I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorbed them, rather than read all the books.

—Naval Ravikant

For many, reading becomes an exercise in vanity, measured by the quantity of books read. Instead, it is better to focus on quality, and to actually apply the lessons learned. Rather than chasing new books, it is often more valuable to revisit what has previously had a big impact.

Rereading does more than just reinforce ideas. Each time you return, you are a different person with new perspectives. That shift reveals new insights you did not gain the first time.

One of the biggest epiphanies in my life came from rereading 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson while travelling in Portugal. Many of the rules in the book have deeper philosophical meaning that I did not appreciate until I was older.

When I first read Mastery by Robert Greene in university, many of the ideas felt abstract and distant. When I reread it years later after starting my career, I saw the ideas in a different light. I gained new insights while reinforcing the important ones.

Rereading is not about repetition, but rather iteration. Each pass deepens your understanding and reinforces what has provided value. Instead of constantly chasing new books, return to the ones that have already shaped how you think, and let them shape you further.

Food for Thought

I highly recommend the podcast Naval Ravikant did with Joe Rogan. It’s one of my favourites, and is where the quote above comes from. There are so many gems throughout that episode.

One of the best things I have ever done in my life—especially at that time—was learn how to play guitar. I started the summer before high school and taught myself over the next few years.

I was terrible at first, just like any beginner. It was hard. My playing sounded horrible, and my fingers would hurt and ache. It was only after months of practice that my playing finally started to sound like music. This motivated me, and with more practice, I got even better. I was hooked.

As I got better at guitar, my social life began changing. I made new friends who also played instruments. We even formed a band together and performed in front of an audience a few times. I started to feel more confident.

Before this, I thought confidence was something that was supposed to come naturally. Learning guitar made me realize that a large part of it comes from putting in effort to prove to yourself that you can learn and get better at something through practice and hard work.

Food for Thought

In the early years of learning guitar, I chased speed and complexity because I thought that’s what would impress people. As I got older, I realized that none of that really matters as much as the quality of the music itself. In fact, I’ve found that most people aren’t impressed by highly technical or complex playing anyway.

In the years since I first read that book, I tried applying those ideas in my own life many times—and failed. I would change the cue or routine for a habit that I wanted to change, and inevitably fall back to old habits.

What I eventually realized was that you don’t just choose a new cue or routine. You discover it, through relentless experimentation, before you find one that clicks. The habit loop isn’t a formula you run once. It’s a framework for running experiments.

Most of those experiments will fail. That doesn’t mean you’re not making progess. Experimentation is not optional. It’s required for habit change.

Food for Thought

For a comprehensive guide to habits, check out James Clear’s guide on his website.

Lately, I’ve realized that this mindset had insidiously manifested in how I’ve lived:

• Trying to preserve my nice clothing by not wearing them as often

• Being too precious with my books and not handling them as much (i.e. not reading them)

• Not using my oven as often to keep it clean and generally being afraid to make a mess in my kitchen while cooking

It’s subtle, but the pattern is clear: trying to preserve things in a perfect state restricted my quality of life.

This was even more apparent to me after moving out of my old place. I had kept that space very clean. Everything was maintained, organized, and in great condition. But looking back, I realized I had spent too much time keeping it pristine. Once I moved out, all of that preservation meant nothing.

What was the point of keeping everything pristine, if it meant I didn’t fully and freely live in my own home?

Wear and tear isn’t something to avoid. It’s a sign that something has been fully utilized. The marks, imperfections, and signs of use all tell a story. They give things character.

Cleanliness and order still matter, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of actually living. You don’t want to just be a maintainer. A bit of mess, a bit of wear, a bit of imperfection—that is evidence of a life fully lived.

Food for Thought

Last year, I had come across a video by Rajiv Surendra titled, Why you should use your nicest things, every day!, which has since inspired and changed how I view my “nicest things”.

Dwelling on these things that are out of your control is a waste of time. Instead, it is better to focus on things that you can control, namely, your own thoughts, and how you interpret the world around you.

It is your thoughts and opinions that make a situation good or bad, not the situation itself being inherently good or bad.

Food for Thought

When you are grieved about anything external it is not the thing itself which afflicts you, but your judgement about it. This judgement it is in your power to efface. If you are grieved about anything in your own disposition, who can prevent you from correcting your principles of life? If you are grieved because you do not set about some work which seems to you sound and virtuous, go about it effectually rather than grieve that it is undone.

—Marcus Aurelius

1. Define the problem clearly—what exactly is bothering me?

2. Imagine the worst-case scenario

3. Accept the best I can the worst possible situation

4. Meditate

5. Brainstorm solutions to mitigate the worst-case scenario

6. Prepare for the worst, but take action toward a better outcome

I usually don’t make it to the final step because slowing down and clearly defining what is bothering me is often enough to break the cycle. Without that clarity, my mind tends to run wild with irrational fears and anxieties that have little to do with reality.

I’ve found that taking a moment to meditate helps me slow down and put things into perspective. It gives me room to think rationally about a problem. And more often than not, I realize the thing I was worried about was never as big as it felt.

Food for Thought

I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

—Mark Twain

Initially, I experimented by generating a running program based on a specific distance goal, and provided my age, gender, and weight. Through iterative prompting, I realized that the more context I provided (such as my current workout routine, available training days, and time constraints), the more personalized the programming became. All of this was done without having to do hours of research to adapt generic programs or hiring a coach.

From there, I realized I was not limited to running programs. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have started training for a few big mountain climbs this summer. With the habit of showing up already in place, I needed a real program to follow.

Instead of spending hours researching and piecing together a program, I provided the same information as I did with the running program, but also included the mountains that I am planning to climb.

What I got was surprisingly nuanced. The program accounted for each mountain’s unique challenges. It recognized where my current routine was already sufficient, and filled in the gaps with targeted training days. Based on my own independent research, this program seems sound.

More importantly, it removed a major bottleneck for me: picking a plan that I trust enough to stick with. Instead of spending so much time planning, I’ve been able to focus on training sooner. So far, this approach has been more structured than anything I followed last year.

The true test will be this summer on the mountains.

Food for Thought

I am reminded of a video I saw last year titled, You’ve consumed enough. It’s time to create. One of the core ideas is that we often spend too much time consuming tutorials instead of actually creating. In other words, we often spend too much time planning and not enough time doing the thing.

You’re where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform. There, you’re allowing new information to inform you—to permeate your stability, to repair and improve its structure, and expand its domain.

—12 Rules for Life

Order is structure. It’s a strong foundation to lean on, where everything is known and the world matches our expectations. However, too much order is tyranny. It’s also doing the same things over again and not taking risks. Too much order stifles creativity.

Chaos is potential. It’s where new things are created and innovation occurs. It’s the unknown—what has not yet been explored. However, too much chaos is anxiety, uncertainty, and fear. It’s also failure, things not going as planned, and making mistakes. Chaos is complete freedom without discipline to provide any order.

As an individual, your purpose is to mediate between order and chaos, to balance between the two. This is the best way to live life.

Food for Thought

I’ve mentioned before how influential 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson has been for me since 2022. It’s one of those rare books that continues to reveal new insights with every reread. While the rules may seem trite at first, each carries deeper meaning in relation to the balance between order and chaos. In an early lecture Peterson gave in Iceland, he explores the deeper philosophy that underlies the rules.

At the highest level, it starts with three key questions (I took this from James Clear):

1. What went well?

2. What didn’t go well?

3. What am I working toward?

Generally, most annual reviews follow those main questions. You can start with those three questions and get most of the value out of doing an annual review.

Personally, I go into more detail for each question:

What Went Well?

I start by reflecting on what went well the previous year, where I journal in a narrative format on what happened. At the end, I list out achievements and highlights of the previous year.

What Didn’t Go Well

Similar to “What Went Well?”, I journal in a narrative format on what didn’t go well. I also include a section where I outline lessons that I’ve learned from what didn’t go well, and a section on what should change as a result of those lessons learned.

What Am I Working Toward?

This is the fun part, where I outline my ambitions for the year. I start by listing my principles and values — this helps guide what I choose my ambitions to be. For each area of my life (i.e. career, health, relationships, etc.), I write what I want those areas to look like. I call these my big themes for the year.

I then list out my goals for the year. These goals are usually related to one of the big themes that I had defined. At the very end, I write out what I’m currently working on, which are the projects or tasks that move me towards my ambitions.

Food for Thought

Although one year is the most common timeframe for setting goals, it’s often too long to stay focused and motivated. A more effective approach is to break the year into shorter 12-week cycles, each centered on a smaller set of goals. This idea is the core premise of The 12 Week Year. Tim Hill has a good video summary of the book.

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

— David Allen

This is the foundational principle of the first step of David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy: capture anything on your mind into a trusted system. Every open loop—such as ideas, tasks, reminders, etc.—must be written down somewhere.

Although this should be done throughout the day, it often takes the form of a brain dump, where everything on your mind is written down all at once. Brain dumps are a great way to clear your mind and can feel productive. The problem is what happens after.

The relief fades. Previous dumps are never revisited. Soon, you feel the need for another brain dump, and the cycle repeats. The same ideas end up scattered across several brain dumps. Nothing actually moves forward.

The mistake is treating capturing and processing as the same thing. They aren’t. The solution is to separate them and make processing unavoidable.

Capturing should be fast and frictionless. No organizing. No structuring. No deciding where something belongs. Just get it out of your head and into a single trusted place. You can use different tools, but everything must ultimately funnel into one source of truth.

Processing is different. It is a dedicated session where you return to that source of truth, decide what matters, and turn what was captured into actions, projects, or notes. These sessions should be regularly scheduled and dedicated only to processing.

Your brain trusts your system only when it sees you returning to it. Every time you capture and then process, you prove to yourself that nothing will fall through the cracks. That is when you can finally stop trying to hold everything in your mind, and brain dumps no longer include ideas already captured. That is when you can focus on getting things done.

Food for Thought

There is a whole subculture out there dedicated to pocket notebooks and their many uses. Peter McKinnon has a great video on how using pocket notebooks for 800 days changed his life. They are a great tool for capture.

Some time ago, I came across Jocko Willink through his conversations with Joe Rogan. One core lesson stood out: take responsibility for everything. It’s the foundation of his book, Extreme Ownership.

The idea is simple but powerful — when you take full responsibility, you have control. Blaming others or external circumstances only surrenders that control. While it might sound like a heavy burden, this mindset actually creates freedom. It gives you control over your circumstances. Instead of complaining when something doesn’t go your way, you now have agency.

Food for Thought

The idea of personal responsibility was popularized in recent years by Jordan Peterson. For me, his podcast appearances between 2017 and 2019 were the best. His early podcasts with Joe Rogan are my favourites, with many great discussions including that on personal responsibilty.

In recent months, I’ve noticed a growing push to integrate AI into everyday tasks. As a knowledge worker, I’m interested in leveraging AI to be more efficient with my work. Being late to the game, I’ve found diving into AI overwhelming. There are so many tools, models, and platforms out there that it’s hard to know where to start.

As someone who is analytical in nature, it’s tempting to start by learning the theory. But I’ve learned that the best way to learn is to dive in immediately and start tinkering:

…most things that we believe were “invented” by universities were actually discovered by tinkering and later legitimized by some type of formalization. The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It is only after some trial and error—taking action first and doing the thing—that learning some theory will be most beneficial.

Lately, I’ve been taking small steps to learn how to leverage AI. For me, the first step is to build familiarity and form the habit of using AI regularly as a tool. Here are a few ways I’ve been using AI:

• Proofreading my writing

• Summarizing large amounts of text

• Researching topics (at least initially)

There is much more potential that I have not explored yet, but these are the small steps that I am taking. Over time, I will adopt more advanced use cases.

Food for Thought

Ali Abdaal recently published a great video for learning how to leverage AI. Some key points that I liked:

• Build a daily habit of using AI for small tasks such as summarizing meetings or doing initial research

• Use AI as a coach to provide feedback

• Use AI as a worker to delegate tasks such as writing to

Knowing this is important when deciding what to prioritize and what to ignore. It is best to prioritize the 20% that leads to 80% of the output first. In many cases, the rest can safely be ignored.

I experienced this recently at work during a CRM migration. We had exported our data from one system to another, but some customer notes weren’t carried over. My colleagues and I had to double-check and move over anything that wasn’t migrated from our accounts.

My colleagues finished this task within a few days. But it was taking me more than a week. When I asked how they finished so quickly, one colleague told me she only reviewed notes from the past year. That was when I realized my approach was wrong.

Not all notes were equally valuable. What mattered were notes from important meetings—context that helped us understand the customer relationship and the bigger picture. What didn’t matter were old notes or administrative updates that were no longer relevant. Those took time to copy but added very little value.

The real objective wasn’t preserving every piece of information. It was enabling better conversations with customers today, and having enough context to move relationships forward without getting lost in unnecessary details.

That’s the Pareto Principle in action. Identify the small set of inputs that drive the majority of outcomes, and start there. Everything else is optional.

Food for Thought

I first heard about the Pareto Principle when I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss for the first time in my early 20s. Despite its gimmicky title, it’s one of the few books whose lessons have continued to serve me, not least of which is the Pareto Principle.

In one video on how to become dramatically more productive, he emphasizes that getting better at asking questions is key. The implication is that asking better questions helps you identify the critical 20% faster.

Imperfection that exists is infinitely more valuable than perfection that never sees the light of day. Your system is worth nothing if you don’t actually create and put things out into the world. Action is worth more than “tawk”.

The solution is to lower the barrier for entry and completion. Break things down into smaller parts and get started on the low hanging fruit. Get to 80% and ship. Avoid constant tweaking and overthinking. Just do it, no matter how bad or unfinished you may think something is.

If you focus on getting to 80%, you’re likely to realize that the remaining 20% is often unnecessary. 80% is enough. It can be refined after you have shipped. The act of shipping forces you to improve, iterate, and actually create value.

Food for Thought

A few years ago, I discovered Rick Beato, a producer turned YouTuber known for his music analysis and breakdown videos. While they are informative, I think his true talent is storytelling. In one of his earlier videos, he reflects on how two major failures dramatically shaped his life trajectory and made him who he is today. It’s a reminder that failure can often lead to success.

How small should tasks be? That depends on the person. Some experimentation is necessary until a good balance is found. A good rule of thumb is tasks that take 25 minutes to complete — the length of a single Pomodoro. For dealing with procrastination, you may want to go as small as 2 minutes. Avoid creating tasks that don’t have a clear next action.

If I’m struggling to start on a task, I create easy subtasks and start completing those to build momentum. Sometimes, that subtask is as simple as “attempt to start this task”, and that’s enough to start building momentum.

Food for Thought

Aim low, but up—that is advice from Jordan Peterson that has always stuck with me.

Almost a decade ago, I was in my final years of completing university. Like many, I had big plans after graduation, all of which required competitive grades. One summer after the school year had ended, I took it upon myself to try and catch up on my studies, as well as prepare for the upcoming year.

I laid out numerous goals that I wanted to achieve by the end of the summer. I wanted to review everything that I had learned so far as an astrophysics major, as well as new topics that I would be learning the following semester. I also wanted to put on some muscle mass, learn how to code, create a commonplace book, and also read several books.

Unfortunately, by the end of the summer, although I had done a lot, I did not achieve anywhere near as many goals as I had planned. In fact, I never fully completed any of my goals. This ended up being the case the following summer as well.

Around that time, I had read The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta. It’s a great book on minimalism, and it highlights an important lesson that I think everyone should learn, one that I had eventually learned myself after those unproductive summers.

In The Power of Less, Leo Babauta summarizes his philosophy on minimalism as follows:

Identify the essential

Eliminate the rest

He goes on to describe six principles that follow from the above:

1. Set limitations

2. Choose the essential

3. Simplify

4. Focus

5. Create habits

6. Start small

Of those six principles, the one that had the biggest impact on me was focus:

Focus on just a few things at a time. Set goals for yourself, so that you know when you have achieved what you set out to do, and can continue onto the next goal.

Try to pick at the most three big projects in your life, and to stick with them until the end.

— Leo Babauta

To focus means not only choosing a small number of goals to focus on, but also having the discipline to not be tempted to try and start new goals before your current ones have been completed:

It is very tempting when you are working on something, and you reach a roadblock, to start something new. It gives you a boost in motivation and makes you feel good, but in reality you are procrastinating. Learn to recognize when this happens, and refocus yourself to your main tasks.

It will be hard, but every time you find yourself wanting to start something new, think about all the other things you have started, and have not yet finished. Do those instead.

— Leo Babauta

What I learned after those summers was that I was trying to focus on too many goals at the same time. It felt like I was being productive, like I was achieving a lot in a short period of time, and it felt good. In reality, I was being inefficient, and setting myself up for failure.

I learned that I would have achieved more if I had focused on just one or a few goals at a time, as opposed to trying to focus on everything all at once.

Here are the five fundamental steps for getting things done:

Capture

Write down anything on your mind—tasks, worries, ideas—to clear mental space. These unrecorded thoughts are “open loops” and must be captured to free up your attention.

Clarify

Review each captured item and determine if it’s actionable.

• If not: delete, defer, or file for reference.

• If yes: define the next action. If it requires multiple steps, it’s a project. Delegate tasks when needed, do quick tasks immediately, and defer the rest.

Organize

Sort clarified tasks into appropriate categories:

• Incubate for later review.

• Reference for non-actionable info.

• Next actions for current to-dos—use additional lists (e.g., “waiting for,” “projects”) to organize to-dos.

Reflect

Review your system regularly:

• Daily: Check your calendar and task lists to stay current and avoid anxiety.

• Weekly: Step back to evaluate long-term goals, review projects, and plan ahead.

Engage

Focus on what you’re doing now. If your system is solid, you can trust that you’re spending your time on the right things.

Food for Thought

In the search for mental clarity, another important tool is having some kind of mindfulness meditation practice—learning how to focus on your breath and slowing down your thoughts. In the words of Yuval Noah Harari:

If you can’t focus on the simple reality of your breath coming in and out of your nostrils without being overwhelmed by some story generated in your mind, then how can you hope to understand the financial system of the world, the geopolitical system… much much bigger things, if you can’t do that?

Instead, I find it’s better to start with small steps. Lower the barrier for entry, and break things down into smaller pieces that are easy to complete. Iterate while making small improvements. Focus on consistency over taking large steps. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

This is how you build momentum which will carry you beyond the early stages. It’s how you build habits that can sustain your action. The momentum that you build will compound over time, allowing you to take bigger steps.

This summer, I have three big mountain climbs planned in the Rocky Mountains. The first climb is in five months. It’s a big challenge that intimidates me. But I’ve started training last week—not with anything intense, but by taking small steps.

Food for Thought

During the pandemic lockdowns between 2020 and 2021, I came across Kraig Adams, a YouTuber who shares videos of himself doing solo hikes around the world. His videos follow a simple but effective formula: no background music or voiceover, just peaceful hiking with beautiful scenery. In particular, his trek along the Mardi Himal Trek in Nepal, inspired me and gave me a sense of adventure, especially at a time when I was stuck indoors.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

—Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman was a rare combination of being both a Nobel Prize winning physicist and an excellent science communicator. Not only has he had a legitimate impact in the field of physics (I still remember learning Feynman diagrams in my undergraduate particle physics classes), but his work as a science communicator has made him a well-known popularizer of physics.

In the book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!—a collection of life stories told by Richard Feynman—he tells an anecdote of how scientists measured Coulomb’s constant, a value used to calculate the force between electric charges. As scientists performed experiments and published their results, there was a trend over time where measurements of Coulomb’s constant smoothly converged from whatever the accepted value at the time was toward the true answer. This seemed innocuous at first, but actually demonstrated how even scientists can fool themselves.

With independent measurements being made across different labs, you would expect that measurements would be close to where the true value of Coulomb’s constant is. What happened instead was that scientists would assume their apparatus or method was wrong whenever their measurements were far from the accepted value at the time, and rerun their experiments. They would ultimately publish a value closer to the true value but still close to the accepted one. The process would repeat until finally consensus converged to the truth.

That story was a lesson in how everyone—including scientists—can easily fool themselves, and how we must all be mindful in not fooling ourselves, no matter who we are.

Food for Thought

In the introduction to The Feynman Lectures on Physics—which are freely available online—Feynman makes an important point regarding scientific theory:

We are not concerned with where a new idea comes from—the sole test of its validity is experiment.

He expands on this by saying:

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.”

In classic Feynman manner, he explains in a different lecture how new scientific laws are found.

I struggled with this for a long time until I discovered News Feed Eradicator, a browser plugin that replaces Facebook’s home page news feed with an inspiring quote. Unlike other plugins that completely block social media, it still allows you to use Facebook. The only difference is that the home page news feed is no longer there.

Over time, I began spending less time on Facebook without even realizing it. I still used it for instant messaging and keeping up with groups and events—useful functions that had previously made it difficult to quit scrolling—but without the news feed, I was no longer pulled into its addictive stream of novelty. While I still felt the urge to check the feed, it required far less willpower to resist when it wasn’t there.

When it comes to changing habits, addressing the cue that triggers the habit loop is critical. Once the loop begins, willpower alone is rarely enough to stop it. In this case, by removing the news feed, News Feed Eradicator eliminates the cue and disrupts the loop. Less willpower is needed, and habit change becomes sustainable.

Food for Thought

A recent trend I’ve noticed is the push towards unplugging from social media and using analogue tools instead. The first glimpse I got of this was last summer when I came across a video titled a summer without algorithms. Before even watching it—which I ironically came across through the YouTube algorithm—the message was clear to me: stop using social media as a means to discover content.