Aug 6, 9 Am
"I am feeling okay, not confused, rather with slight clarity"
The truth is : There will always be problems.
And the irony is : I am an active seeker of problems, inviting them, rather than waiting for one.
Couple of tasks in my head
# Office: Connect Github + Blogger + Github Actions
And later: Github + Python Anywhere + Github Actions
Personal / Or with mom
# Get the rent agreements for all the tenants
# Talk to Lawyer Mohit Jain
PERSONAL / MATH-EIGHT
# Test "blend words (ccvc) App"
# Enhance "Tiny Stories App" for meaning and phrase pairs.
13 Aug 2026
To Do
— Run PDF Reconciliation code on PDF files received on 12th Aug.
— Explore further on Ignis/Leonis. Raise specific issues that you get/observe — not just open-ended requests like “Can you help me run this code?”
— Create a table to maintain SPA details from math-eight. Columns: [Title, URL, Date Published, Subject, Class, Language, Mobile/Web, Developer]
— While you work with interns, focus on infrastructure, architecture, security and research/innovation in what you do.
— Engagement with DC.AI?
— Father's name correction in death certificate?
— Rent agreements for tenants in Tri Nagar?
— Get intern offer letters sanitized by Mohit Jain.
9 Aug 2026, 6PM
# Improve on your Worst case scenario.
# To love what you are doing: Assume this is your final hour and that it's the last time you are doing that you do, it's the last conversation between you and that person, it's the last time that you having your coffee, write as if it's the last time that you are writing...
# Value people above money and material. Value the living above non-living.
— ✗ —
Atomic Habit addresses bad days and low motivation moments through three core strategies:
(1) The 2-minute rule (Scaling down habits):
Rather than trying to maintain maximum performance on your worst days, scale your habit down so it takes two minutes or less (e.g. instead of running 5 miles, put on your running shoes). This keeps the neural pathway alive even when energy is at its lowest.
(2) Never miss twice: Missing a habit once is an accident; missing it twice is the start of a new, bad habit. The goal on bad days isn't to hit a personal best, but to maintain continuity.
(3) Focusing on the process/trajectory: James Clear says that small, repeated actions define your identity over time.
— ✗ —
Ask yourself: What is the worst thing that would happen as a consequence of your death?
Next proceed to take just a small step towards improving the worst possible outcome.
3 Aug 2026, 7:50 PM
Today (after having read 200+ books), I don't think knowledge is the problem with me.
I damn well know right from wrong.
I damn well can separate big from the small — but somehow I don't.
7 AM — 5 PM: Office
5 PM — 7:30 PM: downstairs
So I was totally disengaged and at distance from from my regular and routine life.
Pretty obvious why I am feeling confused!
Asking the "North Star" question again:
What would I do if it were my last day on Earth?
Managing money, managing work and managing family will go on forever till the end of life, but what is it that would matter to me if I were to die?
On my last day on Earth, I would take some time out to savor my little and big wins in life. To thank those I met on the journey to this day. And some time to accept my shortcomings, accept my losses and accept my failures.
Random thought....
I lack patience to follow through my plans.
I lack patience to listen and engage with people.
And because of this impatience with people, situations and life, I also (I am aware) appear to be uncouth to a lot of people.
Not everything in life sees and meets closure...
"I was excited till the morning, but nervous and confused at noon."
Why: Because the project is not exciting and it isn't related to AI or ML.
Much more like a Cloud and Software engineering project.... At first sight.
~~~
The thought I am getting right now is I am gonna have to find a way out.
~~~
A loan is bad for the person who needs it and good for the person who doesn't.
CASE 1:
Netizens have an opinion and view that if you have an X amount of Home loan and you have an X amount of money in your account, you shall not pay the home loan till it has a interest rate like 7-8% set and revised based on RBI's repo rate.
You keep the X amount of money in a fund that has higher returns such as Index funds with (historically) 12-12.5% returns and specifically higher than Home loan interest rate, and then you continue with Home loan.
CLEARLY: This person didn't need home loan but he took it.
CASE 2:
Second case is a person who is okay to pay the EMI and is in need of a house so Home loan would be good for him.
CASE 3:
Third case is a person who DOES NOT want to pay EMIs and who COULD live within or below his means.
I am sort of a Case 3 type of person.
I value freedom more than debts, burdens, EMIs and monthly payouts.
Home loan is bad for me.
~~~
Random Quote: When you are angry, drink water. Water has cooling and cleansing properties. And so does slow and deep breathing.
LIST OF PROJECTS I AM DOING AND WHY?
# Legal Help
Because I am aware that I may need the solution when helping myself or mom with SIR, or with Aadhaar update, or while trying to get father's details corrected, or while opposing a legal body / local governance body.
# math-eight
Because I had shared my interest with Juhi mam and Poonam mam.
THIS IS THE PROJECT I FEEL DEEPLY CONNECTED WITH.
# Engagement with DLAI as an Alpha Tester
Because it gives me sense of pride and purpose.
It gives me a sense of value and importance.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
TASKS
- Getting rectification of father's name done in father's and mom's documents.
- Closing / Completing DSA course at Khan Academy
- Studies from platforms like LinkedIn, DLAI, WebVeda, Khan Academy.
- Paying House tax for MMV
- Canceling unneeded subscriptions
- Cancel availability on Job portals such as Naukri and LinkedIn
- Read a few pages from a book
- Update survival8 for knowledge from books, videos or news.
28 Jul 2026, 5:50 PM
Q: What are my priorities?
# Home Loan is not priority. It's collateralized.
[PRIORITY: 1 (lowest)]
# Getting mom's and dad's documents corrected
[PRIORITY: 5 (highest)]
# Voter ID correction and SIR for me in Gurgaon and SIR for mom in Delhi
[PRIORITY: 4 (second highest)]
# Building retirement corpus
[PRIORITY: 2 (second lowest)]
# PRIORITY 3: Mildly urgent and also mildly important-
## Reading books
(On retirement, on leadership, on Chanakyaniti)
## Doing personal projects
(on Link to Blog, Video to Blog, math-eight, AI powered legal assistance)
21 July 2026
There's a bit of confusion and running thoughts in my head about my job because I cleared three rounds of interview with a company and now I will be invited for HR discussion.
NOTE: It should be noted that I'm still talking in terms possibilities (of HR discussion).
With this possible progress, there are these four questions that are going in my head:
(1) What should be my goals now (personal, professional, academic)?
(2) What should my spending patterns be?
(3) What does the end look like ?
(4) What did I learn from my experiences in about past 2-3 years?
(1) Goals
# To be healthy
# To be happy
# To be less financially burdened
Professional:
Like Apurba Das said: To stick into this job for 3-5 years.
Academic: No change as such but frequency may decrease with other (job) priorities coming in.
(2) Spending patterns
2.1 Regular expenses
2.2 Early repayment of Home loan
2.3 Laptop for AI workloads (possibly costing about 4 - 4.5 Lacs)
2.4 Renovation and maintenance in Tri Nagar (possibly 2 Lacs INR)
SEEMS LIKE A PLAN FOR NEXT 6-12 MONTHS FROM FIRST DAY AT NEW JOB... BCS FIRST 6 MONTHS ARE OF PROBATIONWHAT DOES THE END LOOK LIKE?
Well, the time is going to run out. We are all going to die sooner or later. But I just wish for myself that I don't run out of money while I still have life in me.
...A very typical retirement goal :D
WHAT DID I LEARN FROM MY EXPERIENCES IN ABOUT PAST 2-3 YEARS?
# Maintain continuous learning in this daily changing world of tech.
# Complacency could kill you.
Keep the below quotations in mind:
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
— James Clear (Atomic Habits)
"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training."
— Ancient Greek Poet Archilochus
# Not keeping well
# Not so energetic
# Feeling good about not having any loans to pay. (Except Home Loan, which is collateralized.)
# Having mixed emotions about my mother -- love & hate / ignorance & care
17 Jul 2026, 2:15 PM
My mind has been abuzz with thoughts lately.
#1 Finances
#2 Job
#3 family
Major shock came when I realized that I may not earn money equivalent to my expenses (monthly) from Flocareer.
My monthly expenses stand at about 70-80 k.
My earnings from flocareer for 15 days stand at 20 k.
That's 40k for 30 days (projected)
Job
# My preparations to crack job interviews is not top notch.
# My fundamentals are poor.
# Same questions are (50 - 70 %) asked in interview after interview but I have yet got a hold of them.
What are the solutions?
# Start small
# Set 1 Hour daily meant towards preparing for interviews.
Why fix it when we are spending time randomly, flexibly?
"Fix it" because it creates a ritual, creates a habit, creates a routine, creates a default, gives you room to plan before the hour.
For today that hour is 6-7 pm.
28 Jun 2026
Day 18 of job searchWorst case thinking
If I am not able to pay my cook -
If I default on society dues -
Well, a lot of "what if(s)".
When you lose your job, what is the first consequence of that?
# Stress
# Financial crunch
What two things we can do to manage stress?
# Meditate
# Exercise
What two things we can do to manage financial crunch?
# Cut back on expenses
# Pick up some thing to do that pays something
Q: Let's say this is your 18th day job search. What would you do? Or what would you do differently?
I'd need to collect feedback.
"Error Analysis" of the feedback
# Get book recommendations from ChatGPT (to work on the errors from feedback)
# Get YouTube video recommendations from ChatGPT (to work on the errors from feedback) (or Gemini)
Work on the foundationsApurba Das: Goal shouldn't just be to clear the interview. But to stay in the job long enough.
Though my tenure at The Webplant was short – less than 6 months – I learned some very basic and valuable lessons at the company – and most of them from my first team leader Dipu Pandey.
In this post, I would share three key lessons I learnt from Dipu Pandey that I wished I had learned and absorbed earlier.
#1 No compromises with the quality of your work.
While working in Dipu Pandey’s team, we would get the site migration projects where we would have to migrate already running client sites to HubSpot.
After the team member would complete the migration, Dipu Pandey would be the first authority to sign off the migration (then it would go to others like Vikram Singh or Deepti Mittal).
In the first review, Dipu Pandey would be matching and comparing the migrated site with the original, element by element and pixel by pixel. I repeat “pixel by pixel”.
That experience with him taught me the value of quality work. And about the role and responsibilities of a team leader.
#2 Go the distance. And then, run the extra mile.
Dipu Pandey expected his team to be the last team leaving in the evening.
Staying late at the Webplant office for some extra 30-60 minutes was pretty normal for his team.
Not that I liked it when it happened, but let’s be honest: If you are willing to go the extra mile for your lead, manager or company, you will register yourself in their good books – which could translate to better work, better pay, better position, better role, or something else that’s “better”.
#3 Leadership
Dipu Pandey commanded respect and authority. He was good at what he did and his team (because of Dipu Pandey’s QA/Testing) also did brilliant work.
There was a line he used to say to express his understanding of the corporate world and corporate culture in general: “Boss is always right.”
Sure, it’s a cliche and an over-simplification but a good starting point to keep in mind if and when you have to face or confront your leadership (be it your lead, manager or just somebody senior).
2026-Jun-26WORST CASE SCENARIO
11 Jun: Abhishek Chakraborty disclosed the termination news — taking my forced resignation instead.
26 Jun: 15 days later.
No other job offer in hand.
A couple of disappointments from a couple of interviews.
Yesterday, Abhishek Chakraborty said I may be getting terminated for deleting my resignation record from my SuccessFactor profile.
That means no salary for June and a marked documentation and blacklisting at IBM.
Read this again: "No salary for June."
I don't have enough in my current account even for next 30 days.
34 + 8K is non-negotiable (42K).
Let's say 50–60K with some expenses even if I live in Tri Nagar.
I have about 2.4L in savings/investments.
That money will last for about 4–5 months.
So, I have about 4 months to find a job (or find a source of money).
Worst case thinking -- If I don't find a job in 4 months:
# I would default on Home Loan.
# Run out of ~2.5 lakhs of savings.
# Would have to redeem other/remaining 10L at (possibly) a loss.
Okay, so 10L might buy me another 20 months (1 year and 8 months) of time.
And after that, I would run out of every penny.
Would have to say goodbye to ***.
AND: Too big and wide a gap in my resume.
19 Jun 2026
The problem isn't dying — but rather in living.
If I were dying, I wouldn't have to worry about finances or relationships. But if I were to live I'd have to calculate the bare minimum I would need to live by my months and days.
After a more rigorous thinking, I have reduced my monthly spends down to 70–80K (which is not a low number either) but down from 1L by 20–30%.
In this 70–80K:
35K is for paying Home loan EMI.
Rest 35K–45K is for everything else.
Breakdown:
35K: Home loan EMI
8K: Society dues (monthly)
1.2K: Internet
3K: Electricity
4.5K: Food
1K: Milk
4K: Subscriptions like DL.AI, WebVeda, PythonAnywhere, Naukri.com...
That's about 57K.
So, 13K for reasons like:
1: Medicine
2: Gadgets
3: Clothes
4: Travel
5: Car/Scooty maintenance
6: Petrol/Gas
7: Cooking gas
8: Or any other luxuries
9: House maintenance (MMV and Tri Nagar)
Effectively, we would run out of 70K, or average out over the time at 70K.
Doing a rough math for an FD @ 6.5% p.a. interest rate: we would need about 1.3 Cr to make enough money for our monthly spends.
If I were to live longer, I may need to have some relationships. And "Building and Managing Relationships" is what I am worst at. Totally clueless.
18 Jun 2026 — Thinking about death, again
I was not having a very good day.
Headache maybe because of heavy caffeine intake lately and I’ve cut back today — no tea/coffee since 9 AM in the morning.
Was thinking about my death today again and to satisfy my intellectual hunger, watched a TED Talk titled “Let’s talk about death” that encouraged people to discuss the topic of death with (their and others) with the elders or peers or family.
But let’s be real for a second: the other person may not be as interested in the topic of death, the other person may not look at it with the same depth, and there mayn’t be an “other person” to talk to in the first place.
So if I were to talk about death here on a page, let’s start with first things first:
(1) Finances: There are no financial obligations. The house itself covers the home loan and I think there will be some surplus for mom to keep.
(2) Relationships:
Let’s be honest — I don’t have any meaningful relationships to look up to or to look after.
Relationships are built on top of your successes, achievements and possessions.
And I don’t have too many or too much to count as my successes, achievements or possessions.
My relationship with my mom is limited to managing the Tri Nagar house with her.
I think if she had enough money to run her life, she wouldn’t bother me.
She needs money, not me.
I don’t see too much history or future with Anu either.
My last conversation (which was one sided with Anu lecturing me) was very painful and disappointing.
So, in short:
If I were dying, I would be better off without having Anu around, than with having her.
(3) Health
Health is not okay. Headache and stress.
Primarily the reason that triggered me to think about death.
(4) Remaining time (or life)
Now the toughest question: what would I like to do with my remaining time?
Well, I could think about a couple of questions:
(4.1) What could I do to improve my finances?
(4.2) What could I do to better my relationships?
(4.3) What could I do to better my health?
After a couple of minutes...
Completely blank on finances and relationships...
But yeah I could rest and relax to regain my health.
Cya!
Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011. I was in college at that time and soon after his death, his biography by Walter Isaacson was released.
There were not a lot of things or lessons I gathered from that book when I first read it in my college days, apart from the sections and parts of the book I connected emotionally with.
Lately, I have been doing endless meditative writings about death and quoting Steve Jobs frequently for his views on death: “What would you do differently if it were your last day?”
That question has acted as a very powerful focusing lens on what I did for the past couple of years, maybe. But this morning, I realized there is also a second very powerful technique that Steve Jobs used and taught frequently to enhance focus. That technique was “Saying No”.
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully." – Steve Jobs
As I was starting my day today around 4AM amidst headache and muddled thoughts, my first thoughts were: “To focus better, what would I say 'No' to today?”
And without too much thinking the answer popped up in my head was “Blogging”. Funny, ain't it? 😀
One of the main reasons why I chose “Blogging” to say 'No' to was because it takes me about 2 hours to work on a blog post end-to-end (from watching a video to social media promotion). And now, saying 'No' to blogging meant I could easily save 2 to 4 hours.
Apart from helping me focus, this technique has three benefits:
1) Helps you focus
2) Helps you get some extra time
3) Helps you step out of routine and ritual a bit. (Very much the case for me: by choosing not to blog, I focused my attention towards office formalities and towards rest. And honestly, the day feels pretty different.)
Thank you for reading!
PS: This technique “Saying 'No'” feels a bit like taking a “niyam” (not eating salt, not eating sugar, not getting angry, not lying, not disrespecting, etc - any one per day) at the Jain temple in my childhood days. And that resolve alone made you pay attention to what you say, do, eat or (maybe) think – making the day feel very different.
