Trigger

It was The Millionaire Fastlane, but it’s a notion invoked by many in general. I’m rereading the book for inspiration now that I’m attempting the fast lane myself.

The author endorses and celebrates an extremely intense lifestyle before you become successful so you can enjoy more life than work later.

The premise goes like this: in order to get what others don’t, you need to do what others won’t. The “won’t” part typically boils down to daily time investment.

Put another way, the more you work each day, the higher your chances of achieving the success of your dreams.

According to another version of this philosophy, the only way to achieve success is to burn the proverbial midnight oil. Not by becoming a night owl who wakes up late and toils through the night, but by becoming both the day’s early bird and the night’s watchman.

The perceived logic is simple: the more you work, the more you get done.

Work for 12–16 hours per day, six days a week, for two to three years. Sacrifice everything that gets in the way of work – TV, family, friends, health, sleep, games, sports matches, recreation… everything. Once you do that, magic happens. Your work compounds and you taste success.

I want to debunk this theory.

Problems with the long-hours framework

But first, I must admit that I’ve believed in the long-hours notion my entire life. Even today, a part of me is fascinated by the lure of late-night stillness. That part goes to sleep guilt-ridden from not trying hard enough and from giving in to the body’s demands.

So, what’s the catch?

First, it’s possible to generate the same intensity – or even more – by working fewer hours. By fewer hours, I’m not endorsing something as extreme as working 4 hrs per week. There’s something called deep work. You’ve probably heard of it, right? If not, keep reading.

Second, long hours come at a cost. A huge one, if you ask me. If you’re lucky, you’ll get there in 2–3 years in a healthy state. But if anything goes wrong, you’ll have accumulated years of relationship and health debt that may take just as long to pay off.

A viable alternative – deep work

Having practiced deep work for a few years now, I can say that it’s possible to get the same amount of work done in fewer hours. The challenge is that it’s not easy, just as it’s not easy to work 12+ hours a day. Maintaining a distraction-free work environment is hard. So is the discipline required to stay focused. But it’s possible.

Three to four hours of deep work per day, accompanied by another three to four hours of less intense work (meetings, emails, admin, etc.), can leave you just as drained as a 16-hour workday.

The challenge is figuring out how to do it consistently.

On productive days when I’m “in the zone,” I easily get more done than I would during a distraction-laden 12-hour day. On such days, I look at the clock and find myself surprised that it’s only 6 p.m.

There are many books on deep work, so I won’t go into the details. If you’re interested, I’d recommend Deep Work by Cal Newport, Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Obstacles

One thing getting in my way at the moment is the sheer number of threads I need to work on. I often get stuck in decision paralysis right at the beginning of my deep work sessions, which ends up eating into valuable time and pushing me further into the rabbit hole of distractions.

To fix that, I’m going to start an experiment. At the end of each day, I’m going to write down the top one or two priorities for the next day so I’m not starting from a blank slate and am crystal clear about what I need to do to confidently crush the day.

Another intensity destroyer is self-doubt. It’s nastier and harder to shrug off. When self-doubt sets in, progress feels empty. Productivity feels like distraction.

In yesterday’s deep work sessions, it took me a long time to figure out a good name for my product. By EOD, I had made some progress on rest of the planned tasks but couldn’t finish them. So my mind did what it does best – reprimand me for being careless and shallow focused and failing to finish reasonable amount of planned tasks yet again.

It was only at the end of my thinking walk that I realised the importance of naming and how everything in code and branding and GTM revolved around it, and how it typically takes even more time with even more folks. Not to mention I had completed all three non-trivial action items from yesterday’s call.

Was I really unproductive? Self-doubt made me think so. If I had given in to it, I would perhaps have given up on my deep work schedule believing the long-hours framework.

It’s all about intensity

In the deep work framework, time is more valuable than money. Every wasted minute is gone forever.

That said, I want to acknowledge that the intention behind the long-hours framework is the same – to get you to a level of work intensity where you are getting stuff done quicker thereby increasing your odds of success. Intensity engenders reward. But only one of the frameworks is sustainable and the other is not.

To get shit done, I must either learn to focus deeply for a few hours while still enjoying the essential luxuries of life, or toil for longer hours while sacrificing family time and health.

The post The myth of the 16-hour workday first appeared on Anurag Bhandari.

I own a Btwin Riverside 120, and despite the slightly uncomfortable saddle it’s served me well. On a less windy day or with tailwinds, it allows me to zip across smooth roads at 30+ kmph quite comfortably.

So, why not Tilt?

Upright positioning felt unnatural. The moment I wanted to pump it up, the seat came in the way and prevented me from achieving zippy speeds. Plus, working out at a 90 degree angle feels clumsy.

Chaffing is real. Despite a softer, more comfortable seat (compared to Btwin), I started feeling irritation in my thighs due to friction from seat.

Low frame. It’s designed for super casual rides within the society perimeter. A low frame keeps the design general enough for all ages, but it takes real skill to adjust the seat to your height.

Misleading health benefits. Their hoardings tout 100 calories burned in 10 minutes. I mean, WTF!

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Every aspiring entrepreneur has asked themselves this question – sometimes in passing, sometimes in moments that refuse to let go. For some, the feeling builds slowly. For others, it arrives all at once – piercing through the chest like a red-hot rebar shot from a Resistance crossbow.

And for some, it never arrives at all.

For me, it arrived last month.

The trigger

Caught between ruthless working hours, caregiving, and the quiet dread of letting a once-in-a-lifetime idea slip away, I felt a constant pressure building in my head.

Day after day, it stopped being abstract. It showed up physically: anxiety, restlessness, goosebumps, flashes of anger, even hives. My body was keeping score.

In late December, I joined Deel as a Technical Lead. It was everything you’d expect: large-scale systems, complex products, real engineering depth. The compensation was great, the equity meaningful. But what really pulled me in was the challenge.

And to be fair, it delivered.

Within a month, I had onboarded into two microservices and three monorepos. Before three months, I had shipped a large backend feature end-to-end, and written enough documentation to help both teammates and AI agents navigate the codebase. It was intense, messy, and deeply educational – the kind of experience that leaves you sharper, with a few battle scars to show for it.

But the relentless pace, the quiet expectation to always be “on”, eventually caught up with me.

On April 10, I left.

I stepped away from the well-paved road I had been on for the last decade and took a turn toward something far less certain. A path that feels less like a highway and more like a trail through misty mountains – cutting across long marshes, brushing past something that looks suspiciously like Mirkwood.

Sounds crazy? It probably is. Maybe even preposterous.

But to me, it feels like a leap of faith. And right now, that’s enough.

The quest

Let me try that again.

On April 10, I didn’t just quit a job, I embarked on a quest.

A quest to understand what it really means to build and run a business.
A quest to be fully present for my family – not just physically, but mentally.
A quest to live life on my own terms.
A quest for health, for balance, for something resembling inner calm.
A quest to find out what I’m actually made of.
A quest to lean into my strengths instead of skirting around them.
A quest to stop leaving potential on the table.
A quest to see what lies ahead when there’s no predefined path.

What am I building?

I’m building a new way to think about online commerce, from first principles.

At a high level, I think of it as a context layer for modern commerce, something that rethinks how intent, discovery, and transactions come together on the internet today.

Right now, I’m focused on getting an MVP out into the world – something scrappy but real enough to test for product-market fit and, more importantly, to learn quickly. I’ll share more once there’s signal worth sharing.

And importantly, I’m not doing this alone.

I’m working with Gaurav Gandhi – a long-time friend, mentor, sparring partner, relentless researcher, and a seasoned entrepreneur who’s seen more cycles than I have. Having someone like him in the trenches with me makes this whole thing feel a little less like a free fall.

The road ahead

I don’t know how this story ends.

Maybe this turns into something meaningful. Something that outlives the initial idea and becomes a real business.
Maybe it fails quietly, teaching me lessons I couldn’t have learned any other way.
Maybe it leads somewhere completely unexpected.

But for the first time in a long time, that uncertainty doesn’t feel paralyzing. It feels… honest.

There’s no roadmap here. No performance review. No neatly defined next step. Just a direction, a set of beliefs, and a willingness to keep moving.

If nothing else, I want to be able to look back at this moment and know that I didn’t ignore the question when it mattered most.

If not this, what?
If not now, when?

This time, I chose to answer.

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After using Safari as the default browser on my personal computer for a few months, I am switching to Arc. I thought Safari was a tiny bit faster than Firefox. Boy, Arc is orders of magnitude quick (at least it feels that way). I had been using vertical tabs in Firefox for a while, so it doesn’t feel disorienting anymore. I am appreciating the polish and customizability, and loving that the Ctrl+Tab behavior mimics Firefox.

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My new machine is a beast of a device for most tasks. What’s more, it’s a capable gaming console, at least for the pre-2020 titles in my library. It’s silent and fun. And it’s portable enough to take anywhere if I wish. I recently bought a portable monitor to go along, so it’s a completely portable solution now. It takes a bit more time to set up as compared to a laptop, of course, but it’s worth it.

One thing I miss from my laptop is its intimate screen to watch movies or TV shows – you know, when you aren’t in the mood to watch them on TV and want a screen that’s big enough to keep anywhere. Sure, I can move my Mac mini around, but it’s a hassle finding a power socket and a stable base to ensure adequate thermal airflow.

That’s a gap my Steam Deck fills pretty well. When connected to a portable monitor, it’s practically a laptop. Its desktop mode makes you feel right at home with a fully featured KDE interface on top of SteamOS (an Arch-based Linux distro). The controls on its right double up as a capable mouse – trackpad, right trigger, and R4/R5 buttons (at the back). Steam Deck + portable monitor is one option that I can truly take anywhere!

P.S. Currently watching Dexter: New Blood on this setup.

The post Joys of Steam Deck’s hidden desktop mode first appeared on Anurag Bhandari.

Abiding by my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) avoidance strategy, I have decided to sell my ROG Zephyrus laptop as the mini is a proper replacement. In the last few years, I’ve been travelling with my personal laptop less and less. It’s at a point where I never stash it in my travel backpack as (a) it’s heavy, and (b) my work laptop is enough for quick personal tasks. It is practically a desktop computer, so why not get a real desktop with better performance.

The biggest reason to miss the laptop is its gaming abilities. It has an NVIDIA RTX 3060. Apple M4 is nowhere near in gaming performance. But then there are other, cheaper, ways to play the latest games, like cloud gaming. Also, let’s not forget I already have a Steam Deck. And, to be honest, it’s not like I’m playing games everyday.

So, back to Mac mini. My first impressions are good. It’s silent as hell: my ROG would start screaming (fan noise) 10 minutes after starting even with something as basic as browsing the web. macOS Sequoia is fast and snappy on this thing. I’ve just finished downloading the 2016 Hitman game; curious to test how it looks and performs.

I am setting it slightly differently from my work MacBook Pro so they both don’t appear like practically the same and I have something to look forward to in my personal computer. For instance, I have enabled Stage Manager, set up automatic wallpaper refresh (Bing), trying out Safari as my default browser, and more.

Intended uses: everyday personal things, casual programming, casual video editing (maybe), and casual gaming. Casual is the keyword!

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Today I Learned (TIL) is a weekly newsletter where I share interesting insights I learned last week from podcasts, books, and self-realization. I aim to share 7 insights, one from each day of the week, but that’s not always the case especially when I am traveling.

In this edition:
– Not all prejudices are the same?
– Willpower can heal physical ailments
– Indicators of a deep, meaningful life
– Being extra nice could be detrimental
– Loving your craft so deeply that nothing else matters

Enjoy! And subscribe if you find it interesting 🙂

Read on LinkedIn

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At first, the book came across as an extension of Atomic Habits with concepts such as just manageable challenges and productive stress, reminiscent of the 1% improvement rule popularised by James Clear. But as I went deeper, it steered in an original direction written by a unique combination of performance enthusiasts – one a running coach and the other a former management consultant.

If there’s one thing to take away, it’s the growth equation:

Stress + Rest = Growth

I previously wrote a couple of blog posts inspired by the book:

• Be intentionally uncomfortable to grow
• If stress is critical to grow, rest is vital

What I liked

• Most arguments are backed by scientific research.
• The rich use of examples makes things easier to visualize.
• Comfortable language.

What I didn’t like

I cannot think of anything here.

Key learnings

• Mindfulness as Rest: Use mindfulness and meditation to turn off the task-focused mind, allowing the subconscious to work creatively during rest periods.
• Sleep and Napping: Sleep is essential for converting stress into growth, while short naps boost alertness and concentration but should not replace full sleep.
• Strategic Breaks: Not all breaks are equal—walking and nature breaks enhance creativity and reduce stress, while fully disconnecting on weekends leads to better productivity.
• Consistent Routine: Establish a warm-up routine and work in a consistent environment to get “in the zone” and optimize performance.
• Minimalist Approach: Eliminate nonessential decisions to avoid decision fatigue, reserving peak hours for deep work and off-peak hours for creativity.
• Purpose-Driven Motivation: Focusing on a purpose greater than oneself can help overcome fear and push past perceived limits, with grit linked to a strong sense of purpose.
• Evolving Purpose: Purpose should evolve over time, supported by self-talk, expressive writing, and acts of giving back, which help sustain long-term motivation and success.

Conclusion

Peak Performance is the best book I’ve read so far this year. Highly recommended!

The post Peak Performance — Book Review first appeared on Anurag Bhandari.

Only if my YouTube channel becomes a hit, I can be a millionaire.

Only if I finish my book and it becomes a bestseller, I can be rich.

Only if I move to XYZ location, I can live my dream life.

Another problem with having grand goals is that often such goals rely on lucky breaks or circumstances outside of our control. As a result, we are constantly chasing Olympic records as amateur athletes.

In the Deep Life podcast episode Ep. 313: Structured Journaling, Cal Newport described an effective antidote – lifestyle-centric planning. It was not the first time he brought the technique on the show. Some things are worth repeating over and over.

Lifestyle-centric planning implies defining a master narrative of the kind of life you want to have and then working backward to fulfill that narrative.

Eg. I would like to lead a peaceful life creating software on my own schedule, playing tennis, and having time to socialize with friends and neighbors.

In the above episode, Cal discusses a few more examples of master narratives and describes how someone should be doing lifestyle-centric planning to achieve it.

This idea eerily resembles the 4-hour work week promoted by productivity guru, author, and podcaster Tim Ferriss – you don’t need a million dollars in your bank account to be rich or enjoy life.

It’s also similar to the financial independence vision that’s central in MJ DeMarco’s book The Millionaire Fastlane.

Despite the similarities, the important takeaway is that while it’s fine to be ambitious, it’s more important to design your life practically for satisfaction and calm.

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