good calorie, bad calorie

Read good calorie, bad calorie last week. This book cites the effect of excessive processed carbohydrate intake in our diet. The author has gone way forward with the research papers, experiments attributing all major modern-day diseases to carbohydrate consumption. We have victimized fat to a great length.

I keep hearing from friends about moderation, which seems too difficult to implement in the era of food deserts. Apart from the food being available on the click of a button. The quality control from consuming outside food is highly debatable.

journey

I was with a few friends last evening, both running their startups. It was great listening to them. Added the list along with. 

  • Things will screw up, get ready to be on the joyride.
  • Live, for now, do not keep grudges. People change with time.
  • Enjoy the moment while being on the journey.
  • Find the right co-conspirator, co-founders.
  • Have a self-belief, conviction. 
  • Things take time.
  • Celebrate small wins
  • Product pivots, people stay. Focus on building a relationship and having great people on the journey. 

A lot many of these resembles with Pankaj Mishra’s journey of running Factordaily 

Connect

I have come to that stage of my life where I am least interested in making new connections. I feel like I am completely exhausted with my real-life friend’s list.

I have a small list of friends and I am happy with them around me. I am finding everything else as a distraction.

I am also fed up with the wise men preaching on various subjects from entrepreneurship, life, career or relationship.

What is the point of taking advice, taking counseling in your affairs from someone who has no skin in your GAME?

At times I feel I have entered into an age of getting a quick fix for everything which is not sustainable in the longer run.

Your situation, startup, life is yours and wasting time listening to some random podcast or coffee meet will only create confusion.

One has to own his/her shit, read, learn, re-learn and engage people who have skin in the game, people who are part of the business: customers, investors, and advisors everything else is a distraction.

The Anarchy

I finished reading The Anarchy this week. I enjoyed reading it and gaining more knowledge about Indian history I also felt the author being a Mughal apologist.

Throughout the book, the author mentions the atrocities committed by the British, the Jats, the Marathas, the Rohillas et all.

I got to know about the powerful Marathas and Mysore, Tipu who were the only formidable forces fighting against the East India Company, the reason being their close alliance with the French.

East India Company was an enterprise with a monopoly, it was no less than the modern-day Google, Facebook according to the author.

How amazing India would have been without British Invasion? Much richer with our culture and economy both. Awadh, Bengal and all provinces would have existed with its own culture like Europe? Or we would have fought battles among others?

Incentive

Product development should focus more on the incentives for their stakeholders. Don’t create a feature-rich product but take end-users requirements to its core.

Most products have more than one personas, understanding it and working towards eliminating the pain would be a good start.

People don’t buy a product because it’s sexy, but because they have pain and your product solves it. An added layer of incentive creates a good moat and delights your user.

Getting lost in competitors, feature set parity and forgetting about user’s pain and incentives can kill any product in no time.

act

Some meetings turn out bad, meeting where the other person acts inappropriately because they could afford to do that.

How hollow are we with this external layer over ourselves: power, position, designation? Do we not know that these are all temporary?

Don’t be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be prideful and say, ” I am handsome,” it would be supportable. But when you are prideful, and say, ” I have a handsome horse,” know that you are proud of what is, in fact, only the good of the horse. What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances of things. Thus, when you behave conformably to nature in reaction to how things appear, you will be proud of reason; for you will take pride in some good of your own.


The Enchiridion, Epictetus

default

I have spent the last two years with some reading and taking care of myself. I wish I could have done this much earlier. 

One thing I have learned all this time is that our brain by default is a pessimist. Reading Philosophy made me realize the meaning of self-knowledge, observing my thoughts. 

Since our birth, we have been conditioned and told about what we cannot do, which is not possible. Very few kind people guided us to achieve the impossible. Our brain took it as default for everything. As a grown-up, we are paying price for it. 

Do not let the default control our thoughts, guide our actions and make us more miserable. 

  • How will we lose a war without participating?
  • How will we get rejected without proposing?
  • How will we fail without trying?

Keep your monkey mind in control. We need to have positive affirmations, goals and visualize our success. Our life is as we see it. If we are not happy, confident within, how do we expect others to see the opposite in us?

generation gap

It is amazing how the thought process works. What is great for you might worth dime for your parents. The generation gap exists, seeing the world in a different lens.

You might think you have achieved everything in life but for your parents, you are still not settled. Settling down means getting married, having kids and ownership of a house. This ideal definition of being settled has been passed upon generations.

Few lucky ones survive this pressure and lead a life on their conditions while others succumb to settling down with the blessing of elders.

broken

We are all broken. Broken by rules, relations, and rituals.
This brokenness has its misery, a hollow world. A world that makes us not believe in ourselves. A world that makes us no nuts over our minuscule success. A world that makes us not believe in our own self.

There is so much one can achieve in his own silo. The aspiration of self can drive us to glory. But the caretakers of this society thrives on our brokenness. They make us their disciples via religion, god, and gurus.

It is wise to know the broken self. It helps us in not getting run over some leader, demi-god.