Felt good taking the time off on Sunday, journaling and reflecting on the past week.
Catching up on some reading and writing which I love doing but didn’t prioritise in this month.
Reflecting on last week, could introspect ego coming in and emotions riling up at work. Not often do I lose composure but happened. Need to correct this behaviour.
With marriage and mid-career in the horizon, thinking about things that should be in auto-pilot before so that I can auto-pilot basics while focussing attention on bigger challenges
have fitness, diet and habits in sustenance
‘pay my debts’ w.r.t tech
Others
Binged on Solo-Levelling Season-1 and Season-2 and then went to finish the Manga
I started writing on this blog since end of 2016. It’s something I really want to do but end up not allocating enough time to it.
Published a total of 52 articles so far. Being in college definitely help 😄
2025: 1
2024: 0
2023: 2
2022: 6
2020: 5
2019: 2
2018: 12
2017: 17
2016: 1
Below are some unfinished drafts over the years which I intend to post even if the thoughts aren’t as clear as back then.
2025
Ultimate Frisbee: Current Favourite Sport An attempt at running and failing
Thoughts on taking a break from cycling
Trek
7 day Sandakphu trek
2024
2024: Reflecting on what feels like the worst year I’ve ever had
2024: Books, Blogs and more
Rollercoaster of a Quarter from Jan-March
Tour of Thekkady
National Championships
Race Reports
HCL Cyclothon Hyderabad Edition
Telangana State Championships’2024
Nandi Epic
Namma Nandi
BBCH Hasan Express
2023
2023: Reflecting on what feels like the best year I’ve ever had
2023: Books, Blogs and more
What went into becoming the Telangana State Champion
Race Reports
Telangana State Championships’2023
BBCH Races
BAR races
Bananthimari trek
2022
An attempt at Getting Shredded
2022: Books, Blogs and more
RaceReports
Telangana State Championships’2022
Trek
Skandagiri
Mulki
2021
MNC -> Startup: Moving from ADP after 3 years to MyYogaTeacher
Moving to Bangalore after 25 years of staying at parents
Around the start of the new year 2025, I was watching MKBHD’s 2024 rewind. Although I knew he played Ultimate frisbee, the mention of him taking a long break from Youtube to spend time playing pro Frisbee intrigued me.
So I went around and checked if any Ultimate Frisbee communityexisted in Bangalore. A quick Google search led me to: Bangalore Ultimate Instagram Page
The Instagram page had a link to ‘Bangalore Ultimate’ whatsapp group, where one of the member posted a link for a game in ‘Koramangala Ultimate’ group. A bummer that I could not make it to that week’s game as I had Sandakphu trek with Indiahikes coming up in a week. Once I was back, I immediately signed up for a game on the last Thursday of January.
Koramangala Ultimate hosts games at Coolulu Turf Park every thursday from 8pm-9:30pm. Hardik and Pranav host the games. When I met Hardik at the court, he was surprised that I found the community through a google search, as most players are referred by friends.
The evening went something like this
Warmup and Drills
Game
CoolDown
1: Warmup and Drills
Warmup had couple of sprints, leg openers, heel-up runs, team sprint drills, alternate leg swing touches, etc
After that, Hardik paired us beginners – Saurabh, Prashanth and Sujith. We practiced our forehand passes and captures. Did a drill of 50 non-stop passed and played a mini-game of 2v2
The other experienced players were meanwhile doing some drills on offense.
2: The Game
We were 16-17 players in total and were split into teams of 5/6. Couple of players were participating in the FastFive tournament and they were group together.
I was on a team with Natsu, Amitesh, Sharath, Saurabh and Anoop.
We played 2 games. I don’t recall the result of the 1st game but we definitely lost the 2nd one. The opposing team was a bit too strong and very coordinated.
Though 1st game was good, I quickly ran out of breath in the 2nd game. HR was ~190bpm. I got a couple of reminders from my teammates to slow down, survey the field, and make passes more deliberately
3: The Cooldown
After a picture, we all gathered for a cool down. This was, hands down, the best cooldown I’ve ever done. Period.
We formed a circle holding hands and then took a step back. This created a tension and was a great stretch for the shoulders
We did neck-to-toe stretches, some shoulder rotations, cat cow, hip-90s etc.
Running is something I’ve always loved, whether it’s during morning runs or football matches. I consciously reduced the number of football games as I started getting worried about injuries after 1-2 bad experiences at games with players doing scary tackles and pushes. I moved on badminton post that but after playing my 1st game of frisbee, I’m very inclined to play a lot more:
it’s a no-contact sport. I could feel minimal aggression in player (unlike football) during the games
it gives me the similar rush as in football (can’t yet compare the rush of scoring a goal as I’m yet to play my first real game)
TL;DR, 📝📝 Insane vibe @crankmeister 🙌🙌🙌 Meticulous planning by @shaurya @ashwin and team Adrenaline through the roof
TS;WM 📝📝 After the end of Round 1, Vikram suggested I build the momentum into the start the of the sprint. I asked Venky if I could get a countdown for 38 seconds, as that was my Round 1 Sprint timing. Low on fuel (thanks to Imaad for the bar), I expected to have a worse timing than R1. 🥲
Good start with momentum, I wanted to do 5 second on(off the saddle) and 5 second off but my mind had zoned out and I couldn’t synchronise with Venky’s voice 😴
The familiar mind-chatter of
you are empty on fuel
you are competing against a stronger rider
there’s always a next race. save your legs for that 🤮🤮
During school, whenever there was a sprint and it was close I used to shout my lungs out and it always gave me that edge to push through.
Back to the race, I shifted to a higher gear and screamed through a couple of strokes and tried to maintain the momentum till the end. I couldn’t hear Shrinidhi’s shouts of “drops and sprint”, else I could have gone all out in the last 10 seconds off the saddle and end up with a better timing.
All in all, a great sprint. A huge confidence booster. 😄
I’m a huge admirer of Venky – the longevity in the sport , the sheer amount of content he pushes out (blogs before and podcasts now) and the legacy he’s been steadily building with Bangalore Amatuer Racing (11th year now). 🙌🙌🙌
A great coach helping out with building up my base, fine tuning for target-race performance; race & pacing strategies, post race analysis and nutrition tips and also helping out with equipment when needed. ♥️♥️
The calls we meet up is just truckload of information. 📝📝
If I had to describe Venky’s coaching style in one line, it would be “simplicity and fortitude” (haikyuu) Lot more races coming up in July. Lot more potential to bring out of myself. Cheers to Coach! 💪💪
TS;WM
“Without structured training, you’re just spinning your wheels.” – Greg LeMond
I’ve been riding a bike since end of 2016, started with community rides, then a 200 BRM, then a SR series, then another and a bit of racing mixed in between with @HyderabadRacingCircuit and Ending with a Paris Brest Paris finish in Aug’2019. From COVID until Oct’2022, I spent very little amount of time with the bike but that changed after the time at Telagana States 2022. The adrenaline rush and the community pulled me back again.
After recovering from the crash, I got myself a indoor trainer at the coolest bike shop in Bangalore @VeloStudio. Spent the whole of January with random but consistent rides and finally went on my first group ride in Bangalore at the end of Jan 2023.
Meet coach BikeyVenky.
Post ride, hopped on Venky’s website. Booked an appointment. Had a good long call about background and goals. We started working together since Feb, 2023.
“The key to structured training is consistency.” – Alberto Contador
BAR ITT in Feb was the base check. BBCH IIT was a bit of a mixed feeling. did it Merckx. might have finished on the podium with TT bars but felt a bit risky as I was not used to it. Good base building in Feb, Mar and April ending with Ooty trip.
BBCH Hasan express was the most fun I’ve had in a road race. Felt super strong on the bike but a hub issue prevented me from a standing sprint in the finish. June was the most eventful with 2 podiums. One @TheMonthlyCours and one at @BAR Criterium. Finishing up with my 1st Nandi climb at Namma Nandi 2023.
At the end of 150 days, we come to the BAR ITT which was the event we started with 🙂
With the main race approaching, focus is on being sharp on that particular day mentally and physically!
If I had to advice, one of the best things you could do at the start of your endurance journey is prioritise working with a coach than worry about equipment and purchases.
Career || Work Work => A mix of work from home and office due to Bangalore rains 🙂 got home a monitor and a new extension. => continuation of lot of meetings, follow-ups and mentoring sessions Career => I was looking for any meetups to kill time on the weekend and I found one focussing on DS-Algo and System Design. Last sunday was on Binary Trees and it was very informative.
Workout || Diet Diet => 1100 cal: we entered the last 6-week phase of cut with a 1100 calorie diet. And I hit it 95% of the time 🙂 though I had many cravings in between. how did I handle? instead of ordering something I put a time and had 25% whey scoop followed by water 🙂 => Adding taste: I used to just boiled chicken (haldi+salt) marinated for lunch. started mixing it up with soy sauce this week. I’ll start documenting good recipes which are healthy, tasty and calorie-mindful. Workout => missed 3 days of workout 😕 on Thu-Fri-Sat for being lazy
Personal => Bangalore rains 😄 you must have already seen a lot of memes. our street was water logged. => Even mobile signal was not working and I was chilling with my flatmate on the terrace. During a half-day power cut on Monday, cleaned up my room and it helped in decluttering my mind a lot.
Thoughts/Ideas
Scheduling Learning I like to listen to podcasts in the gym and take notes as well. But sometimes I don’t have any podcast in queue and I end listening to music. => Why not queue up interesting things at the start of the week like newsletters, blogs, etc to read
DS-Algo Mnemonics Just like we have mnemonics for vocabulary, why not try doodles/mnemonics for popular ds-algo questions? Any resource you know?
Work: It was a usual work week along with a holiday on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. Nevertheless I went to work as there were no interruptions and I could code in peace. Currently working on “referrals” on our platform along with reading up ‘URL Shortening’ architecture and a couple of topics from “100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them”. Also got to explored datadog and videosdk platforms. Friday ended with some carrom and chess games🙂
Workout: I had a huge overload of calories on the weekend and that spiked my weight by 2kgs. It was damage control throughout the week by keeping diet in check along with the workouts🙂 One day, post the workout and pranayam session at the gym, Ashish introduced himself. It felt good when you see people making a conversation pro-actively. Need to pick a thing or two from him🙂
Personal: Stacked flossing as a habit in the night. Let’s see how the consistency goes
Thoughts/Ideas
Minumum Viable Habit Rather than focussing on getting the perfect workout, meditating 10 min day, all 5 breath work in pranayam, etc this week has been better by focussing on the bare minimum Ex: just 2 mins of meditation and I will tick it off on my habits tracker. Same with gym. Just the 1st exercise
Deal with juniors/interns The amount of context-switching has been insane with assisting younger folks at work. Trying out a couple of things to handle these efficiently and more importantly, emphathatically. Any suggestions here?
Resources
Podcasts/Youtube
An amazing podcast on Product Management by Shreyas Doshi on YOUTUBE. Explored topics like pre-mortems, LNO frameworks, product metrics etc. Extremely insightful. You should definitely follow Shreyas Doshi on LINKEDIN
I revisited Awaken the Giant Within audiobook by Tony Robbins during evening walks around the office. Tony had a big impact on me during college.
A SPOTIFY episode on `Time Management for Engineers`. Explored topics like boundaries, context switches among other things.
Saved Content
Are you struggling with handling meetings along with your daily code work? A LINKEDIN post helping with a couple of things you could try.
An INSTAGRAM post of street calisthenics engaging the passersby 🙂
A QUORA post where the author brilliantly humanises our organs and their fear. (aren’t organs already human?)
Reading
Superhuman by HabitCurrently re-reading this book and summarising them on Notion. Maybe that’s why you see two blogposts coming out this week😄
I used to listen to these names from my friends right from school. Though my elder brother used to watch them, the only anime I watched was Dragon Ball Z during Cartoon Network days. But…
I have watched Haikyuu!! and I loveeee it. I have been revisiting the scenes/episodes multiple times😄
What exactly is Anime?
Anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. (all anime shows are cartoons, but not all cartoons are anime.)
And, what is Haikyuu About?
Haikyuu is about a Karasuno’s high school volleyball clubs journey from the bottom to the top and captures the metamorphosis of various characters (and Hinata Shoya in particular)
I enrolled with a coach on FITTR for the #GetShredded goal for 2022 in June and to have a hook that wakes me up early in the morning (#RGV), I started watching Haikyuu! after a recommendation from a colleague.
The series has 85 episodes in total spread over 4 seasons.
Why I love it
A sports anime and I naturally gravitated towards it.
A perfect underdog story. Characters alone and together defying all odds. Evolving through the episode. Each episode moved me.
It doesn’t focus on a single characters. Though the pace might seem slower while covering other characters, the payoff is incredible.
Season 1 conclusion where characters are taking in the results.
What Next?
Haikyuu season 5 is coming as a 2 part movie in the later part of 2023. can’t be more excited 😀
I started watching other anime Kuroko’s Basketball and Baki which didn’t keep me hooked and finally settle upon Diamond No Ace: YOUTUBE Hajime No Ippo: YOUTUBE A place further than the universe: YOUTUBE
Weekday => The start of the week was energetic 🙂 Woke up to comments on the blogposts published late in the night about the Uttari Betta Trek. Also, embarrassing with ‘class vs className’ in plain html 😀 => With rising omnicorn cases, we were rightly asked to stay back and work from home. A little lazy on the first day but picked up and had pretty great remaining days. Had a live(/stressfull) release ‘Call to Actions’. => breaking down the tasks, using the pomodor timer which I got recently helped a lot! Highly recommended!
Weekend => finished the long pending application work. Pushed out blogpost on theme for 2022 🙂 => also pasting charts all over my room with all kinds of things – goals, systems, streaks. Hope the owner doesn’t mind. Better ask for forgiveness rather than permission (and also the paint cost in the end)
Overall => Probably a 6/10 again. Work went great and could have been less stress full if not for some old limiting patterns to the fore especially waking up late.
Thought Experiments
Three series on the blog: => ‘How (not)to build a brand’ covering journey of building a brand. Sort of mock startup. => ‘Risk Mitigation’ covering things you can do to avoid risks later. Stuff like dvorak keyboard or financial mistakes when young. => ‘Challenger Series’ I’ve been wanting to wear a kurta to office inspired by Jayanthi Sampathkumar. Include 11 other challenges as well?
Still haven’t gotten the Pixel 5a 🙂 and this is the only photo from last week.
No, it’s not 4:48 am. That’s the pomodoro timer I was talking about. Wake up hack has been putting on a timer for 10minutes and just staying awake 🙂 (and also munching on a banana with some overnight soaked almonds)
Job switch went great. I moved from an MNC to a young tech startup in the health/fitness space – a combination I want to continue on. It was very discomforting in the initial months and only now am I finding some foothold.
I lagged on this one. Classical mistake of one goal clashing with the other. There was always hesitation in going for long rides vs spending that time prepping up for interviews. Also, I had to make my presence at the Bangalore office the weekend of State Championships. That makes it two misses of the State Champs in a row. Nevertheless, I was fitter than before 🙂
As I was reflecting in December upon the goals and systems to be set forth for 2022, the thought of having a theme around this sounded great. And came up with the very unintelligent hashtag ..
SkillUp#2022
Two books that have had the biggest influence on me in the last two years have been
The book by Cal has the tag of ‘Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love‘. In short, you need to skill up and first provide value to the world. Also, watch this short reel by Furqan which beautifully captures the book’s core idea.
And Scott, in his book mentions (good + good > excellent). Some recommend going deeper in one subject and doubling down on it and being a craftsman like Book 1 says. But currently, Book 2’s idea appeals more to me 😀
The whole intention is to select skills I want to get good at, commit to learning, show up every day and track the progress. We can think of this as a 2 year Masters’s course not in an MBA or an MS, but in #SkillUp.
Also, writing these down helps me with 3 things: 1. Track my progress, ups, and downs, learning from them and, overall, capture the journey. 2. Get help from people, get connected to people who might know fast-lanes on achieving goals. **Third and most importantly** 3. Clarity on the next steps. There are far too many things to do and I end up doing nothing. Writing these down makes me filter through the noise and focus. Having action steps not more than 3-5. 3 being the magic number.
So what are the ones in focus for this year?
Goals and Systems
In List:
ReactJS/Golang
Programming Principles
SoftSkills/Language
Instrument/Game
Books/Resources
Grooming
React JS/Golang => I’ve been a data/backend engineer primarily working on Python till last June. And I’ve started working on end-end modules in ReactJS and Golang/NodeJs on our product and I’m loving it. Will double down on this
Programming Principles => I’ve finished my graduation with a degree in Computer Science but I must admit, I haven’t done full justice to my degree 🙂 => Goal here is to internalize the good programming practices, concepts and behaviors. Ex: Clean Code, Clean Coder.
*For (1) and (2)* => Goals: Certifications? Interviews? Still defining an end goal. => Systems: 100Days of Code. 3 Times this year.
SoftSkills/Language => Focus here would be on modules like small talk, maintaining energy and confidence, proper voice technique, etc. => also learn Kannada 🙂 => Goals: Give a speech in Kannada TM? Open mic in Kannada? => Systems: Talk only in Kannada? Talk with one stranger everyday? Track those and next steps?
Instrument/Game => This has been on the wish list for so long. The goal is to be able to have a jamming session with my dear friend Swathi Peddi whom we’ve had on our blog before. => Choice of the game would be between Chess and Rubik’s cube. Since we have 3-4 Rubik’s at the office, let me put this up the list for a couple of months 🙂 => Goals: Jamming session with a friend. Redbull speedcubing competition. => Systems: Still defining this
Books/Resources => Three prong goal here [ Internalize old classics, More science fiction, and continue reading 🙂 ] => Goals: 12 classics, 12 sci-fi, 12 new books. Document podcasts, blogs, videos I’ve consumed. => Systems: Reading Sci-fi 15 minutes before sleeping.
Grooming => The goal is to grow some muscle and cut down fat. Yep. The same old boring goals. But commit to a 5-year journey of strength training 3-4 times a week along with solidifying healthy food habits. => Couple this along with the usual grooming stuff 🙂 => Goals: Abs by Dec 16 => Systems: Still defining these. Workout sessions every day.
In Spheres:
The above 9 can be split into 3 spheres and more unintelligent hashtags:
A] #KoffeeNKode i.e. Level up as a full-stack developer. Top 25% | (1, 2)
B] #ProduceNotConsume i.e. Hit Content Creation Goals (3, 4, 5)
“The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
This year, focus on the identity you want to build.”
James clear in Atomic habits
Tracking would be through using Notion, Google Docs/Sheets along with #SkillUp2022 section in weekly newsletter.
I will also keep tracking the numbers of sessions done per day and transition into #DeepWork hours soon.
End Note
I have had the usual cliched goals since ever. 90% in I.C.S.E boards, crack BITSAT exam, grab a high-paying job in FAANG. But I have to admit, I did not have the work ethic to back it up. One for sure has to work now or later and the earlier he does, the better the compounding. “Jhak aaj maaro ya kal, maarni toh padegi hi.”
Let 2022 be know for the hours put in, work ethic with deep work and stacking these skills up!
