discussion

on Empathy, Ed Yong, and my grad school project

the ability to take on another's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience

What's the Rush About?

One thing remains clear: prioritising speed may yield more tasks accomplished, but it robs us of life's essence.

If it was harmful ...

We all kinda sorta know of the obviously harmful. For example, we know smoking cigarettes is terrible for health. Right? No one is smoking under the impression that it is a net positive. But what about the stuff we don't know of?

books

Four things that caught my eye this month

Laws of valuation, Have the willingness to pay talk early, the dubious rise of imposter syndrome, and ALOK

discussion

Changing your mind is a GOOD thing

ou are not the same person you were 10 years ago. Heck, 10 days ago. Change is the only constant. Be true to yourself. Follow your intuition. Question everything. Including your stances.

discussion

The drama triangle and other stories

Learning to separate facts from stories is imperative. Hold on to your stories with curiosity. Your stories are your framings from your limited perspective. Many a time, your stories are triggered by implicit memories from childhood which you haven't addressed.

discussion

The KB swing is awesome but is it awesome for you?

The complication is the fine print. You need good technique. To get adequate benefits. And you need GREAT technique to compound the benefits over time. The movement is not as important as your ability in the movement.

discussion

The issue with advice

When you ask for advice, know that no one can or should be able to answer this question for you. If someone attempts to, it is a good litmus test (that you should be warier of what they are saying.)

discussion

On why we are bored and dissatisfied

One is to keep accumulating new experiences. There are infinite options out there. This intuitively sounds silly. If you got bored with the first 20, the next 200 will lead to the same end.

discussion

To stand still against the current

Recently, I had the chance to do something interesting - to eat by myself. I thought I could do this anytime. But that's because I did it while reading a book, which for some reason I didn't think was the same as a distraction like watching TV. It is, as much of a book snob, as I might be.

discussion

A few fundamentals we shy away from

the unfortunate definition of a blind spot is that you don't know what it is. By asking for feedback from the people I spend a lot of time with, by journaling and by reading those journals, I've been able to decipher these rather fundamental things.

discussion

Zooming out and a sense of time

One limitation in our progress is our handicap of looking at time. Using one hundred years as a lifetime, we tend to focus on short durations. The disruptions we are producing i.e. the variables in the system we are affecting are unbeknownst to us.

coaching

The Particle and the Wave

The world around us wants to divide us. And because we need to be here or there, we pick an extreme. Or worse, we choose inaction. Because deep down, we don’t agree with the extremes. That’s great. But we need to use the complementary theory here to dig deeper into our perspective.

discussion

Friday Thought: Is That Your Idea?

Understanding why the idea feels important to you though is something you can look deeper into, as part of exploring the idea.

coaching

Learn from yourself

Have you learned something fundamentally true about yourself from someone else? Something that you could not have come up with by steadfastly sitting with yourself and your organised thought? I seriously doubt it.

discussion

Finding Balance and Pillaging the Earth

When you focus only on one aspect or metric, you lose sight of the whole picture. The past 100-ish years, from the Industrial Revolution, the human race has been caught up in its own bullshit and pillaging the planet and going forward. But is forward really forward?

discussion

Rocks, Pebbles, Sand 2.0

But its fundamental flaw is in fooling you that you can fit everything in. And in telling you that you should aim for that. You cannot. You should not. Fuck this hustle culture.

discussion

Choosing experiences

you could choose to have coffee in Blue Bottle in SF in the morning, go to your favourite dive bar in New York in the evening, and watch football in the Bernabeu - all from your home, and all in the course of your day.

discussion

The fun world of contradictions

All diets work. None of them works. You can eat doughnuts and burgers and lose weight.

discussion

break the rules

"You cannot have ice cream for breakfast", for example. What kinda stupid rule is that?!?!

discussion

3 clarifications

The larger point I do want to make is that this blog is simply one path of what can work for you. For people of a similar wavelength, there are things you can pick from here. For others, not much will be relevant or be in sync.

discussion

on keeping score

If you could go back to school and tell yourself, would you seriously tell yourself to score MORE marks? Or to learn some skills that you did not know needed to be learned back then?

coaching

on zero-sum thinking

Most sports are zero-sum games. If you win, I lose. That thinking does not bode well for folks who are looking to improve their health and fitness, especially in group settings.

discussion

on shoving things under the carpet

In New York City, by one estimate, horses left behind 2.5 million pounds of manure and sixty thousand gallons of urine every day.

coaching

what we can learn about instant gratification from plants

A lot of us fail on our journey towards better health and fitness because of poor mental models and mindset. Just like a plant takes love and care and time to yield results, you need to do the same in your journey.