Been a while since I hopped onto here. And sadly, if I have to be honest with myself, I don't think I have worked on as many of the improvements that I have been hoping to work on this year. Going through the list will take too much time, but all I can say is that I feel my procrastination is really getting abit out of hand. Really should watch The Social Dilemma to see if I can get any inspiration to procrastinate less.

I have actually come to terms with the fact I have this mental OCD, things that are not done, yet, that are things I want done, really gnaw at the back of my head, with said gnawing strength varying with the level of importance I deem it. And an interesting quote i read from James Clear, is that (I paraphrase), things, stresses us out when it's undone, but it stresses us out more when we do nothing about it. Just doing it, no matter how minute the progress, relieves us of that stress. It makes sense to me and here I am, writing a short post cause its been eating at me that I want to have more frequent reflection but have yet to do so. 

Been a long three months and its just a testament of my amnesia-like memory that they flew past so damn fast. Returned to training, painful, painful training and I don't like to admit it, but my "why" to doing it has changed so much, and as I realized with all the damn books I read, that's about the most important thing to everyone and everything they do. August has been decent though, celebrating my birthdays with loved ones, the hc polo guys, capitol alcoholic brunch, etc. September was on its way to being not so memorable, honestly, your life just blurs into an unending film on loop of work and training work and training, that you no longer keep track of it anymore. BUT, then came to good one, where I dropped the bomb on my parents that I wanted to move out. Well, lets say the bomb really did hit them, and I feel the dynamics have never really been the same since then. 

And last but not least, I've learnt to not take so much shit from a lot of friends. And weird enough, I only learned it by taking alot of shit from one, but that's a special, special case.

Ah yes, and books wise, it's really one of the only thing I am proud of since the year progressed to this stage. Still on track to a book a month. In June, it was failing forward. July, was The Hard Things about Hard Things, August was Never Split The Difference, and September was No Filter. All amazing books in their own rights. 

The Hard Things About Hard Things

Great book, really tells us about the difficult parts of running a company. Behind the glitz and glamour of being an entrepreneur, shit, like "hustling" and "finding investment" and "growing" , if they are the bright side, leaves, to a budding tree. This book tells you about the roots, the dark, less noticeable side that people dont know but without which, your company will surely get fucked over. Pardon my analogy stolen from Naruto though, its one of my favourite ones from there. Basically, things you probably havent thought of if you want to start a company like how to fire someone, how much power to give your managers, taking care of your people->product->profit in that order, what type of CEO to be, etc. Amazing book.

Never Split The Difference

Another amazing book, this time about negotiation. This book really piqued my interest in negotiation so much, that I would really like to find a role in life that give me more visibility to it. Not going to get into details of it, with techniques like mirroring, labelling, using No's to get to your Yes', how to use layered questions. Amazing book.

No Filter

Yes, I am blessed with being introduced amazing book, because, is YET another amazing book about Instagram, the way it grew, why it grew that way, and how it grew that way. Especially amazing because whether I am proud of it or not, I was there on its journey for the last 8-9 years. Not proud because i was there too fucking much. Offers great, great insights into the working mind of some of the tech geniuses and the things they look out for, think about, and things they do to manage a growing company. More importantly, they also focus on what they hold true to.

Well that's it for this not so short update. Just making some recall of the events that happened, flipping through some of the 3 books to get a recollection of some of the points (which I love doing anyway), took me around 30 minutes to get this post up.