By now, the tech world is going over the top on the Deepseek-R1 model and its implications for the broader world. Deepseek dropped a paper on Jan 22, 2025, which spoke about a model that is slightly better than OpenAI’s o1 model(the incumbent and the best reasoning model so far). What was more stark is that this was achieved with a cost of $6 million(vs ~$100 million), with 200+ employees(vs 4500+ employees of OpenAI) and in 2 months, was the clincher that has pushed the industry to the boil. Prior to this, several million dollars were required in computing to train a model like Deepseek-R1 and, furthermore, millions and millions for inference. They also have used far fewer GPUs(2000 Nvidia H800s vs 100k) than the ones used by the premier model. ARC-AGI benchmarks, too, confirm the results published in the paper.

None of this should be surprising, as Deepseek released a paper on December 26, 2024, launching Deepseek v3. However, this time, the reaction was different and quite profound. US large-cap technology companies and the industry at large are in shock, which the market reflects in red. Nvidia lost $590 billion in market capitalization in a single day, marking the largest drop in history.

Why is this a big deal?

Marc Andreessen calls this AI’s Sputnik moment for the US. But why is this a big deal? The US government introduced export controls back in 2022, restricting China from procuring advanced GPUs from the US. This is important since these GPUs were required for training general-purpose models and advanced reasoning models. Deepseek, a Chinese company founded by a former hedge fund manager, managed to develop a better reasoning model using less powerful GPUs (compared to the GPUs. that leading AI companies in the US had), fewer employees, and very low limitations on APIs. This model can run on a high-end laptop. Additionally, it was launched with open weights (but not open source), meaning we don’t have access to the training data. Still, it is different from OpenAI, where their models are closed and proprietary. We must understand that they achieved all of this even at low cost and without access to the latest H100 GPUs that their US competitors could use. This is the most striking aspect of this episode, which leads many to feel that Deepseek-R1 came out of nowhere.

More chips. More compute.

OpenAI has been leading the initiative to create more compute for training and inference. It recently launched Project Stargate, which will develop AI infrastructure in the U.S. for $500 billion.

All companies building models have chosen to invest heavily in GPUs for training and inference, pouring several billion dollars into future computational resources. This has created immense demand for GPUs, as well as for the memory and power required to support this massive infrastructure. However, Deepseek has disrupted the standard operating principles of this industry by leapfrogging several practices and innovating new methods to train and create models at very low training and inference costs and with far fewer GPUs. Clearly, the export controls have led to less powerful GPUs at their disposal, prompting them to maximize efficiency and employ ingenious techniques such as reinforcement learning and distillation. This discussion details the strategies adopted by Deepseek. The belief that we need more GPUs, more compute, and more power is now outdated.

That said, doubts have been raised about whether Deepseek had access to 50,000 H100s and whether they might have used other models (which originated in the US) for distillation purposes. These claims are unfounded at this point, and there is no data backing them up.

Bull and Bear case

This means that all frontier model development companies will thoroughly examine the Deepseek papers and adopt those techniques. Even better, they will conceive more ingenious methods across all layers of the stack involved in creating a model. This will lead to more efficient and effective reasoning models, which will ultimately benefit the customers the most.

However, models will become commodities (if they are not already). Many open-source models will be available. The advantage of closed, proprietary model companies has been challenged. We will have significantly improved use cases and applications that will be realised due to the low footprint required.

Meta, which already has an open-source model, will launch models on par(if not better) than Deepseek. Grok 3 is on the anvil, and I am sure they are in the race. Open AI will have to justify the cost and compute to its investors. Open AI and Microsoft are already growing increasingly distant, and this development will only accelerate their separation. But Sam Altman’s tweet today says otherwise. Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta were right in saying models would become commodities. They are sitting pretty that it is playing out as they predicted.

Two years ago, a few pointed out that AWS had missed the boat. But with AWS Bedrock for powering the agentic stack and a slew of announcements in its recently concluded Re: Invent(and the one before), it did make amends big time. With models becoming a commodity, AWS(and GCP and Azure) will benefit greatly.

There was a leaked internal Google memo (written by a Google employee and not to be taken as Google’s official document) where I really like a line: ‘We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI.’ This has become true much faster. OpenAI will definitely come out swinging, but they will have to invest in creating new moats. May be they have projects that are not public yet. As the startup world says, ‘never bet against Sam Altman.’ It will be interesting to see what OpenAI does from here and how Sam takes it forward. His initial reactions indicate he is in for the long game, as it has always been and as it should be.

In this mayhem, Apple stock(and Meta, Facebook, Amazon) has gone against the trend. It will benefit because Apple intelligence can be much more meaningful and useful to customers, given the low footprint required for running a very powerful model on these devices. Not just Apple devices, but future smartphones will be nothing like what we have now. This might usher in an era of AI-first smartphones that look different and do a whole lot of things that are not possible now. This was going to happen anyway; it’s just that the timeline has accelerated.

There will likely be additional export bans from the U.S., along with several restrictions on all AI-related exports. The Deepseek app might be banned in the U.S. and possibly in India, given the previous precedent regarding concerns that Chinese apps collect data and store it in servers in China(and not in the countries where the users reside). The next few days will tell us how this will unfold.

Nvidia stock will likely recover once the market rebounds from the doomsday scenario. Satya Nadella from Microsoft spoke about Jevons' paradox, which may unfold in the next few years. Given that fewer GPUs are required to create a new reasoning model, more such models will emerge. Additional use cases will arise, necessitating more compute and, consequently, more GPUs. There will be a period of recalibration regarding GPU needs, but demand for GPUs is expected to increase from this point forward. This represents the bull case that many anticipate. The bear case suggests less need for GPUs if the application of Gen AI use cases does not grow exponentially as we expect it to. However, the bear case is unlikely, considering the Gen AI-driven advancements that have been occurring over the past few years. Amid all this, many are discussing the obscure term in public discourse - Jevons' paradox. Economist Shruti noted in her tweet that everyone in the X feed is talking about Jevons' paradox. To be frank, I heard about it for the first time this week :)

We might be closer to AGI/ASI, and this is a possibility within our lifetime. The race is on, with the US and China being two key players in it. This bipolar competition will lead to extreme innovation, and as Marc mentioned, it could be the AI’s Sputnik moment. During the Space War, which the US won, we witnessed innovation at breakneck speed in just a few years. Until now, there was no narrative framing this as a race, but given recent developments, many in the US tech sector are comparing this moment to a race (and not a sprint, but a marathon). The space race still exists in the public imagination and is easily being used as an analogy in this context.

The next five years (if not a decade) will see new breakthroughs and innovations that we haven’t experienced in the past five years. When I say this, I fully understand what the last five years have resulted in and what has been a relentless march of innovation. Since governments also view AI supremacy as absolutely required for their global standing and sovereignty, we will see more government push and easing of regulations, clearing the path for innovators to build. It will be interesting to see how China and the broader world reacts.

What is clearer is that for a country to remain relevant in the global order, it must be self-reliant in building chips, compute, energy, and foundational models. These four are essential, and governments will increasingly push for investments in them.

Where is the value?

As models become commoditized, the real value is in the application layer. We can build new applications on top of the models and solve real-world problems for customers and enterprises. New ideas exist, such as leveraging Gen AI to fast-track drug development for diseases, an enterprise stack of agents, etc.

Enterprise products have adopted Gen AI over the past two years, solving several use cases intelligently. These primarily focus on improving productivity, enabling efficiency and powering conversational user experiences. Recently, building agents has become mainstream, and nearly all companies are investing in developing or adopting agentic frameworks to launch a variety of agents. However, these Enterprise and SaaS product companies have been charging a premium for these Gen AI features, largely due to the costs incurred for token usage and compute. Given that Deepseek has made it affordable, these companies must reconsider their pricing strategies. In a few years, Gen AI features are poised to become mainstream, and these companies will not be able to charge a premium. It will be interesting to see how companies recalibrate from here.

What is in it for India?

India has been concentrating on creating applications leveraging Gen AI and building SOTA models, specialising in Indic languages. So far, the narrative has been to avoid building foundational LLMs in India because they are very costly, and we can use the money elsewhere. But given the recent developments, we should revisit our approach and go all in to build foundational general-purpose and reasoning models.

India demonstrated how it can innovate in the space industry(and not limited to) and achieve several feats at a fraction of the cost. We should have pursued the goal of building foundational models from India. This is a grave error, but we can rectify it quickly. Right now, in India, there is a rebuke over Sam Altman’s earlier comment about India not being able to compete with the models, as the old video has resurfaced. However, we should channel our energy elsewhere and go back to building.

We should invest in building chips in India. While there have been many developments and government programs in the past few years, establishing this industry at scale in India will take many companies and several years of consistent effort. We need to fast-track what would take several decades of effort into less than a decade.

We should also invest significantly in the computing power, infrastructure, and energy needed to support these.

While these are the top four investments we need to make to become a player in this AI race, many other possibilities exist. We will discuss these further in subsequent posts.

Memories are curious. Few are ever truly forgotten, and many do not surface while we go about our daily routines. However, when you read a beautiful sentence or hear someone speak about something, suddenly your memories come flooding back. These are deeply rooted thoughts in your mind that you never realized you had. Such are our memories. Some stem from a past you wish to forget, while others bring warmth, and it is those very moments that remind us how truly blessed we are to be alive.

I grew up in a remote dust bowl of a town called Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, India. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and neither do its residents. They go about their daily lives at their own pace, without any displayed flamboyance. It is a sleepy town and a poorer member of the delta districts, where agriculture remains the primary occupation for its residents. The food is tastier, the air is cleaner, and the roads are lined with trees that create a welcoming green landscape. Local people build homes with gardens, unlike in cities where every inch of land is taken up by concrete structures. As the years have passed, few things have changed. Yet, it retains the essence of a small town.

In our garden, we had teak trees in their full, towering glory, short coconut trees (not the usual tall ones) that were easy to pluck from, mango trees that produced plentiful Sindhura mangoes in the summer, and banana plants that constantly nourished us with every part. We had lemon trees whose fruits were in demand year-round and a Moringa tree whose drumstick yield was abundant, turning me into a rookie entrepreneur as I sold it to nearby shops. We also cultivated several plants for vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Every morning, we would wake up to the sounds of sparrows. At least once a week, we had to fend off monkeys from eating the produce from our trees.

Yet, one tree stood out: an Indian cork tree, also known as Mara Malligai or Akasha Malli, located right outside our house. When you stand near it, you are mesmerized by the fragrance of its flowers. The flowers resemble the Nadaswaram, and, like their counterpart, when blown, produce a lovely sound. The tree existed before I was born and stood tall until a recent cyclone brought it down. I was not home to witness its fall, but hearing about it from my parents filled me with sadness. If I ever own a farm or a large plot of land, perhaps this tree will be in the front.

There is another tree in my father’s ancestral village in Ramanathapuram. On the slope of a large pond that stretches wide and long, a big, old banyan tree stands with a temple beneath it. I hear the tree has always been there; my grandfather probably saw it too. I was unfortunate not to have met him, as I was born a decade or more after his passing. Yet, there is a tree that connects his time to mine. Now, my kids have also seen the tree and sat beneath it to escape the hot, scorching sun that is synonymous with the state.

The tree has served as a connecting arc for my family across several generations. I rarely visit the village, but the picturesque scene of the pond, the tree, and the temple is well etched in my memory, evoking a haunting and mystical feeling. I don’t know why. Recently, the tree fell, leaving only a remnant of the old trunk. In its place, a new banyan tree has grown.

Circle of life!

Yesterday, I watched “The Martian”. It’s a space movie where the astronaut Mark Watney gets left out in mars while on a mission and how he plots his way back to earth. I am a sucker for space movies. Interestingly, it took me back to the past.

It was 2013. My startup had failed. I had invested in my startup, all that I had saved during my 2 year stint at the first job. It needed more capital, so I borrowed some money. Also, there was a family health emergency and I borrowed more money. Once my startup went bust, I was broke big time and by then, I had borrowed more than I can manage. I found a job right after but it didn’t change my financial status quo. Within 5 months, I gave up on the job as I didn’t like it and was back to unemployed bench.

Every day of 2013 was brutal. I had to make a hard decision of shutting down my startup. “How did you know that its time to do so?” — This is a common question that is asked to a cricketer who has just announced his decision to retire or a startup founder who has decided to get acquired or a startup founder who has decided to give up on his dreams. Well, You sort of know that in your heart. Once this inner peace manifests, the decision will follow. But still it’s a painful process to go through. Once decided, I executed it which was even more painful. Then I found a job and it was a spectacular flop. I was unemployed and in dire need of a job. As is, I was broke financially and was struggling to repay the borrowed money. All this in one year.

I started looking for jobs and couldn’t find any right away. Few people whom I counted didn’t deliver. None of the interviews went my way. So, there I was waiting for that one miracle that will help me come out of my rabbit hole and see the light at end of the long, dark tunnel. But, it never came.

My parent’s were getting frustrated and it grew as days went by. One day, I lied to my parents that I was going to an interview and instead, decided to roam around the city of chennai, quite mindlessly. In the morning, I went to express avenue mall and made my way to Escape cinemas. I wanted to watch some movie. I booked a ticket for this english movie — “Gravity”. It was a luxury to spend Rs.120 on a ticket, back then. But I watched it. Then something happened.

After the movie got over, I felt very different. I realized that the movie affected me deeply. Initially, I presumed that it is the usual after-effect post watching a good movie. But it stayed with me. The idea of resilient will of a woman who made it to earth from deep space despite all odds. Later the day, I went to the beach and let it sink in.

Within a week, I landed an awesome job at a fast growing startup. I am still part of it growing professionally and personally. I am not saying that watching “Gravity” helped me land a job. Definitely, No.

But, it put me in touch my inner self. Back in the beach, I realized that at the end of the day, I wanted to survive this chaotic phase. I wanted to come out of it and not give in. “Get busy living or get busy dying”.

During this tumultuous period, I experienced all of negative emotions such as failure, depression, loneliness, fear, helplessness in various degrees. Not for just a day, but for over a year. But, I had few great friends who were there for me whenever I needed them and I am very grateful for it.

Usually, such journey is a lonely one. The long nights, empty stare and hopelessness are the norm. I am not the only one who underwent such things. There are countless people who have gone through or going through it. In fact, their problem might be much graver than what you or me faced in our lives. Every human who has taken birth on this planet will go through one or more negative emotions at a given point in time.

Recently, I saw this ted talk where the speaker talks about how we don’t care about our psychological health like we do our physical health. It is true in every sense.

During tough times, we need support from family and friends to help us stay afloat. You need someone to pat you in the back when something positive happens or to act as a sounding board or to slap you when you screw up something. In short, you need someone to keep you sane. Because, loneliness will rear its ugly head. It will derail our thinking and drive us to do things that we would normally squirm at.

It is perfectly ok to seek professional help. Don’t worry about the stigma associated with it in the society. Sometimes, its better to deal with it through professionally trained people.

If you are going through a failure, then the normal reaction would be to approach anything with caution. This can go to an extend where you will refuse to take a step forward as the recent failure will be in back of your mind. If we stop there and don’t take a step forward, then life stays as it is. But if we overcome the fear and take a step forward then we can change life for the better. We always have a choice when we are going through a failure and that very choice will separate winners from the rest. When AR Rahman won oscars for Best original score and Best original song, he said in his acceptance speech — “all my life I had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I’m here”.

Of course, we undergo a lot of stress and anxiety. But beyond a point, it doesn’t matter. Like MS Dhoni would say “It’s like having 100kg put over you. After that even if you put a mountain, it will not make a difference.”

It is always darker before the dawn. If you feel helplessness, it’s perfectly ok. Give yourself a break and don’t beat yourself to death emotionally. But import thing is not to give in. Giving in is the thing that kills people and their self esteem and not the failure itself. Believe that, This too shall pass.

Remember, “Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

I wrote this piece to share my story of failure, depression, loneliness, fear, helplessness, so that it can help someone who is going through it right now. It might help someone to come out of it and shine in their life. More such stories are required to bring awareness.

If you know of someone who is going through a bad phase, make it a mission to help them out. They badly need it but they can’t ask for it. Please volunteer and be what they want you to be. In past, it might be that there was no one to help you when you were going through a bad phase. Do you really want this person also to go through the same? Please drop your ego and help them out. Who knows, you might have saved a person from suicide or depression or from going on a bad, dangerous path. It is our responsibility to help such people. We have to instil hope in their minds and help them figure out the art of resiliency.

My 2015 was an awesome year. There were many occasions to celebrate and reflect upon. There is another new year that is waiting to unfold. From my growing days, I had a long harboured wish of writing. I dabbled in it for many years. I write whenever my muse takes me over. There is this sudden surge of mental activities where words start to flow seamlessly and fingers seems to capture every bit of it. I get such a joy and a ‘high’ while writing.

I am writing this post because my muse has taken me over, once again. When last year dawned, I decided to make a habit of writing often with the goal of writing atleast a week. Also I wanted my writing to reach more number of people and possibly build a network of followers.

Mostly, I achieved both the goals. I created a publication “The Last Lecture” and started writing in it regularly. It has crossed 6400 followers and counting. Also, I wrote many essays which is where my heart is. There were discussions and responses around those essays. People seem to have liked it. To sum it up, I am happy with how I have progressed with my writing.

Journey of a writer

There is a typical journey of anyone who writes. Initially, you read from many sources, especially from lot of books. Every day, there are interactions with others. Then there are your lessons from success and failure of various events in life. At times, you travel to a different city. All these things influences you. You start to form your own opinions and rationale.

Along this ride, you start to pick a tone, a voice in writing. And it is unique. But it takes years to find it. Once found, it forms the soul of your writing. After years of writing regularly, it starts to flourish. My goal has been to find that tone and I believe that it has started to emerge. It will take years to sharpen it and I am willing to patiently try it out.

All of my writing experiments in 2015 have reaped good results and has given me confidence to continue more elaborate and bolder experiments in 2016 as well. They say ‘New year, New beginnings’. I have decided to make a new beginning by writing something that I have been living with for the past three years. It has been nagging me every single day and given me sleepless nights. There are days when it has blew me away with sudden sparks of ideas. It’s something that I want to tell to the world. They say, if you want to write a book, then it has to come from within. You don’t start to write a book on one fine morning. You have to live with it for months together and sincerely believe you have a story(if there exists one) to tell the world.

Yes. I have to decided to write a book, tentatively titled — Book #1. So, what is it about? For this, I have to tell you a story.

The Startup Story

I was a naive 23 year old when I started up. We began well. We didn’t startup for wrong reasons such as being my own boss or to get rich like those internet moguls. Also we didn’t want to add to the ever-growing, ever-present statistics of people, by eternally sitting on an idea. We went ahead and built a product from ground up.

Nothing gives you the high like building something you envisioned. During a lifetime, very few people get to build something that’s theirs. It’s even rare if they get to do it more than once.

Until launch, we were in this happy period thinking that ‘Build. They will come’. Once we went to market, we soon realized the hard knocks of business, that is, product-market fit. We validated few of our assumptions and yet we didn’t close any deal.

Product-market fit was elusive. We realized that we were not building what people want, not the version that they will use. We went back to drawing board and built a new version. This time, response was better and we managed to close quite a handful of deals for few months. But again, we were not able to build a sustainable revenue channel. Again we went back to drawing board, and decided to build again. But that version never saw the end of day.

While starting up, we never took cognizance of the fact that we needed enough money to take off from the runway. We ran out of money and were not able to raise further rounds of investment. This led to infighting between co-founders and it turned ugly. We scaled too fast and did few things too soon. We did all this for that one elusive breakthrough. In hindsight, what we did was to throw a hail mary pass. Eventually we shut shop and moved on.

Why I am writing this book

The best advice I got for writing a book is to articulate the idea of your book in one page. This one page document will act as your true north. Here is my true north —

1. Most of startups fail for three reasons — running out of cash, co-founder fighting (usually one leads to other) and not building what people want. It is true that you learn lot out of failures and I am extremely happy to have embarked on that crazy journey of entrepreneurship.

2. Unlike the prevailing notion of celebrating failure by ‘Fail Fast’, failure hits you quite hard. It is devastating on many levels and has a deeper impact on your personal, financial and health fronts. It is a rabbit hole and you will never know when you will see light at the end of tunnel.

3. During the same time, I was noticing lot of glorification of startups and romanticising the idea of entrepreneurship. Popular media spins lot of tales about a twenty-something guy going on to found a billion dollar company and living life king-size. But what they don’t tell is for every successful entrepreneur there are thousands of others who fail. Their stories are never told. Instead, they sell the idea of mass entrepreneurship and send an unprepared person to go through a soul crushing, wilderness trip without understanding the vicissitudes and fundamentals of entrepreneurship.

4. Further, people who advice on startups are those who don’t have an ounce of experience in entrepreneurship. They are fence walkers, cheerleaders who haven’t taken risks by starting up.

5. 9 out of 10 startups fail. Whole venture capital industry is built on the fact only 1–2 startups in their portfolio give 10x returns. A few startups give 2x return. Rest of the startups are loss making ventures.

6. Often people who startup fixate on their idea claiming that it will revolutionize the world. Though it is a good start to have a great idea, it doesn’t help you go all the way. Execution of the idea defines the success of a startup.

These, along with, my tryst with failure, got me into thinking mode. I did an objective study of what went wrong. I read lot of books and spoke to past and present entrepreneurs. I worked for few startups. Currently, I work in a fast growing startup. Something began to dawn on me. It started to emerge that success of startups can be traced back to consistently committing to fundamentals. However different the startups are, fundamentals remains the same.

So I wrote a blogpost compiling a list of fundamental learnings titled ‘Hundred things that I learnt while building my startup’ and published it, hoping it makes some resonance. But what followed was beyond my expectations. Entrepreneurs and ‘want-to-be’ entrepreneurs responded positively and wrote to me in droves. As a result of that post, I got couple of jobs too. This gave me confidence and bolstered my belief that people could identify with my theory and appreciate it. Thus, that blogpost became a minimum viable product(MVP) for writing a book.

I started looking for inspiration from other fields where sticking to basics and improvising on it is practised. ‘Kaizen’ caught my eye. Kaizen is a process of continuous improvement made famous by Japanese industries especially by Toyota’s production system. Lean Startup was partly inspired by kaizen.

Startups can’t be run like a traditional business. Because startups operate on a high level of uncertainty in trying to build and launch a product and create a repeatable and sustainable business. Principles practised in behemoths doesn’t work in startups. This was an inspiration behind Lean Startup. It gives you a blueprint on how to apply lean startup principles and build a successful startup. Eric Ries is the architect of lean startup and he devised a methodology where he believed entrepreneurship is a kind of management that can be taught and learnt.

Lean startup gave words to my thought process post my startup debacle like it had done for hundreds of entrepreneurs all over the world. But I felt that there was a greater scope to extend and extrapolate on lean startup by concentrating more deeper on lot of smaller yet fundamental things.

What are the fundamental things that I am talking about?

1. Though it is very well known that founder issues are one of important reasons of failure of startups, there was no definitive information to how to choose your co-founder.

2. It is imperative to have financial plan for your family and your startup for atleast an year. You can’t starve your family while you chase your dreams. Also you need to bootstrap initially. Heedless of the awaiting disaster, founders plough on with their idea.

3. You have to be two-face. Though you should love your solution for a problem statement that you are solving in your startup, you should not obsess on it. Love your problem, not your solution.

These are the smaller things that I refer to. Often, these smaller things are ignored and ridiculed. We think that these smaller things will not impact on a larger level and don’t give it’s due importance.

Startups don’t achieve success on a bright monday morning. As Jim Rohn, famous entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker, would say, “Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day. While failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day”. When you aggregate gains on lot of smaller things, over a period of time, it will be the difference between success and failure. It is very similar to compounding of wealth.

This theory has been around for some time and is called “aggregation of marginal gains”. It was made popular by Sir Dave Brailsford during his stint in Team Sky and British Cycling Team.

Sir Dave Brailsford was the Performance Director of British Cycling. He adopted a methodology wherein if you start improving 1% on everything and anything that goes into riding a bike, those small gains would add upto considerable improvement. He was proved right when Britain went on to win two cycling gold medals in 2004 Olympics, their highest tally in cycling event in any olympics since 1908. In 2008 and 2012 Olympics, they dominated the proceedings by winning eight gold medals.

In 2010, he joined Team Sky, a cycling team as General Manager and Performance Director. He faced an arduous task of turning things around and ultimately winning the coveted ‘Tour De France’. He applied his ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ practise and orchestrated consecutive Tour de France victories of Team Sky in 2012 and 2013.

Thus evolved my theory from its elementary state. So the higher order bit is

a) consistently sticking to fundamentals, those little things in running a startup

b) improving atleast 1% on everything wherein small gains would add upto considerable improvement over a period of time.

This will be precisely what I will be exploring in depth in this book. Now, I am waiting for my muse to take over for the entire year of 2016 and help me write my three year dream.

I am a morning person and I wake up around 5 - 5.30 AM every day. Within minutes, I switch on wifi and connect to it from my smartphone. Bam! There are tons of notifications and email. I sincerely check each one of them. I reply to those pressing emails and slack channels. Mostly social media walls are my news feeds. Each post is varied and ‘feels’ to be very important. I read it one by one. There are those posts that will take to many other posts through their inlinks. I follow each one of them. After sometime, fatigue sets in and thought processing slows down. At this point, I take a break and set out to do some physical activity. I religiously save rest of the articles to my Pocket reading list presuming that I will read it when I am free. As the day progresses, now and then some nicely written post catch my eye and I am on it. Then something pressing comes up and I leave it either having read a fair bit or full of it, but without forming any actual thoughts on it.

This is a typical life of anyone in the age of smartphone. Click. Click. More clicks. But all for nothing.

Though we consume a tons of information, do we really sit back and think about it? The time we spend to concentrate on a topic, think and reflect upon it over a fixed amount of time is non existent. It has really been a long time since I sat back and let my thoughts form on an amazing blog post that I read a while ago. What I read a while ago is lost for ever. Nothing gained in terms of knowledge or skill. It has been reduced to a zero sum game and is a greatest trick that the devil ever played. Death of thinking.

Who is to be blamed? Each one of us. Why do we do this? Fear of missing out. We don’t want to miss out on that thing which might get us the lucky break. It might give an idea for a startup that we have been waiting for. It might make us look like a fool when we are not aware of a happening thing during a chat with a group of people.

At any given point, We all know what we can know and what we want to know. It is just that we have to apply from what we already know. We don’t allot time to process that. We consume and consume, but forget to produce and reduce ourselves to facts junkie. I am afraid where we will end up, if we just consume and consume but not produce. Probably in an asylum.

After some pondering, I started to do some experiments to get my life back on track.

Experiment #1 — Control how the days starts.

As soon as I wake up, I stopped peeking into my smartphone and never switch on wi-fi. Instead, I take a stroll outside my building and start jogging. Then I meditate for a while. Still no smartphone in my hand. Then I read some newspapers and a book. Now I take my smartphone for my allotted 10 minutes time. Then I get back to life, do some errands and proceed to office. After reaching office, I start replying to those pressing emails and slack channels.

Throughout this first experiment, I had a nagging feeling to get hold of my smartphone and connect to internet. Some times I resisted and at times I gave in. Initially, it was frustrating to let go. But gradually, it felt ok and thus became the new normal.

Experiment #2 — Avoid clicks while and after reading something

My second experiment was to avoid clicks after click. I read the same amazing blog post, step back now and then to process the information. After reading, I form my own thoughts and thereby ideas. Sometimes I might agree with the point of view but think further to have my own well formed ideas on that topic. At times, I disagree but with solid and rational counter points.

Experiment #3 — A file to note down little sparks

My third experiment was to maintain a spark file. I borrowed it from here. Often, while reading a blog post, talking to a colleague, taking bath or driving to office, there are barely formed little spark of an idea. Give it a minute, it is long gone from your limits of mind. It is like a developers eternal search for a reason for that line of code that they wrote a month ago. I decided to note down all such little sparks and revisit it often. When you revisit, some ideas might be laughable. But few ideas might connect and become something concrete. But very few ideas might take the air from the room and leave us completely silent, like Jony Ive said in his famous tribute to Steve Jobs. This blog post is result of one such idea.

Experiment #4 — Avoid distractions and practise 30 minutes burst mode

I love to do multitasking and in fact, I boast about it all the time. But for quite sometime, I realized that there was a serious dip in my productivity. I was frustrated and felt really bad.

I would be writing some code. Then I will be reading something from my pocket reading list and writing down an idea in my spark file. I would start playing a song. Suddenly, I will realize that I had digressed from writing code. At times, I will not remember what I was doing at the first place.

I confused distractions with multitasking. I decided to switch gears and started to work in bursts. I will work for 25 minutes straight with just the task in hand. Then take a break for 5 minutes. Then another 30 minutes burst. Every two hours, I take 10–15 minutes break and I go for a walk.This way I was able to maintain the momentum and enjoy optimal productivity.

During such bursts, there will be distractions that you can’t control. There will be meetings or one of those 100 other reasons. It is perfectly normal. Instead of trying to control it, just go with the flow and try to get back to 30 minutes burst as early as possible.

Experiment #5 — It’s OK to be bored. It’s the last privilege of a free mind.

Recently I visited my hometown which is a sleepy little town located in the southern coast of Tamil Nadu. I was not able to connect to internet for three days. Initially, it was difficult to comprehend. Back here where I migrated to make a living, I am connected to high speed internet every second of a day. I was bored throughout my stay there.

Likewise, occasionally we will feel bored. There will be nothing to do. We will be either crouching in sofa or curling up on the bed. For many years, I felt ashamed to be in such a state. I often found ways to keep myself occupied. I wanted to be productive every second of the day. I wanted to be engaged with one activity or the other. I was very frustrated if I wasted even a minute in a day.

Then I read this and was blown away. To sum it up, it says “Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It’s the last privilege of a free mind. Lean in to boredom, not your smart phone screen. You’ll learn more about yourself and the world around you than you think. You know the best antidote to boredom? Think.”

I decided not to keep myself engaged all the time. It is ok to be bored. Instead, I started to think when bored. I made peace with myself that it is going to take time to be successful. It is ok to take things slow. Everything in life can’t be a fast moving highway.

Experiment #6 — Practise no internet day.

Once I got back home from my hometown, I was thinking how it’d be if I practised the same, that is, No internet for a whole day. This day, I will strictly have it for myself. I can do whatever I want, except connect to internet or use any digital device. I will not pick up my smartphone or laptop unless there is an emergency. The frequency of no internet day can be per week or per month based on your comfort level.

In west, there are many attempts to do exactly this. They call it Internet Sabbath.

Experiment #7 — Practise silence every day.

Silence. These days, there is absolutely no possibility for it. I made sure that I practise silence for at least 15 minutes in a day. During this time, I usually meditate. You can go to a nearby park. The bottomline is that you can pick your own tool for practising silence. I am very early in the process. So I can’t comment with authority. But it sure has brought in much needed clarity and peace.

These are the experiments that I have done lately to prevent death of thoughts and get things back in control. My productivity has improved and there is inner calmness. All my experiments might not be possible to do at a stretch. You can identify a problem that you want to overcome and pick a corresponding experiment. Do that experiment and try to make it as a habit. If you want some help in creating habits, then follow the seinfeld strategy. In due course, after finding what works for you, you can create a variant of an experiment. I look forward to hear from you what worked and what didn’t work.

Pic: Thanjavur Big Temple.

It’s amazing what people can create. Their creation still stand tall amidst the test of times. Why do they do it?

Well, this question is the very basis of existence of human life. Some people are constantly urged by the idea of creating something that touches people’s life. By creating, they ascend to the gates of immortality and claiming a permanent seat, thereby living beyond their time after death.

So, the question that we should ask ourselves is — What is your idea?