Anurag Kale's Blog

The modern mind is over stimulated, the modern body under stimulated -Naval Ravikant

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Attention is the currency of today’s digital world. There are a lot of things that seek a piece of your attention, which has a limited quota. We are bombarded with tons of content. This adds a lot of noise to our life. Most of the time, we can’t seem to find our way out of it and hence can’t prioritize what really matters to us. This book tries to present you with ideas that can help you cut the noise and find meaningful things you really want to work on.

What’s the book about?

I interpret it as a group of ideas, thoughts and questions introduced to help you find – what’s worth doing, fixing faulty thinking and making things happen. It’s a distilled version of author’s private journal that he maintained over 10 years,  a collection of questions and its answers, which he thought would be helpful to others.

Structure

~130 pages long collection of essays with each essay spanning 1-3 pages. Can be read in order (recommended if reading for first time) or out of order as it pleases you. Essays span into 7 broad ideas –

• Updating Identity
• Saying No
• Making things happen
• Changing perspective
• What’s worth doing?
• Fixing faulty thinking
• Saying Yes

Don’t read the book if you want –

• A recipe or to do list
• A self help book explaining an idea for 100s of pages
• A prescription to follow
• An easy answer to burning questions

Read the book if you are ready-

• to be questioned (your thoughts, assumptions)
• to reflect and apply the thoughts from the book to your own life context
• to find answers on your own and use the ideas as a framework or reference

Some of my favorite takeaways from the book –

• The online version of you, is not the real you (no matter how hard you try or think it is).
• Don’t follow a person, follow their ideas.
• If you are not feeling “hell yeah!” then say no
• There are a few things that seem obvious to you but amazing to others
• Learn to see past an example, focus on the lesson and apply it to your own life
• Learning without doing is useless (irrespective of the field)
• The work is the point and my work is unique. Doesn’t matter if is a masterpiece or not as long as I enjoy it
• We don’t get wise by adding and adding. We also need to subtract to reach a goal.Unlearning is needed.
• Goals shape the present, not the future.