April - log - 2025: on obsession, timeless work & better mistakes
Unfiltered thoughts on grit, immortal themes, quiet obsessions, and building what lasts beyond you.
28th April, 2025
1:01 AM - She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.
— Oscar Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray
27th April, 2025
2:49 PM - Sometimes I think I am not possessive about materialistic things but then I won't leave the socks I have been wearing for 2 years even though it has a hole. Proudly wearing it with toe wiggling out of it in the last 6 months. No other socks has come close to it.
8:00 PM - One thing my mother admires about me is that I never get bored. I can be sad, disinterested, confused but never bored. Even as a kid she never had to make an effort to engage me in something to keep me occupied. I could spend hours doodling on the walls, making air bubbles, playing with a dough, reading the same picture book again and again.
23rd April, 2025
I overthink and undership. When in fact it should be in reverse. I should think less and ship more.
(Ab tere kya hoga kaliya. Kuch kar kaliya kuch kar. Karta ja bas tu ab. Bhut soch liya ab bas karne ki baari hai.)
22nd April, 2025
10:54 AM - For anything to be perfect or imperfect, it has to be finished first. We try too hard to be perfect from the beginning or in the middle. But reaching for perfection or imperfection is the final stage. Anything before that is just mesy.
21st April, 2025
11:06 PM - Too many problems — one solution — fix a time.
Fix a time to write for my personal projects. So this way, a draft and outline will be set in the first 2 days of the week. Editing in next two. 4 days to publish a newsletter. If I can do that. It will be still less than what I am taking by not publishing for more than 20 days. I made a promise to myself at the start of the year to write daily and regularly. I am in April so this is the right time to revisit that promise and own up to it again.
11:15 PM - It’s time I make better mistakes. I am not making new mistakes that’s why there isn’t a learning curve for me. If I just keep passively obseriving, there’s no learning. Best learning curve begins from mistakes made by my own self during learning.
18th April, 2025
6:19 PM - We’re all juggling big dreams with a quiet fear, hesitation. It’s like you want to show up but sometimes, you don’t. And the consequences are so subtle, they almost sneak up on you.
Your character’s light starts dimming over time.
Life can chip away your spark if you don’t pay attention
12th April, 2025
1:24 AM - It doesn't matter if we see it or not but EVERYTHING we do, our tiniest of actions are guided by what we BELIEVE.
11th April, 2025
12:59 PM - The absolute clarity you need to give specific feedback on design and copy is mind blowing to me.
Just sent 3 loom videos.
Editing and explaining my edits in a newsletter series.
Sharing my thoughts on what's not working in the designs.
Reviewing a cold outreach sequence.
I am very upfront about what I don't know, so these feedbacks are guidance + questions + realigning objectives.
10th April, 2025
6:31 PM - Everyone thinks, Jo is the lead in Little Women. For me it's Amy.
In the beginning Amy and Jo both wanted to make big fortunes for their family. I adored them for this sentiment. Amy wanted to do it by selling paintings and Jo wanted to be a writer.
But as they grew up, Amy realized she has the talent for painting but she doesn't has the genius. (whatever that means) She thinks she can't make her fortune anymore, so decides to marry into fortune instead. She has always been clear on what she wants (status and wealth) and she goes after it by hook or crook.
On the other hand Jo didn't make it big in writing either and starts to romanticize poverty (like a delusion) She even contradicts herself via writing stories for money. She writes what the audience wants, even if it doesn't align with her morals.
What I am trying to say is, whoever has the most self tuned character development arc automatically becomes the protagonist for me. Because that's what I look for.
9th April, 2025
5:29 PM - You need to know your strengths more than your weaknesses. The whole point of self awareness gets wasted if you realize your shortcomings but not your potential.
6:15 PM - Transitioning from multitasking to prioritizing one thing at a time has been a game changer.
8th April, 2025
9:45 PM - The skills that helped the earliest humans survive — persistence, pattern recognition, and adaptation are still important for our survival in cutthroat situation.
In that context our challenges have become a bit less high stakes. Let’s say if I take on the job of learning to hard things. It would mean taking care of my body, my relationships, meeting more people, traveling, writing a lot, finding patterns…
12:24 PM - There isn't a lot of merit in being well connected or having high networking ratio. Firstly why does one want to be well connected?
to gain favours?
to get recommended?
hoping that some cross connection happens that gets them more money, more access?
But any connection that has been made with an agenda of gaining favours fizzles out pretty soon.
It lacks substance.
If you really want to have people around who run on the same or higher mental bandwidth than you, then the intention should be to make FRIENDS
Make friends based on shared vibe and excitement.
You will get all the best opportunities, mind bending moments, holy shit connections once there is no agenda and you are simply making friends because it's FUN.
I got my first freelance project via a friend
I got my first business partner who is a friend
I get the most amazing recommendations of books, people and emerging curves via friends.
My clients start out as professional relationships and turn into FRIENDS & MENTORS.
So drop the idea of networking or making connections. Build and work on interesting things. Be so magnetic with your ideas and things you are building that it attracts people from different tangents.
Once they show up, chill out. share your excitement. Try to meet as many of the same people as you can. time and frequency is a big factor in lasting relationships.
Instead of jumping from cafe to cafe. go to the same cafe at the same time. go to the same events. meet the same people again.
We talk about a T shaped curve in skill development - having a breadth of skills + depth in certain skills.
I think it's the same with friendships as well. be open to new friends. keep expanding your horizons. but invest time in certain friends to build that depth.
7th April, 2025
12:14 AM - Those who gain fame and fortune without caring about it are the real winners. They have better priorities in life. Fame and fortune comes as an added bonus for them.
12:36 AM - I see the significance of tasteful hoarding now. Having physical volumes of books, movies, music, journals around you makes you revisit them often. And we learn more by revisiting than reaching for something new.
6th April, 2025
8:43 PM - I have nearly 5,000 volumes in my library at Rome. But after reading them over many times. I found that with 150 well chosen books a man possesses, is all that a man really needs to know.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo
11:06 PM - Sometimes, a sunflower needs a little less wind to bloom.
5th April, 2025
8:06 AM - Once our mind is set to do something. We find our way anyhow. This whole world is a proof of that. Every day, every minute someone is finding out a way to solve their problem.
4th April, 2025
12:42 PM - When starting something again, let go of the past baggage of failures & successes. Archive everything — wins, regrets, missed chances, good runs. everything.
You can retrieve the learnings anytime you need them. What you learned is going to be with you but the weight of what happened doesn't need to be.
Start fresh. Start clean.
12:50 PM - Obsession creates talent. In the end, you won't be able to tell who was born with a gift.
3rd April, 2025
11:43 AM - I want to write timeless things. But I am not able to think too far in the future. I can’t even predict what’s going to happen 5-10 years from now. But I would still like to write things that will be relevant 5-10 years from now.
And the biggest metric to test out what’s going to be relevant is:
What I think will be important for me?
Universal feelings that have stood the test of time for centuries.
I have talked more about this: timeless themes.
We all have a central theme in our life, that keeps surfacing again and again. If you just think back, you will find some of the central themes that have stood out time and again for you. Try to window down the theme and emotion to one word.
Something that’s Universal.
Something so constant that as long as humans are present in this world, the word will be there too.
Words like power, love, obsession, creation, innovation, envy, rebellion are here to stay and always did.
These are immortal themes.
11:44 AM - Expression over Impression. Anything we do to impress someone - people or algorithm, dies out too soon.
3:45 PM - Money is just the reward for controlling reality. People who control reality, who dictate the terms of the game get to decide where the money goes.
How does one control reality?
you control perception: People don't pay for the best product, they pay for what they BELIEVE is the best.
you control distribution: Amazon never sold everything. They just control the infrastructure that sells everything.
you control access: In every decade a few companies control the access to information or a niche. Right now it's Open AI, anthropic, deepseek. Before this it was Google & Meta. Even before them it was Microsoft, IBM & some early internet gatekeepers.
If you’re not the one controlling what people believe, what they buy, or how they access things, you’re just another player following the rules, not the one writing them.
4:10 PM - We want to matter in others' lives. It's the whole reason we make friends, raise families, offer mentorship & lead.
When we offer advice, remember someone's birthday, show up when it counts, we instinctively affirm our place in the fabric of someone else's world.
11:50 PM - Wealth attracts wealth and poverty attracts poverty.
Don’t think of it in just literal terms. It applies to most things. Beauty, abundance, confidence, friends, love.
As if whatever you give and show to the world, the world gives back 10x more.
2nd April, 2025
5:27 PM - We instinctively know what the ‘other’ person should do. We don’t carry their emotional baggage or fear. There’s no action bias. So, the advice we dish out to them seems obvious. Like why aren’t they doing this already.
But when it comes to us. There’s a thing that we ‘should’ do and there’s a thing that we ‘want’ to do.
Anyone who yaps anything else, does get heard but not with same conviction as our gut. When we’re in the middle of our own situation, we feel all the emotions tied to each other. We also think far in the future because we are the one who has to live with the consequences.
5:34 PM - I don’t think our gut instinct is always right. Most of the time it is. But not always.
Our instinct reactions are born out of the wisdom that our logical mind hasn’t processed yet. But there are times when emotions overpower instincts and they try to protect us from old wounds rather than guiding us towards what’s best.
Speaking from experience, I would bet on my female intuition/instinct every time.
5:45 PM - I don’t write content. I write ideas worth rereading.
1st April, 2025
11:08 AM - When I think about where I want to live. I think of a room that has stacks of books lined up on the walls. There’s big large windows in it. A nearby lake within a periphery of few kms. The right amount of sunlight is coming in and it makes me happy like a sunflower. This room has kind neighbours around who smile when I pass by. I have friends and community with me to fall back on.
I want to live in a room where I can obsessively put 12 hours of work without interruptions. A room where no one can disturb me. But once in a while someone checks on me to see if I am doing okay or if I need anything.
A room that welcomes me like a warm hug whenever I come back from travel. A room that doesn’t feel empty but rather cozy. Even though I am the only person there or I am the only person coming back from my travels.
I want a room like Austin Kleon’s where all my creations, manuscripts, drawings, brain stormings are at one place.
I want to keep things upside down. Pictures a bit tilted. Things a bit chaotic, so it feels disturbing to the soul.
I know obsession doesn’t require glamour or pretty aesthetics. It requires grit to work from anywhere. Especially a dark basement as such. But it's my obsession to work from a place where sunlight is around me. I feel fresh and rejuvenated to work. Even on the boring days I am so attuned to my routines that I naturally do what I have to do.
1:24 PM - Talking about people from the past in the present tense is the highest form of a “made it” moment for me. Like Steve Jobs is such a genius. Sylvia Plath writes so well. Seneca is mind blowing when it comes to meditation.
We talk about these people and their ideas in present because it applies to us in present. Because of their ideas, these people exist as if they are alive and just out of reach. You can’t meet them, but they are there. That’s a kind of revolutionary existence that only few get to have.
6:17 PM - This idea is one of my all-time favourite reminders: Just get 1% better every day. You will end up 37x stronger.
The calculation is simple:
1³⁶⁵ = 1
1.01³⁶⁵ = 37.78
0.99³⁶⁵ = 0.03