The philosophy behind "asjbdhjasdfhgw"

Better late than never, right? Finally jumped on the Twitter bandwagon this year, and boy, getting started is no cakewalk. Well it is, but my mind refuses to keep things simple. I just have to overthink and obsess myself into always having the perfect start and how every move will play out in the long run. This lame thought process explains why most of my work is in stealth, wrapped up in this self-limiting idea that I’m just an introvert, so being reserved is my natural state.

And then earlier this year I passively tuned into a conversation, and one of the people I really look up to dropped this nugget - “young people in India worried about reputation when they have none”. It struck a chord, revealing a limiting belief that's kept me back for so long. It’s funny how simple words have such high impact. so now I’m on a journey to just do stuff and put myself out there without worrying about all the bullshit my mind makes up along the way by just asjhdasdkjadhjd-ing way into starting things.

what are my goals with the newsletter?

Just gonna talk about stuff I think is cool, with work updates and a few personal updates. The Ws and the Ls. The stuff I find interesting at the time of writing filled with disgustingly bad humour.

There’s isn’t going to be any structure and it’s probably going to evolve into something I can’t be bothered to predict. I’m just writing this for myself (and maybe my mom who wonders what is going on in my head and wth do I even do)

Stuff that happened lately.

I took a youtube video and turned it into a mobile game and published it on both ios and android.

I won a live gameshow with a winning prize of $25k. It was pretty cool but also very intense, took a lot of all nighters doing all the code & art by myself. Over 17,000 people took part working on all sorts of crazy ideas from so many different domains.

In life, there are very few outsized opportunities. Winning Buildspace’s nights and weekends is one of them. As someone from a third world country, an opportunity to reach to SF and essentially relive a uni life - with all the upside (connections and learning) and none of the downside (debt or time wasted).

I think it’s important to recognise such opportunities when they come along, and when you do decide to pursue them - make sure there’s no potential energy left in the tank when it all ends. There shouldn’t be any coulda woulda shoulda left.

The world will never know the subtleties it took - how I scheduled all feedback calls with new people just before I was about to tweet, so they would engage with it after the call. Or how I stayed back till 5am on demo day trying to present my idea to as many new people as possible - because the next day they’d be watching me live and get a chance to vote. 100s of little things that are just silly to talk about. Did any of these things even matter? idk, but they probably had a non zero impact.

This is what going all-in with no stones unturned looks like. I didn’t know if I was going to win, but I did know that nobody could’ve put more effort than I did over those 6 weeks.

After n&w ended, I went to an irl event in Dubai. It was surreal, lowkey felt like a mini celeb there, because soooo many people I’ve never met knew me — mostly because of the gameshow and my twitter updates. It’s a feeling that’s very foreign and hard to articulate, but definitely something I could get used to.

I met some truly amazing people. It felt like one big happy family, everybody and I mean EVERYBODY was fascinating. An event where two hundred people flew from all over the world, after hustling on their idea for 6 weeks straight. Only 200 out of 17k. At the very least, the event is an amazing filter for talented people who put in the work.

But where there are highs, there are also lows.

This has also been the saddest month of my life. I also suffered a deep personal loss a few weeks ago, so rn I’m in recovery mode and writing is such a good way to get out of my head. You know somethings not right when your reminder to stop going down a spiral is a notification from your watch indicating a spike in heart rate.

The human experience is truly fascinating. I think of life as a rollercoaster — if you were on a rollercoaster and it only went up then you’d get bored of it pretty quick. True discovery and thrill only happens on the lows. It’s somehow liberating knowing things can’t possibly get any worse.

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Anyway.. had a weird dream last night. I was an orange, stuck in a medieval courtroom consisting of only vegetables that had anime eyes. The king was a potato with Morgan Freeman’s voice. They were racist but also jealous of me (presumably because of my fruit race), and I think they wanted to carve me up because they confused me as a pumpkin? idek.

so here’s an absurd poll

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Weekly stuff

Thoughts that have gotten me through this week

When heading towards a mountain, the view from where you stand, and the view from one step forward are basically the same. Nothing changes, but with enough steps the you’re already at the peak of the mountain. That’s what progress looks like. Don’t bother visualizing day to day progress, just move a lil bit forward each day.

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Insights

I think there is more value and growth to be had when I am prompted by AI vs getting answers from AI. I’ve often found that the questions are the limiters rather than the answer.

Something you should try: take a normal scenario where you have to make a decision, intricately feed context about that decision into gpt and ask it what questions or things should I be considering that I am not. It reveals many blindspots and silly oversights. Right now doing this is a chore, but I hope someday feeding context becomes natural and effortless.

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Links this week

This podcast episode was just full of gems

The Buildspace s4 movie. WATCH THIS! (also I didn’t expect that kind of screen time)

https://x.com/FarzaTV/status/1719091708775059754

Billions - The show just concluded. I remember starting this in 2017 and the first couple seasons had so much influence on me eesh. The ending was cliché but satisfying.

https://www.sho.com/billions

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