jan 2026: breaking down & getting up
books i read, steps i walked, thoughts i had
At the beginning of the month, I had 3 goals:
Increase my speed of work
Don’t eat sugar
Walk 7-10K steps daily
Here’s how they went:
1. Increase my speed of work
I am conventionally a slow thinker, slow writer & slow doer. But this self shaped identity was getting in my way of getting things done quickly.
If I want to scale a product (hugsy.app) I need to keep some parts of me (slow thinker, slow writer) and let go of others (slow doer).
Speed over perfection.
Speed over perfection.
Speed over perfection.
Speed over perfection.
On 20th Jan I broke down. Thinking I am not able to increase my speed of work. The essays I was publishing regularly, I had stopped doing that as well. It was a miscalculation from my end. I have surely improved in some ways, it’s just I am not there where I want to be.
But how can I be? When these slow habits had years to prosper in me, how can they change themselves at once?
So, I will mark this goal as not done. ❌
And give myself a quarter to keep working on this. I really want to be the person who snaps her fingers and gets things done.
2. Don’t eat Sugar
This one is funny, the more I decided not to eat sugar, the more I ended up eating cakes, banana bread & sweets.
I have a sweet tooth, BUT…
I don’t eat too much sugar on my own. It’s like, if it’s out of sight it is out of mind.
As if, if this goal didn’t exist, I would have eaten less sugar.
I will mark this goal as not done. ❌
3. Walk 7-10K steps daily
This one I religiously followed except one day. That day was so much packed with work & meetings I couldn’t get a moment out till 12 AM.
That was the day my streak broke.😭
Otherwise, my total step count is 1,72,063
What I read in Jan:
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Keep Going by Austin Kleon
Sweet Venom by Rina Kent
Is this anything? by Jerry Seinfeld [In progress]
How to take smart notes [in progress]
1. Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
This book was a gift by a friend. The hardcover with sprayed goden edges is so beautiful that one look at it and you would want to devour that book.
Now the book is old, written in 1843. And it has beautiful descriptions whenever describing the scenery where the action is happening.
I took one such description from the book and gave it to gemini (word to word):
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures.
And look how beautiful it is:
The book is about a rich miser who has become anti-social, doesn’t celebrate christmas. He is visited by 3 ghosts who make him question his life again.
Merry Christmas! What right you have to be merry? What reason you have to be merry? You are poor enough.
What right you have to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.
One instance that jumped out to me in the book was:
“Why do spirits walk the earth?”
It is required of every man. That the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide, and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world and witness what it can’t share but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness.
This was Dickens first book that went popular. I am looking forward to reading more of his books like:
David Copperfield
Oliver Twist
The old curiosity shop
A tale of two cities
2. Keep Going by Austin Kleon
This book was left somewhere half read from a few years ago. This time when I picked it up on a whim I couldn’t keep it back.
As the name suggests, the book is about how to keep going in our creative endeavours.
I guess the effect showed up in me publishing 3x more essays in one month than I did in one year.
One of the most beautiful quote I read in the book:
None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it.
— Lauri Anderson
3. Sweet Venom by Rina Kent
I started reading this book for the dark romance. But I had no idea how it would break me. The talk about death in this book spoke to me in ways even Albert Camus couldn’t.
Some lines from the book:
It’s not the first time I have thought about death, and I’m always left with this niggling sadness at the realization that it’s not real.
I find solace in the small patch of orange that’s trying to slip through. Despite the rain, despite the gloominess, there’s that little smidge of brightness that refuses to give in.
4. Is this anything? by Jerry Seinfeld
This book has 413 of Jerry Seinfeld’s quotes. I think this book is always going to be in progress. Some of the jokes are surely funny but not funny enough to make me keep turning pages and swallow the book in one go or in one year.
One of the wholesome jokes:
One big difference between adults and kids is the number of pockets they go through when they’re looking for something.
Adults touch every pocket on their clothes when they’re looking for something.
“I thought... for sure... I had... that with me...”
When you are a little kid,
somebody asks you if you have something,
you just hold both palms straight out.
“No, I don’t have it.”
You don’t have to check. You have nothing.
Anything you have is in your hand.
You ask a kid, “You have a change of a quarter?”
(hold hands out palms up)
He goes, “Nope.”
Ask him to double-check, “Are you sure?”
They just spread their fingers out wider.
5. How to take smart notes by
I started reading this book because some Obsidian bro kept saying, this is the book that changed his note taking process. The Zettelkasten method and all.
I kinda like the book because of the little anecdotes about historians, writers and scientists, how they used to take notes that helped them with their thinking.
Overall, my january was fineee. I broke down thrice. So 28 days out of 31 were epicccc!
How was your Jan 2026?
Poitu Varen
Akanksha