I'm not 100% sure what's been going on with me in terms of writing. Actually, I do, and it's all to do with work.

I'm supposed to be using writing in order to release some of the tension that I've been feeling, to get some of the crap inside outside of my head, and to use it as an outlet. I've definitely not been doing myself justice in this regard, and today I've decided to just let fingers flow onto a slab of glass and just hit the road hard. I'm going straight out until I stop.

I've been listening to the great Tim Dillon on the Are You Garbage podcast. It's been hilarious to listen to what, as the hosts say, is classified as classy versus trashy and sometimes I find myself in between two things. America, as a whole, has a culture of quantity over quality, and that's one of the themes I have noticed on that podcast: trashy things are essentially cheap, overbloated, over-sugared, quantity-enhanced choices, while the quality choices are more expensive, thought out, et cetera.

Growing up in Staten Island in the early to mid-2000s without a car didn't really present with a lot of choices, but growing up in a South Asian household comandeered by strict business owners made us quite aware of the choices, at least numerically if not qualitatively, we made. I'm pretty happy to say that I was given a lot of love and care at home, but choices were, as I would probably be generous in saying, somewhat limited. Not in terms of procurement: on the contrary, sometimes there was too much choice, but some things were just not good. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'd like to move on because my fingers are working faster than my brain.

Work has been tough: I feel like I have a billion things to do and a billion more on the horizon. Doing the 75 Hard is making me very aware of the level of stress I'm carrying but going through this process right now is making me very constrained in terms of what is and isn't allowed. I refuse to restart as is required by the rules, so I'm sticking with it, but Christ Almighty I can go for some chocolate right now (no sugar!). Also, a gallon of water really makes you want to pee.

I want to shower now but still want to keep the momentum of writing going so I'll keep at this for a few more minutes. I'm happy with the way in which I've been handling my exercise routines, in that I'm being conscious of going outside (again, another side effect of the 75 Hard). Going out for morning walks or morning bike rides really does have a positive start to the day: you feel the blood flowing, muscles loosening, fresh air, and good conversation if nothing else. I'm excited to keep this going, and I'll keep you posted on how my progress is going. Perhaps I'll post progress pics. Perhaps not. Let's see.

I'm cold and sweaty now, so I'm going to take a shower. Part of my to do list is to take a cold shower so I'll suck it up and get that done. Let's get after it today and revisit our thoughts tomorrow.

Vivek.

It's been a while since I've written here. I've been traveling and to be honest, I gave myself time off from all the items that I had on my to do list. I can get extremely obsessive about things and I felt this was a good way to detach. I feel like I needed it, and now that I'm back into the swing of things I feel good about hitting the ground running.

I traveled to Dubai and Munich for a week, Dubai for 7 days and Munich for one. I found both to be really nice places in different ways: Dubai is very much like Miami in the Middle East, while Munich felt like Christmas in a beer hall. I really enjoyed being in both places and learning about them, exploring them, and seeing what they had to offer. Travel really does expand the mind, and I will at some point talk more about my experiences there. However, today I'd like to talk about something else.

I'm currently in the middle of doing a challenge called the 75 Hard. It's difficult, but basically it has 6 simple rules:
1. You have to drink a gallon of water a day
2. You have to do two 45 minute workouts a day, and one must be outside.
3. You have to choose a healthy diet, any diet, and stick with it. No alcohol allowed.
4. Read 10 pages of a nonfiction self-help or educational book a day.
5. You have to take a progress picture daily.
6. If you mess up even one day, you have to restart.

(Note: I just noticed that it seems a little misleading to have "Travel Diaries" written on the header, but to be honest it feels right. Let's continue.)

The reason why this topic of the 75 Hard came up is, frankly, because a few friends and I are going on a bachelor party and we wanted to lose some weight.

Published as is.

There's a weird phenomenon which I've noticed in many aspects of life. It has to do with task lists.

No matter how many items you remove from your task list, more always seems to pop up and multiply. It's like Smith from the Matrix: the tasks never stop coming. I'm sure this is a reflection of a few things: prioritization, list management, delegation, team management, yada yada yada, yeah okay. The point is, no matter what the cause is, the task still needs to happen no?

When developing a system, why is there always "room for improvement"? What is the perfect system, one where things never have to happen and when things go wrong they are automatically and instantaneously handled. Yes, I'm sure there is a system with AI that you can implement, sure, but the problem with that is a. it still needs refinement because you can't replicate it, and b. the whole point of AI the way it is today is to interface with people like a human, so humans are gonna human. You still have the task that needs to be added to the list.

The question, I suppose, is why are tasks needing to be added to the list at all?

Why do the problems exist? Because someone did something wrong or something went wrong through no fault of anyone. Human error or systematic error. Fine.

Published as is.