"Your worst sin is that you betrayed yourself for nothing."
best thing about atomic notes is that they're always evolving
created this proof of history note like half a year ago
just added some more data about verifiable delay functions as i learned more about it just now
the notes and concepts grow as i learn more
and its very visually pleasing as well ( seeing a note grow over time and connect to more concepts )
why do i lose all my drive the moment i go back home
i used to watch 10 unboxing and review videos before buying any product
and now i bought these airpod maxes with watching a single video about it
we trust apple too much but they delivered regardless
its either that or money had more worth back then
yo life is so much better when u dont unintentionally scroll twitter for 3 hours a day
been working on a few projects since the hackathon ended
dripcraft for sirius crocodile ( the drip creator )
telecaster - a telegram client for farcaster
and learning about solana architecture the 8 articles protocol development and fullyonchian games
all this does not require twitter / social media ( compared to previously, where i wanted feedback etc )
this phase is just cavemode sit and grind
so 🫡
long hours of work it is
have soooooooooooooo much to do im genuinely exciteeddd
yes ive disabled my twitter for 30 days
resetting some stuff and need a break
so done with events
i dont want to "network" i hate the term "networking" i dont like talking to people when i have no clue what they do i dont like randomly shaking hands and standing awkwardly at events trying to find someone to talk to
it is literally like finding gold in a haystash
and chances are this gold also is probably not the best
i find cold emails / dms then meeting in person for coffee the best way to meet someone
both of you know what the point of the meeting is
both of you know what the other person does and wants
there is a vibe match already in place because you're agreeing to meet
other than that, random networking events, conferences and everything is mostly useless
what's nice tho
is small handpicked group meetings to either chat about certain pre-planned topics / demo their stuff
or workshops where there's a guest who's going to talk about a certain topic which they're experienced in
ive been to literally 1 event and am already done with events, just wanna go back home and code
streams is gonna go on farcaster soon
it's eerily quiet in 5 star hotels in the night
no fan noise, no noise from the ac, no noise from outside ( im on the 50th floor )
only sounds i hear is my breath and the keyboard sounds
super super weird never experienced this before
i love thinking out loud in my friends dms
to all of you i'm v grateful
question: kinda curious on what tasks are u assigning as to being a operator? something like PMing + hr? also how are u delegating the engineering process to others in the team and how do u tackle and review the entire process? any inside-tips would be super helpful :)
was initially gonna just tweet, but became too long so:
github is for code, documents and version control linear is task management discord for comms
what im considering as "operations" is everything from planning, ideation, what to build, how to go about it and the specs for everything, hiring, managing money ( this is a whole role by itself- grants, investors, meetings etc )
how i do it is once i figure out an idea, i talk to people, get feedback, come up with a product roadmap on what to do and how ( the roadmap changes very often, and chaos is normalized )
choose 2-3 people who ive worked with before who can do design, frontend, backend and general fullstack work
first i work with a design contractor and get the ui, designs and all that figured out
then sometimes i ship a super mvp version with just the main "problem" solved in a couple days / week which has all the functionality and serves as something to refer
then for delegation and review it's usually assigning tasks for whatever feature we're working on currently to frontend / backend usually the frontend is done first, so i leave discord messages with screenshots on whatever needs to be changed and sometimes if it's big enough, ill add it to linear then api work is usually figuring out logic on vc / excalidraw and building it 1 by 1 feature wise
we dont plan the whole product in one go and go through it, we ship feature by feature so that its easier to reprioritize whenever needed
and while "engineering" is happening, im figuring out what to do next / talking to users / getting feedback etc
tbf im probably not the best person to be answering this, but ive done my fair share of shipping products so yeah- im also figuring it out on the fly
sunlight on your face has to be the best way to wake up
people believe in anything but themselves
was taken to a temple and im gonna express what i felt in words
yes, faith can make people do a lot of things but religion is inherently faith hacking
making people submit themselves for a better afterlife or to simply improve their own life but no they wont take things into their hands, instead they will do things for the god in hopes that the god will take care of them - i call bullshit on this
by submit i mean completely surrender, they will do anything the priest says or an astrologer says why? cuz its simply easier to believe and have faith than take agency
rush towards a door which opens at 4am? touch / drink the piss of a cow? pay thousands of dollars to a priest to do more such things???
the scale at which this brainwashing has been carried out is actually mind blowing.
explorations over achievements
rn
figuring out what to build is harder than building it is what ive realized
conviction + focus is what sets apart the great from the good
sure you can be a good builder if u know how to code but being able to have conviction in something other people tell you it's not going to work and focused towards executing towards that vision is genuinely game changing
execution has become super easy with ai, cursor + claude + some kind of ui library is all you need to ship stuff and get users
another thing ive realized which holds back many founders who are technical are- they spend too much time thinking about the most optimal way of doing things and that's the worst thing you could be focusing upon, especially in markets where things move fast ( crypto / ai etc )
focusing on building and showing it to users fast should be the 1st priority, everything else is second
no one cares if your product takes 1s or 1.5s to load up a response from your api when you have 0 users
choose 1 problem, get the solution and MAKE that happen
instead of shooting at everything and getting nowhere
another thing which is very hard especially in crypto is the ability to get distracted because of the market this is easier in the bear cuz there's no FOMO in the air and none of your friends are becoming overnight millionaires but in the bull, you see money flowing around everywhere and anything with a name to it shooting up, the fomo is super super real
either balance it or fully ignore it and focus on what's more important ( sometimes, the trading might be more important than building but usually is not )
i am such an addict to bread and nutella
superficial pursuits can birth metaphysical meaning
fuck everything else
intense focus on 1 thing lets get it
why did no one tell me the secret to flow state is to move out
soo much energy at will
cant seem to place where its coming from
i just feel so high agency all the time
idk why i get a feeling of disgust everytime im in a nextjs project
i think that's primarily why i hated employment + just hate writing fullstack code nowadays
most of crypto apps are built around nextjs
and personally nextjs and react literally gives me the ick
the ugly dependency logs, swiggly lines everywhere, the randommest errors, new version every week which breaks the previous code is so fucking irritating
i loved writing go because you can keep your code extremely clean and abstractions are so neat
but nextjs...
nevertheless i would love to learn more and read well organized t3 stack codebases... so please give me your best, internet
shit i didnt know founders could hold grudge that i left their company too early 💀
one such case is leaving me on read since so long
super impressive setup
blogs + ephemeral twitter
if it were me, ill probably have another twitter account to store the ones i wanna save
working on a time crunch makes me produce output 4x the usual quality and 10x faster
my schedule in singapore
wake up go for a run / gym and get some sunlight bath and take bus to 42, read otw 6-7 hours working on 42, brunch and snacks in between come back in bus, read otw cook dinner, eat dinner, wash the fucking utensils :sob: cycle to cafe work on rift for 4 hours cycle back and sleep for 6 hours
on that grindset fr
at 42 piscine - seems to be 26 days of hardcore coding lets see
they said their method of selection was via technical competence and collaboration
im gonna be in singapore for the next 30 days
was in dubai the past week and came back with a baaaad cold
now am moving to singapore for a month in 2 days
give me energy
also suddenly feeling like i lost all my agency ( could be the sickness but idk )
not working and whatever i do isn't fulfilling
test
soo last week i was in dubai and had a blast of a time there
the lifestyle is really amazing but most people who are out and about seem to be in the same rat race ( who has more bling )
and am not a big fan of that tbh
but the villa i stayed in had amazing folks i was able to have deep conversations with
one night i celebrated "dubai's own voice" ahmed's 30th birthday at a steakhouse
and one night i was denied entry at a club bcoz i was 18 and not 21 😭i thought legal age was 18 wtf
and we even went to abu dhabi and ferrari world
surprisingly my visa card worked everywhere even in cabs and i didnt have problems offramping crypto either
here are some pictures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6_ZuJSWQ4c
ive been using this video as bg music while working for the past week and it seems to keep me in focus so much better than lofi shit
planning for trips is so time consuming
karpathy
i just double tapped my ink pen expecting it to turn to an eraser and scribbled on what i wanted to erase 😭😭
yes bought notebooks worth 30$ today
i am getting super analog notes pilled
a lesson learned after wasting a lot of time with a designer and realizing this mid-way
what you’re doing is product scrubbing which is
figuring out what needs to be where and how users are going to use it and how you plan on letting the user use it
but a designer doesn’t give two fucks about this
what they need to deliver is ui elements which make that happen
they’re thinking textboxes, input fields, color palette, font sizes, font families and gradients
they’re not thinking what the notification tab is going to show
they might suggest a filter widget on the notification tab, but they’re not thinking why a user is getting notifications of every new post if it’s already coming in feed
that’s you the founder’s role - to figure out what needs to go where and what data is going through it
The combination of core simplicity and powerful applications often makes thing really hard to grasp, because of the mental jump required to derive the variety of applications from the essential simplicity of the fundamental abstraction
it do be like this sometimes
i'm just plotting tbh
best thing about touch typing, i can look around, look at someone and talk to them while at the same time typing whatever's on my mind on my keyboard without slowing down or anything
maybe talking to someone else is less possible, since talking something and typing something else at thes ame time is hard, but i can definitely look around and not necessarily need to look at my screen while typing
and it's actually very nice
because you're putting out what you have in your mind and at the same time being "present in the real world" and dont need to step back to look at your kb to type out something
im being so autistic but i like it lmao
im thinking more about what to build than actually building 😕
atleast im learning everyday tho - that's helping with the new ideas but still, im trying to find something to commit to
i think i should choose one and just go at it then change courses as time goes on
but people ( sama, naval ) do say that choosing what to work on
is more important than actually "working on random things"
but i feel i have a sort of vague idea of what i want to do.. ie onchain creator economy stuff
so.. maybe i should just start doing it rather than thinking so much about everything before starting
need to move the needle
pmf what
dedicated time for some ricing and workflow improvements
setup yabai + skhd and changed up my obsidian vault
i am loving the changes
it looks so good + i bought sync, so no more icloud taking 5mins to sync
its crazy how well the software is built
yabai + skhd is giving me arch linux vibes and its nostalgic
i been doing this 750 thing for a few days
and it's nice
basically you write 750 words a day
doesn't matter what it is about
just close your eyes and let your hands slide
been touching 800 - 1k words everyday
and it's nice setting time aside to just reflect and think about whatever's in your brain, good offloading exercise
vibes rn
reallllllly wanna start writing / creating slightly longer form content of thoughts and whatever im building etc on a steady cadence
thinking of ways to make this happen
1. aspirations != goals
goals should be deliverables that can be met which can take you closer to your aspirations but if u have meaningful goals that dont take u closer, dont be afraid to take them.
aspirations are not a good driver
goals are amazing drivers
aspirations are way too vague to target directly
2. systems > goals
a system in place to get to that goal is more important than setting these goals
systems is an action driver
3. action via discipline
um i cant help with this- u just gotta sit down and work 🫡
a friend sent this ss
note- we still haven't publicly launched eventhough we have DAUs and the product garners love on a daily basis
word of mouth is a powerful go to market strategy
delegation, subscriptions open up a lot of onchain usecases
i'm becoming a fan of opinionated software which works really well and gives just enough control
ios, macos, bear, streams
went surfing twice last week and its enjoyable
catching the waves at the right time and making it to the shore very calming for those few seconds
and its very practical
highs are very high but whenever u fall u just get back up and paddle back in
its an essential feedback cycle
i really like the app cosmos
its cheaper than mymind and looks more aesthetically pleasing
but it doesnt have all those features i guess, but it has what i need so im gonna use it 🏄♀️
idk if i necessarily have goals
but
- 5-10x current networth ( optimize for mrr/returns and not salary )
- develop a taste for myself through curation and creation
- put on more lean muscle
- find good uni alternative? or just go to uni for a couple sems
- more hardcore technical things ( somehow gotta merge this and (1) )
new year resolution is to
- read more than i scroll
- learn something everyday
- workout 3x a week
- dont let sleep / food schedule fuck up
- focused execution on work
- write weekly semi-private for accountability / logging
happy new year!
last year was very mixed, extremely good in some perspectives, very mid in some
life has been life-ing
solana PDAs are such a beautiful concept
streams paid features
i love content which has a
compiled into one pdf export option
legendary fr
fixed some bugs for yall
new command: /untag [tags seperated by spaces]
i really need to fix my diet and sleep asap before it spirals out of my control
i used up so much luck in the first half of this year it's crazy
'i experiment with sleep' is supposed to be read as 'i have a fucked up sleep schedule' 👍🏼👍🏼
talking about me here
https://youtu.be/nwRJLa0igmQ?si=S7BTdFCxkm22ArYI
TIL the term
lygometry - knowing what you dont know
this is what i preach
controlling your consumption is the key 🔑
okay streams is fully migrated to v2, images done, all user data, drops data
and deployments are working fine
send it!
the migration was slower than i expected
but streams usage is way higher than i expected
lists and short iterative notes about topics linked together contextually
is the best format for text consumption
big + is easy navigation back and forth
—
update: wait i just realized i summarized obsidian pkm setups lmfao 😭
i wish i got my ipad earlier ngl, “off” time got soooo much better
wonder how ill feel after 10 years scrolling through things ive written / did
paras chopra has literally been writing publicly since i was born
that’s 18 years of writing
almost 2 decades of your brain on the internet is… insane
i wanna build mine like that too.. create for myself to see 10 years later ☕️
kinda stupid of me for not using prisma migrate right from the beginning
well TIL
god bless these indian guys on youtube
caffeine maxxing
cant wait for tags to come fr ( it’s coming in streams v2 )
it not being there kind of stops me from posting everything i want
because when i know everything’s gonna land up in the same junk, it becomes harder to find it later
but when i know i can categorize it / have an easier form of recovery- friction reduces a lot
—-
talking about friction reducing; reminds me of this
when something is ephemeral it makes it so much easier to start doing
especially writing / work / planning
if you know something needs to be very “put together” / permanent,
it’s hard to start doing that from scratch
but when you know that it’s temporary and even just a word / initial few lines are enough for it & it’s made to be edited and worked upon later - it’s so much easier
again, this is why it’s so much easier to post on streams than substack or medium
this embraces crudity and incompleteness, they push towards completeness and finality which are traits which slow humans down
and for creative workers it’s even worse
there’s no “finality” in most work
considering something “done” is quite hard at times
takeaway is to reduce friction
two types of actions
push based
pull based
we start life almost completely push based
pushed into school
pushed into university
pushed into studying x y z
at some point of time you’ve gotta switch it to pull based
start learning something because you want to
start building something because you want to
pull based actions is where real value is created, because YOU do it because of something intrinsic
—
pull based actions aren’t ideal for just large zoomed out events in life
even granular actions like a clock always on the menu bar pushing data to you without you asking for it, is bad
try to remove all indicators of time for one day and see how it feels
if you want to see the time, you have to go search it up ( apart from staring outside the window- that’s different )
many such cases
im trying to switch slowly, but steadily from push based actions to pull based actions
this is why streams is very different from twitter
you’re not pushed into someone else’s profile / post
you click / go to it intentionally and you’re only fed that- we dont feed you random junk
absolute vibes
i love everyone who read my streams
i will make sure i send alpha here first
was wearing anc headphones listening to rain lofi whilst working and thought i heard like “real” rain
so i removed my headphones to check and it’s POURING here
lolled
“Being effective and investing your time in the right area at the right time is a skill, not purely luck.”
https://twitter.com/AmuseChimp
this account has only bangers; sad they went offline
writing code genuinely just feels like a game after a point
you know what weapons you have and you know how it works
you just gotta do the right combos to win
—
me after just writing code without thinking and my hands just knowing where to go and what to do
—-
it becomes like driving, initially you’ll think a lot, after a while it’s just subconsciousness taking over
programming is EXACTLY like that
went and scrolled a bunch of people’s streams and left with a huge smile
this is such beautiful creation fr
maybe it’s the lack of sleep, maybe it’s the touch of real-ness, maybe it’s the aftermath of a fulfilling day
too happy and too tired to take a decision
btw unemployed again, yay!
this time im definitely not going back to a job, ill figure something out
following the rule: “for anything to be properly thought out, it needs to be put into words”
i want to learn cs.
like fundamentals and the math and engineering principles and core concepts.
why?
There are 2 types of software engineer: those who understand computer science well enough to do challenging, innovative work, and those who just get by because they’re familiar with a few high level tools.
people might consider me type 1 / 2 based on what they know of me, but personally, i will not feel complete until i learn everything which is considered to be a type 1; data beats all
which involves a grasp of concepts in:
- computer architecture
- algorithms
- math for cs
- operating systems
- networking
- databases
- languages and compilers
- distributed systems
while these might not necessarily be the skills needed for building startups ( which is what im doing ), it is something that interests me a whole lot and also makes me a well rounded engineer and better suited to take technical decisions while building my product etc
and also this helps with another thing
while i keep extending my gap year and pushing away starting university more and more, if i end up not going ( mom, im saying IF )
this could be a very good substitute for the knowledge gap i might have from cs grads
my working hours now look like this:
- learn practical technical skill while building startups and products
- streams.place, purp.game, deva.me
- mostly full stack + core crypto
- learn marketing, sales and business while managing startup things ( permissionless work platform )
- allot time and learn cs fundamentals INTENTIONALLY
sg
now that uni is out of the picture until next september, i dont wanna stay at home and build
finding the best place to
- stay out of
- be around like minded people
- and build and work on my stuff
and i found @_theresidency - seems like the best option ticking off everything im looking for
is it just me or does any app used for personal use
like reflections, blogging, thought logs, todos etc
just make it so noisy to even use
eg. substack, twitter ( if used for thoughts posting ), reflections etc
social media should comprise journaling, blogging etc
but journaling, blogging and self-centered creation should not have social media in them
this is why people like streams, bearblog, and “personal” but public platforms
hmm an interesting UX case
anything on the web, is easiest editable on the web itself
read.cv is a resume site, links with my domain soulninja.bio
easiest to edit from the browser itself, just have to go to read.cv/soulninja, login and boom editable
but my personal website is a pain to edit eventhough it’s just adding a markdown file
if naval and a lot of others think after san francisco/bay area, tech is going to move completely to the internet..
( but its not there yet they say )
why? whats it missing?
lets see what san francisco offers
- talent
- capital
- community for like-minded wealthy, creative individuals
how should the internet offer this? ofcourse not everything can be on one platform,m like twitter, thats chaos imo
community is easiest to solve via social media and creating and growing network states is something a lot of people are working on and is definitely working
tools and products for it mostly already exist and is quick to build too
but for talent / capital and for the two to meet is still very crude
emails, linkedin profiles, cold reach outs, forms for fellowships, forms for vc funds, twitter dms etc
there’s no one platform ( other than social media, but thats noise ) to showcase talent via proof of work and provide capital to them
this will be the next part of network states. connecting capital with talent.
nature is so cool btw
unreal
i wake up, write some code, lift some weights, read some letters, type more letters, and kill myself to sleep
i am becoming a typescript god thanks to chatgpt
yeah i think 4am to 10am sleep cycle works the best
gym is empty before noon, and plenty time for focused work in the night and i don’t feel moody at all since i get enough sunlight during the day ( compared to waking up at 2pm, 3pm )
people often think hires are easily replaceable and you dont need to worry about who you hire/fire
but its soo wrong
having a good team you can delegate to and be sure they’ll get it done is such a lifesaver
s/o to everyone who’s worked with me so far, lovely folks
im loving my new 27” monitor
just got sooo much more extra room to work with and split screen multi tasking like writing notes while reading, or having terminal open always is just so helpful
i just have obsidian taking 1/3rd all the time
in my third attempt of working at the same startup, ive finally realized what we’re trying to solve and it has aligned with my interests and goals
it’s only up from now i guess
todoist is so cracked, i just wrote code on the app natively to filter my tasks and create views
shit, i forgot i was building streams before i left to singapore 💀 - i will ship that then get to this lmao; i COMPLETELY forgot wtf
i love where my rabbit holes take me
today went down a rabbit hole for core ethereum research, seeing that parc video acc the want to go lower and lower down the stack and learn and do real shit
learnt what core devs work on and how to get there
and found this amazing repo https://github.com/eth-protocol-fellows/cohort-four - the notes folder in this repo is so high signal i love it
for some reason i just like dwelving into niche high signal sources
i also want to do something similar, so will continue learning about this
goal is to have something to show by the next few months
finally something exciting to work on- took so fucking long jhesus christ
experimenting with this new time management tactic where i give myself a lot of slack so that i can pull things in from later on in the calendar instead of constantly pushing things for later and it cascading
so if i have actual “free time” i will pull things from later and work on it
gave myself like 50% of the day free - and put 2 hour blocks every 2 hours
will update this at the end of the day!
update: yes it works!
giving yourself a lot of freetime might actually make u more productive than filling up your calendar…
who would’ve thought
i love singapore, the city is so peaceful, the people are positive and friendly
infra is really good - roads, MRT and buses
payment is neat using paylah and cards
definitely on the costlier side but worth it
city just feels super safe too
i’d go there for uni but i dont think ill get into nus or ntu
oh i also gave a talk at nus about crypto, building products and making money - cool folks they were very intelligent and caught on quickly
the event ( token2049 ) was pretty mid - i was expecting more technical folks; but the side events made it for me especially solidity singapore
i loved traveling solo and had quite the bit of experience for the first time travelling alone ( iykyk )
detox complete!
touched a lot of grass
i wanna talk about flow
i’ve been experimenting with flow for last the past year and a half almost
ever since i discovered that my focus levels were the shittiest on the planet, i started finding ways to fix them
i saw online that getting clarity in thought would help… and well it did but it didnt really improve my focus levels
it gave me a much better framework for thinking and processing information in the world and decision-making - definitely improved my life significantly
last 2 days i couldn’t get work done because i was forcefully displaced and couldn’t do anything, so i dove down a rabbit hole ive been wanting to go down for a whileeee
✨custom keyboards ✨
i realized i specifically wanted a split keyboard but not too many layers since i code and needed my numbers and symbols easily accessible
after a lot of research and binging youtube channels
i found out that lily58 / similar 60% keyboard layout on the split was the way to go
but then after that i didnt know what to do
all the build guides had so many weird letters and abbreviations i didnt understand, so i did the thing any sane person on the internet must do - i joined communities and asked for help
i said i wanna build this, i have no idea, how do i build / get it build
internet has a lot of nice people, folks - so take their help
some very nice folks on the IMKC discord sent me some guides and i learnt more about the process by scrolling through their reddit and discord chats
then i came up with what all to buy and how to get it built with a guy i found on there
this is the specs if anyone’s interested:
PCB and base: lily58 pro
MCU: kb2040 * 2
Switches: Akko lavenders purple keys
Keycaps: XDA heavy industry grey/yellow
TRRS: grey coiled 1m cable
Case: grey 3d printed case
there were so so so so many options, everything was customizable
hopefully this keyboard comes soon, and the layout is so different i’m gonna go from ~200 wpm to less than 50 😭
but yeah it’s better for long term ergonomics and typing comfort and possible speed as well because it forced you to practice good techniques
omg omg omg omg
if you have a mechanical keyboard
get a paintbrush
get some coconut oil
remove your keycap
dab the paintbrush into your bowl of oil ( just a bit )
apply it on the sides and in the middle and put the keycap back on
now press it and see 😳
just setting up my streams
made this function and error handler
which i can wrap around any async function
and inside the function i can throw whatever error i want and return anything i want
and the errors are automatically managed by the errorHandler in the wrapper fn
and whatever data i send is automatically managed by the wrapper to either send as a telegram fn, web api response
NEAT NEAT NEAT
typescript is just beautiful to work with
why can i literally feel the lag on vscode
i’m on a 32 gig m2 pro, if this can’t run vscode idk what can
gonna spend some time tomorrow setting up neovim and alacritty
^^ this is probably because of my vim extension, but i can’t code without vim so it’s probably time to get fully vim pilled
overwhelmed by the amount of things going on in crypto lol
realllyyy need to take a step back, ignore the noise and focus on learning the fundamentals so that i can actually go contribute and build something real instead of just consuming new things these chads create left and right
tweeted this yesterday, thinking about a pod ( developer focused ) to talk about and update ourselves on what’s going on in the crypto ecosystem which is useful for developers and builders
i think it’s very useful because 1. it lets me try many things and 2. make content and share things which i love doing as well
i’ll give it more thought
for now, just need to ship streams.place and continue studying crypto
i was wondering why my vscode was acting weird and buggy today
i was waiting for something to happen but it wasnt happening
then only it clocked in that github pro had ended and copilot wasn’t autocompleting whatever code i was thinking of
and now i had to write out all the queries and text stuff myself 😭
talk about being dependent
edit: dont worry i got chatgpt open on a different monitor
when you’re paving your own path, this everlasting question of
“am i doing the right thing”
“is this the best thing i could be doing at the moment”
NEVER LEAVES
regular reflections, reprioritizations and measuring progress and output really helps maneuvering through the uncertainty
having clear set goals and seeing how much a certain input affects your progress towards that goal and trying to optimize that input is key
but also i try not optimizing the path so much that i end up not making progress towards it at all
but it’s definitely important so
maintaining a good balance is necessary
ive said this before and im saying it one more time
when you’re starting a new project / rewrite -
ONCE U BUILD ONBOARDING, EVERYTHING ELSE WILL JUST HAPPEN
especially true for code sprints and hackathons
it’s very frustrating when i dont have control over my own time, but so is life
hopefully after i move out, this is not the case
anyways, today will be a lot of building for streams and maybe learning solidity if i get time
i fucking love clarity what the fuck, makes you live life without anything stopping you like it’s crazy
maybe i mean flow state but same thing
just pure pure pure pure energy towards what you’re doing and you just feel like you’re flyyingg
i was having a hard time choosing between ethereum and solana, having been part of both communities for so long
i wanted to choose one which i could dive deeper into, i’ve written contracts on ethereum and read a bunch about their scaling and future plans
on solana, i was active in the developer ecosystem and know how it works and the positives and ive dabbled with soldev.app
right now, i needed to make a decision on what i was going to deeper into, because i felt doing 2 things at the same time will lead to both being mediocre
but i couldnt make a choice lmao
both were equally incentivizing for me
ethereum
a lot of solid resources
easier to get started and build with cuz solidity easy
hard to get popular / traction initially
a lot of stuff already been done and has been there for longer
solana
good resources, but not as good as eth
amazing community and easy $$
hard to get started cuz idk rust
very bullish ecosystem cuz of the way it’s built (infra)
i couldn’t choose.. both seemed equally incentivizing and to pursue
so i tossed a coin and chose eth lol
unnecessary discourse distracts us from the main goal; get back to work anon
since everything we think of ourselves attached to our identity; what if we let go of our identity and act purely based off logical reasoning from first principles?
no “i feel so”s and no connection to our internal self
being anon really helps in this case cuz incase u fuck up, it’s not plastered on your real identity
^ this sole reason pushes me towards going anon
but at the same time i want to be public about wins and failures and that needs to be linked with my real identity but with real identity comes the baggage of my “assumed self”
trying everyday to ignore that “assumed personality” and what i think other people think of me to start doing and acting in the way “I” really want to.
the day i figure myself out, we’re soo back
in february 2022 i was able to livestream and code for 21 hours straight 💀
yes. i did that for a hackathon
but nowadays i cant even go for 4 hours straight a day
everyday i pray to god asking for that amount of hacker energy back
i lost something inside me in october 2022 and i still haven’t found it back 🙁
was thinking about single page vs multi-page personal website
single page definitely pushes u to trim things down and show what’s necessary
whereas multipage gives u freedom to play around with what u want where and go deep into things
and ideally
i want a why? section on every page so that i can share my thought process behind a certain decision
i wish more people shared that, i just love asking and answering “why?” so much
imo its the only question which makes people think
writer’s block is sooo real
i had the topic ready but didnt know how tf i should start writing on it lmao
chatgpt can’t help cuz the topic im working on is after sept 2021
ended up giving up after writing some jackshit
PAIN
was feeling slightly lost so went on a 8km walk without internet access or any source of cheap dopamine- just me, my thoughts and my memos app on a dummy phone
got soo much clarity from just one walk, reprio was onpoint 👌
very happy about the outcome :)
going to go on these walks every week to reflect, reprioritize and refine my goals and execution.
experimented with stable diffusion and dreambooth for the first time
trained a model with my pictures and copied some prompts from lexica.art to make funny pictures of myself
output was subpar, the quality was not good, which i guess is because of the pictures i uploaded, wasnt the best - but was definitely fun!
“do hard things and make it easier for others” lives on my mind rentfree; it’s terrifying and catches me when im slacking
being self employed is equal to being in a constant feel of loss of direction
consistent reflection and visualizing your purpose and progress towards it is very very essential
having clarity in day to day life is so so important, literally pushes you to pursue your goals relentlessly
things that have helped me:
- writing down my current purpose and milestones
- logging everyday, and once every hour
- settings weekly goals and reviewing them every monday
- looking back on logs and seeing where the time drain is
oh for the hourly logging, set an alarm for every hour of the day and log what u did the past hour - i use discord for it, but anything works
weird dilemma
i want to do hard things with code, but constantly drawn back into using my current skillsets again
side projects help, but not as much
but i think it’s through side projects where i can actually learn
and there’s this classification bias which im not a big fan of
im constantly wanting to classify things into categories
someone said i should always choose projects which test my competence, while my current ones do, i lowkey think there are better projects which would challenge me more
but if i keep trying to find this arbitrary “good project” im never going to build
so yeah, just gotta pick things up, build it the best way i possibly can and repeat with harder problems
i think every man needs to know how to fight
not to win fights, but to protect himself and his brethren in times of danger
you never know when you’re boutta get jumped so need to keep yourself battleready
so im gonna join mma and start training lol
and ppl tend to respect you more when they know you’re physically capable of beating them to pulp 💀
benefits add up to the time spent training
only problem is that im losing weight EXTREMELY fast, and now have to eat like a dog and keep track of calories :pain:
v1 of streams is completely based on telegram
but v2 is going to have way more
so i plan on rewriting the entire backend to include multiple other sources, be easy to build upon and modular so that YOU ALL can use the API on your own websites
now back to whiteboarding 🫡
was afk for a bit
but im so back
updated my website yesterday and added some more links and cleaned up some pages
i think and relate deeply with motherfuckingwebsite.com
watching the social network again, for like the 7th or 8th time
update:
just realized livejournal.com on the social network is basically streams.place.. except u type in telegram
systems are important.
have systems for everything you consider important
spending time on building efficient systems for life will go a long way
or atleast i hope so
cuz i spend a fuckton of time on building good systems and it sort of helps while executing ?!
or it’s a me problem where i just need everything in place to do the smallest thing
i should start recording yt videos again
little more thought into this and i understood that
i had always assumed core/infra blockchain dev as too complex and hard; hence avoided even looking at it
and solely kept myself around dapp dev / linking contracts with frontend
( youtube effect / echo chamber )
i constantly felt gaps in my knowledge because of that and felt like i was dumber than the people i was talking to who actually understood what was going on under the hood.
sounds stupid but i was cock blocking myself from what i actually wanted to do thinking it was too hard to pull lmao 💀
regardless, diving deeper into core working and fundamentals of blockchain and crypto reignited the fire and is answering those questions
thinking happens in ephemeral notes / voice memos
and prioritizing/private logging happens on discord pvt server
bulletin board on obsidian
second brain on obsidian
everyday life reminders / floating todos in todoist
emotional control happens in reflection.app ( in dire need of a more private self hosted alternative with similar UI / features )
semi public logs, sharing progress and updates on streams
inspiration / news on twitter and farcaster
instagram for media to document life outside work, materialistic things and life experiences
youtube/twitch for consuming content and streaming - creation part wip
email feed for newsletters ( v curated and filtered and updated regularly)
execution on macos/arc/vscode/terminal lol
3 to 5 working days to update one field on a database
traditional banking is hideous
how do people not revolt against it
ive dove into many rabbit holes in the past
but crypto is probably the biggest, most extensive, most difficult and most impactful 🕳️ 🐇 i’ve been to
it’s like an infinitely unraveling threadball
not complaining tho, im loving it
problem:
a lot of gaps in my knowledge about things i know, a lot of vagueness and unsure about details
this leads to me not understanding more complexer things, because those “terms” are pre-requisites
mostly talking about crypto here
solution:
deep dive, bottoms up from fundamentals and ignore things already understood
-> + build / implement wherever necessary for better understanding on dev side (eg: if i learn about erc 721, i’ll implement one and play with it before moving on to next )
benefits:
full round understanding, so it’ll lead to finding problems to solve in the space easier, making ideation better
will document here
found this app called deepstash which is a community sourced information consumption platform;
it summarizes / retrieves the main ideas from a piece of long form content like books, blogs, podcasts etc
seems to be pretty new but it’s really helpful as i can go through pods i dont have time to listen to fully by just reading the summary on here.
there are also collections and journeys and customized recommendations based on my selected interests
oh and im not sponsored or sm 😂it’s genuinely a really good app imo
check it out and download it - https://dsta.sh/3tsh7fQgMabnuHpV8
ive been taking small breaks from the internet every now and then
but never planned a long one and stuck to it
so from now until maybe for a month or so, i just want to step back from the constant buzz
launches left and right, new alpha being shared on crypto twitter, so much fluff and shallow consumption
i want to put a full stop to it
turn the attention inwards towards myself and my growth and block everything else which isn’t necessary
over the past months, ive realized substance and depth over anything, and in this break that’s what i want to focus on.
go deeper into things
ive a bunch of “hard to read” books which ill get through
ive a bunch of rabbit hole entrances saved which ill jump into
ive some research material saved which ill go through
might post here every now and then, but mostly just internal logging.
niches will be ofc be crypto/consumer products and maybe a little philosophy.
goals?
- record low screentime on phone
- record high focus sessions ( both intensity and # )
- optimizing for obsessive work ( beating shiny object syndrome )
- internal satisfaction and validation from within
this might go longer for all i know
but yeah…
ive spoken to my friends at large about this for ages; finally the right time for it i feel.
i might be more active on the purple app and here. @soulninja on both.
can expect random yt streams if im feeling it
can expect random ig posts if im feeling it
can expect random launch if i get to it
thats pretty much it
peace.
keep fighting ;)
i love the second brain am building on obsidian
helps so much when learning about new things, super easy to spot gaps in my knowledge and stop guessing about certain things
when there’s too many, there’s confusion
if you want clarity, cut some off.
- need to update my portfolio and add some more pages
- continue with streams backend rewrite
- continue with crypto research
i long for a day where i can do ctrl k on my brain
automating this whole second brain thing
digital gardens, zettelkasten and so many other workflows / systems in place
everything has it’s ups and downs
but a big problem ive seen repeatedly is
laziness
what if
note taking, and bookmarking, and recording streams and the whole process of “saving”, “linking”, “notes” was just - automated
not fully, but semi automated where you’d have to input some words / tags or something like that
i think im unto something here
a browser extension, which sees tabs and notices you jumping into a rabbit hole, records all links, saves to your obsidian, it’ll prompt u after u “finish” if u wanna save, and it could even help you stay in focus and not get distracted ( opening twitter for the extra dopamine )
ill think more about this
Our tools and techniques are only as valuable as the workflow
from a note taking perspective:
obsidian + roam + notion + handwritten + ur mum + todoist + apple notes blah blah
or just apple notes
i dont give a shit what you use.. but what’s the workflow?
ask yourself these questions:
- what’s the delta of time from when you have a new thought and that thought is documented somewhere? your workflow should reduce this
- how easy is it to find something you’ve saved? your workflow should make this easy
- how easy is it to come up with new ideas from the ones you’ve saved? your workflow should make this possible ( mine can hehe )
- if you dont have access to your “main work device” can you save the fleeting thought without relying on memory?
now based on your answers, make your setup better.
why you ask me?
if you have a good note taking workflow setup for your entire brain ( like a second brain ( cough obsidian.md ) )
you can search your thoughts easily, you tend to rely less on memory, you can come up with some really good ideas over time as you save more and more ideas
reduces brain fog so that you can walk around with clarity in your thoughts
clarity in your thoughts reflect in your words
clarity in your words reflect in your action
action turns to result
!
distractions.
are.
everywhere.
and with adhd, it’s 10x more amplified
i find myself constantly in a rut trying to remove these distractions and they constantly keep coming back
delayed gratification. if only it was as easy practicing it.
i already have so many measures against it, delete, block, leave, isolate.
but the opposing party is working equally hard to make it addictive, to make us go back.
well that’s how they make money, so can’t blame them
and the dopamine gives us a fake sense of accomplishment.
“hard times create strong men”
nice quote isnt it
harder the battle is, stronger you are when you beat it
beating distractions and instead doing the meaningful work is completely internal.
ON YOU.
can you fight? in a battlefield where giving up is literally a few swipes away. they put a red quit button on our fucking hands and made us carry it around 24/7.
but again - it’s all internal.
everyone wants meaning in their life but many run away from it
if you run for long enough, you start losing the desire for meaning
and slowly you start living a meaningless life, doing meaningless work, and in meaningless relationships
that’s my worst nightmare - living life without diving deep in search of meaning
just living off the top of the iceberg
3 things i really like:
- crypto
- creator economy
- ai
lurking a lot and consuming things whenever i find, but i constantly find a lot of FLUFF everywhere i go
it’s rare finding actual substance and value
whenever i find, i learn a lot from that/them and adopt features and mental models from them
but the fact that you have to do so much due diligence to identify fake from real is crazy
but people get better over time
guess everyone gets an inner drive to chase actuality in their craft
big numbers or fame doesn’t replace value or inner contentment
hello
a16z and everyone associated w it are just so… elite.
Intensity + Consistency = Progress.
finally rebuilt my website!
https://soulninja.lol
had a thought today
so
instead of focusing on the outcome ( monetary goal like 100k$)
and putting my focus towards that metric as an indicator of progress
i should be making my indicator of progress my actionables
did i get better in frontend today?
did i get faster in shipping products?
did i get better in writing scalable code?
did i get better in talking to customers?
did i get better in writing copy?
etc
and NOT
how much money did i make today?
so many things to build
so many things to learn
so many things to explore
now execution is all that matters
having “lists” gives so so so so much clarity
lists of
- things to do
- things you’re working on
- things you could build
- things to watch, read
- things to experiment with
- things you like
- things you dislike
- things you want
- green flags
- red flags
- people u like
endless
leaving the job lead to a lot of liberty over time and uncertainty
liberty of time brought excitement due to newfound time in my hands to “do my own thing” but also led to confusion- a lot of confusion over decisions
especially when related to money
will doing this result in good $$
will doing this have good ROI
is there a better thing to be doing right now
but what ive tried directing my mind towards are the goals / missions i set while zoomed out
the pillars of light which are leading my life this year
aim is to make very good use of this gap year
progress shall be made towards that in all forms of life :)
just quit my job
amazing team, amazing pay, pretty good product, amazing culture
dream job for many
but that was not what i wanted right now
been recording / editing small clips - it’s really interesting
possibly something i can start doing more and more as a hobby and maybe later it will grow into something which has worth
main goal is to just document
and provide value
making content which wouldve helped me a year or two ago
month on month exponential growth comes from week on week high expectation strategical execution
solving technically hard problems is an amazing source of dopamine
i dont like the fact that i can type at the same speed as my mind thinks
i end up talking a lot and THINKING out loud while texting someone
and while gaining clarity over something new, the mind spits out a lot of garbage, which i end up telling the person talking to me, very few very very few can keep up with it
so generally, it’s kind of pissing off that i type so fast
but im not smart enough yet to predict if this is good or not, only time will tell ig
upto a certain number, it’s okay to share earnings and shit - but beyond that i dont know
it’s like you’re feeding the evil to come bite you later lol
like you might not be meaning to flex or show off
but for the others it WILL come off like that because their horizons are that low
—
sharing these with some close friends is okay - im just talking about putting it out in public
idk tf levels.io does it so easily
like i get it dont believe in jinx or sm but like 💀when you know the people who’ll read this will probably be envious, why even share?
this might be an indian issue
in india people are extremely selfish and envious - society trains u like that without you realizing it
you need to actively act against it and go through a mindset change
im not going to be open about numbers until
- i either cross my goal #
- my circle changes from envious and ppl who get shocked to people for whom even 100k a month is nothing
—
more about circle
i am in soo many different circles and they’re so diverse, i have to be mindful of what i share to some
it’s only with a handful of friends where i am truly myself;
in all other places, it’s either a small part of me or i’m entirely faking another personality ( that’s just 1 rn lol )
human 1:1 connections are more important to me than “groups” and i optimize for that as well
so in some circles, i feel like i progressed a bit too fast compared to other folks in it, and to cut off and move on - that’s not easy when you have so much history together
and now the issue is, all circles read / consume whatever i put online and it fucking sucks
cuz who am i going to represent? the person they see?
it will be different for others
ideally, it should be “myself”
but i’ve hidden / given restrictive access to parts of me to these diff circles that im unsure as to how they’d react to see my “other side” of sorts
easy fix:
im just gonna be myself and if they dont like it, i cut them off 💀
cold but i dont know any other way
and sad part is, i dont think it’s going to be that they dont like it
jealousy is probably what’s going to happen
now the worst worst part is
the people who are better than me, they’ll find this extremely funny and cringe 😭
such a fake life we all live in
pretending to be someone who we actually aren’t
if u read all this - there are better things to do in life than listen to aadhithyan rant about identity loss
lol this started from me not being okay with sharing certain things to ranting about loss of identity
now some random mf is gonna find this and mention it and creep the fuck out of me 👍
internet 1 me 0
ever so often
someone sees something ive done and goes - “you do all this at such a young age”
internet has broken every barrier to entry to learn new things or to earn money
earlier, you needed a college degree, then go find a job etc; or if you were bit more daring, you’d start a business
now, you can learn everything on the internet, work remotely on the internet, do cool shit on the internet and express yourself
you dont need to ever displace yourself from your setting ( ie school )
so young kids ( me included ) leveraged this to our advantage
i know so many people who learnt how to build, fell in love with the process, spent an awful lot of time experimenting and diving deep into it, obsessed and became good at their craft
and then when they started showing other people what they built, they got a lot of offers and people offering $$ to work for them
and they were in a position to take them up and work on it part time
all this, while going to school
—
i think i should make video / written content on this process;
so that everytime someone asks me “how do u earn money at 17” or “what do u do” i can send them to that video
and recently it’s just been increasing more and more
maybe because of exponential growth at a relatively young age than normal
—
in my circle on the internet, i’m actually less “successful” as compared to other folks my age
but when i step off the internet, that dynamic changes
so for the latter, i will make videos / blogs providing value and insights on
- what ive learnt the past 4 to 5 years doing this
- how they can start doing this and a path for doing so
- mistakes i made and how to avoid those potholes
- transparency about numbers so that u can have realistic expectations ( this im still not sure, because for a lot of “normal” folks it’ll seem like a fuckton )
++ i had a similar idea of a way to document whatever’s going on in my life, and this was the best MVP to achieve that
so i dmmed judah offering to help him build out more features which will make this app really cool and helpful!
and now i shall contribute to this app shipping features 1 by 1 :)
this page shall see it all and more!
i love the idea of streams.place
it solves everything i was looking for
the point of me writing is NOT to be poetic, NOT to teach something,
it’s simply to CAPTURE this moment, what i know, my thoughts, what am working on
so that
- i can look back on it after a few years to see how much i’ve progressed
- for others to visualize my journey
people say having an audience will help u get users
but if the audience you built on different platforms are not your target audience for your product
this is most likely what’s going to happen:
if your followers like you, they might check it out and sign up, giving u that initial hit during launch but after that, your DAUs will just drop to 0 lol
—
some ways to prevent this
- build an audience related to what you’re building
- might involve tweeting / making content which attracts your target audience
- find places where your target audience hang out and become friends with them
- launch there.
—
i saw this really famous youtuber techwithtim who makes content around programming try do this and absolutely fail
kinda sad that he didnt realize this but this was what happened
- his audience are people who’re learning to code
- he joins this startup building for athletes?!
- shills his startup in his yt channel ( 1M subs )
- gets 1k users during launch :/
takeaway: having audience != DAUs to your product if your audience is not your target audience
something less obvious to many:
when the focus is on actually doing something and not talking about it - even the talking which comes after doing it becomes interesting..
so lets just keep doing interesting shit so that we have something interesting to show and talk about
ive experimented with sleep a lot
but- sleeping at around 12-1 am, waking up at 6-7, and sticking to a strict morning routine before starting the day JUST FEELS SOOOOO MUCH better
compared to
going to sleep at like 5 to 6am and waking up at 2 to 3pm completely clueless on what’s going on
but the issue with this is i have to be in bed by 1 am which is incredibly hard
as someone who’s more productive in the night it just kills me to go sleep during my most productive hours
so what ends up happening is that i work until like 3 or 4am
then wake up at like 10am
is not the best, but works.
thinking of building out my personal website today
want it really really minimalistic ( like little to 0 css lol )
some inspirations im gonna be using on the way:
https://spongeboi.com
https://shlok28.wtf
https://sigilwen.ca
https://gd3.kr
https://joodaloop.com
https://tyler.cafe
so to summarize
- minimal landing
- streams of consciousness ( lol this )
- now page
- semi public writing
- list of lists ( my fav )
—-
also until we build out tags on this website, im gonna be using #tags
so tags: #building #personalwebsite
so this is like a private blog?!
i think this way of microblogging is very liberating
i dont know who’s viewing it, and i dont stop myself from posting anything
so this will literally be a “stream” of my thoughts as i go through life
you’ll find drops related to work, life, and other shit
work will mostly be related to backend development, architecture, crypto, AI and other stuff
life will be growth, self improvement, books, gym, work/life balance ( it doesnt exist lol ) and other stuff
other shit = random extremely relatable feelings, random brain dumps and appreciating my friends
hello world!