
.
Ok, let’s go.
💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week
PS: As always, these are not in any order.
.
A/ AI and the creative business
I can talk about this from three lenses – personal, Meru (as a brand owner) and C4E (as a partner to brands).
As Meru, as we scale the business, we need to be able to do more things and fast. Faster than I can say fast. And AI allows us to do that. I know there’s halluciantion, mistakes and all that but I need to imagine that as a brand owner, where do I want the penny to drop – at speed, at quality, as perfection. So that.
At C4E, the team has to adapt fast. Not because it will question the survival but because it will enable to do more.
On a personal level, I can now become hyperproductive. For example, we started to train Heygen on my face and words. Here are the first two outputs.
PS: All the work on this has been done by Vishal. I merely recorded it. I know this is not perfect but we will get to it with time.
Lemme know what you think.
.
B/ Smart Folders on Apple Notes
Accidentally discovered Smart Folders on Apple Notes and I think my life will change!
For context, I use Apple Notes as my temp notepad (apart from a pen and paper based notepad) and each weekend, I clean my notes by adding things to my Roam. I also use Apple Notes to save recurring things for fast and easy access (I may not have my laptop with me all the time but I do have my phone).
So when I needed things, I would often rely on search and then waste time. With Smart Folders, I am able to sort of bookmark things that I need faster access to. And for someone like me who leans a lot on notes, bookmarks, tools and people for details, this was a godsend thing!
.
C/ Notetaking workshop
Oh, and I took a notetaking workshop for a couple of young kids who’re gonna join college soon.
I didnt want to do this (I think that old methods of taking notes are no longer valid) but one of my seniors from MDI insisted and I couldnt say no to him.
While I did that session, I realised that I love to teach people. I just wish I was able to earn a lot of money doing that. I mean I can earn. I can charge a lot. But then my ethics dont allow me to charge from the ones who can’t pay. And the ones who can pay wont probably need me.
So that.
.
D/ Krishna
Krishna was in Bom for a couple of days. Each time I meet him, I am left inspired to do more. The guy literally went from being a cloth trader to a full-stack developer! A remidner that I must surround myself with more doers and people who want to stay with the times.
And I must become someone that a Krishna would like to hang out with.
.
E/ Off Insta. And failure.
I had decided that I would be off insta for a few days.
I could stay away for all of 2 days.
The addiction is real!
To solve for it, I’ve asked AK to loan me the spare iphone that we have at C4E. Let’s see how it goes.
.
F/ Meditation before a meeting / Grounding
In one of my coaching sessions with FOXO, the person asked me to do a one-minute grouding exercise to get into the mindset for the meeting. I find it funny cos when I come into a meeting, I come with 100% intention.
But then, Hemant recommends this as well. And I want to follow each thing that Hemant says. So, thanks to reinfrocement by the session, I will start doing this. A one minute breathing / grounding exercise before each meeting.
Lets see how the experiment goes.
.
G/ Punjabi MC
Listening to this as I write.
.
I really want to posture that Punjabi MC has to be one of the greatest artists of our time. Each time I need some energy, I put on something from Punjabi MC. Shinda, Mundeya tu bach rahi, Punjaban, Morni and many many more. I just wish I could dance alongside. But then I have two left feet.
.
H/ SG’s Braintrust
I have this WA group where I only add people who I…
- have personally met (IRL or online)
- respect
- want to stay in touch with
- am inspired by
- want to learn from
Right now, this group is admin only. Very little chatter. I mostly use it to share things to get inputs, seek connections, throw ideas to see what sticks and other such things. This group has people across ages and locations.
I want to now expand this group. If you know me, lemme know and I will add you.
.
So, this is it for this week.
I know there should be more. Like I said, this was an easy week but the action and words and updates don’t match. Will fix this as we go along!
📷 Some Photos from the week gone by
Here are some photos from week 33. The highlight photo has to be…
Not too many pics to be honest.
Was one of the weeks where I just didn’t have enough to save or share.
🈺 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 couldnt). Last week I added health.
Book 2 – no action.
Yearly Plan – I dropped it a few weeks ago.
Health – I had a fairly ok one on health, except yesterday when I fell off the radar. 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. I did ok on most departments except workout. Yesterday was bad. But I can ignore it. A 0.
Meru. We finally shipped the first iteration of the first product (of the many in the pipeline). It’s live at elevate.merulife.com. So a +1.
C4E. No action from my side. 0.
Brand SG. No large action. But like I mentioned, I did do some experiments with Heygen, thanks to Vishal. You can see here and here. So, a +1.
People. No action on this.
I’d say 0.
Book 2. Lol! -1
Shauk. No action. No time.
And I am not losing sleep over it. So a 0
So the overall score is 1.
Finally in positive after a while!
.
📊 The tracker from the last week
Here is the tracker for the week gone by.
.
What trends do you see?
To me, this looks like a regular week in the life of a regular man. Some good days, some bad days, some good food, some bad, some walks and some not so walks. Guess this is the point of life? No?
Random update. Listening to some Afro-Techno Mix. This one.
.
🏃🏻♂️➡️ 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 will start with updates on what am doing for health. 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.
So…
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Diet
- Community
- Crowdfunding my health.
- Movement (this should be part of exercise but I have a separate section)
- Meditation
- Some links: My food log, my daily health log channel.
Lets go…
1/ Sleep
The week gone by was fairly ok. I have realised that I get 6 to 7 hours of sleep and most days I wake up without an alarm. So that’s ok.
Plus, on a day-to-day basis, I want to make my sleeping environment better. I cant fix the noise (I literally live on the road) but I can manage other things. And thus I am iterating with those. I cleaned my humidifier yesterday. I may not need it as long as it’s raining. Will play with it over the next few days and see how it impacts sleep over the next few days.
2/ Exercise
I still can NOT work out.
I tried yoga but all I got was 1 Surya Namaskar before I decided to quit.
However I’ve been fairly consistent with the walks. See 6 below.
3/ Diet
I track each thing I eat on my food log.
I think I am eating better (except one or two off days – and I need to stop with these). But the funny thing is, my weight is not reducing!
I’ve been consistent with walks (and these are deliberate walks) and I eat in moderation (at least the last few weeks) but the weight is not changing. Sigh!
4/ Community
I seem to have found some friends and colleagues who I can hang out with whenever I want to and however I want to. I dont have any pressure of dressing up, drinking up, going to a certain kind of a place or doing whatever. I can be at my weirdest extreme and I am accepted.
No, I dont want to jinx it. Will work hard to preserve it.
5/ Crowdfunding health
Last week I said, I want my 1000 true fans to help me get healthy.
And I have two backers already. Both of them have committed 10K for 3 months, starting September, if I can show them that I can be under 90 KGs in this month. But, we are beyond the H1 of Aug and I am 92! Sigh!
6/ Movement
I am walking more than 8K steps everyday. Since the 6th of this month! See this…
.
7/ Meditation
I want to restart on this.
Specifically after I got that lesson in grounding aLets see when I get to.
.
Apart from these, I will talk about what I am thinking specifically about health
A/ Streaks is a powerful thing
If I’ve walked approx 1.4 lakh steps since 6th Aug, it’s only because of my want to keep the streak going. I think if I can implement this streaks thing at more places in life, I would have a better one.
The other thing that has worked in my favour is that there is this community (almost all are strangers) who’re pushing each other to walk more. I see updates from others and I want to walk. And that’s insane!
B/ Papad
I need to find a way to stop having Papad 😀
C/ Proximity to Kachra
When I am at work at Meru, we are all snacking non-stop all the time.
Ok that was exaggeration but you get the drift. There are 10 people in the room and each person gets hungry at a different time; and since we are a small team, each time someone is hungry, they offer what they’re eating to everyone else. And thus, I find myself eating all the time. And since most of these are snacks we order via Qcom, these are chips and all. Even “healthy” chips are made with oil and all.
While at home, I dont stock any snacks anymore. I have infact some leftover protein bar that we made last week. So, I am snacking better when I am home.
I can clearly see environment in action. And I need to fix this. Let’s see how I do this.
.
📖 Interesting Reads / Views from the last week
PS: I had added YT to my “reads”
Here’s a list of interesting things that caught my eye. TBH I’ve not read all of these (had a randomly busy week) and I’ve added these to my TRL. I am dividing this section into two – one where I’ve read those (I will add a context) and the ones that I havent.
So, I’ve read…
- This piece by Samarth Bansal. Very honest, very vulnerable. More than anything else, it makes me want to join TWT and work for them. Jokes apart, each “leader” must read this. Very very interesting. And very well written. Like I said on X, if there’s one thing you read this month, let it be this. PS: If you do read this, please share what you learn from this.
- This post by Sahil Bloom. My number 1 takeaway was that most people don’t know what they want.
- Bigotry of Low Expectations. Read here. Mihir told me about this in a meeting. When I heard it and thought more about is, I saw my mind bend!
Here are others that I’ve not consumed but have opened a tab for.
- Tim Urban’s Last 6 Years.
- Rahul’s tweet on how OTT is killing India’s ₹12,000 crore cinema industry
- Gurwinder on how social media shortens your life
- MFM on chasing a billionaire’s morning routine. Here.
- Harnidh’s piece on Taste. Here.
- Charlie’s 12 Rules of Life. Here.
- Impact of Internet on OCEAN. Here. PS: Take OCEAN, Big 5 Test for free here.
- Niraj’s list of things to do to reduce risk in India. Here.
.
🧠 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.
Again, skipping this. Will get back to it at an opportune time.
🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?
Grind.
Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… 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
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.