As daylight savings started this year, followed by unprecedented warm weather, I took the opportunity to build a new Sunday morning ritual. Every Sunday, I started visiting a place of my choice — this could be a beach, bay front, lake, or just a park. Some place that allows me to relax and just be with nature.

Starting my week with this pleasant mindful ritual has worked wonders. I realized that due to my tight work schedule, outside of my planned vacations and grocery runs, I don’t really go out much. By intentionally building this ritual that forces me to get out each week and visit nature, I have allowed myself to relax and improve my mood and overall well-being.

Another positive side effect is that this allowed me to explore new neighborhoods and nature trails that I had not known of even after living for more than a decade here. I am thoroughly enjoying this new routine, and I hope to continue doing this in the near term.

I generally don’t write about technology here but thought I’d make an exception. Lately, I have been using AI tools quite a bit at work. While I had used tools like Writer and ChatGPT in the past, I wasn’t really utilizing them nearly as much as I should be until a couple of weeks ago when Claud was introduced at work.

I always assumed each of these tools is likely very helpful for those that write code on a day to day basis but not for me, as I had switched from writing code and spend more time thinking and writing about strategy, execution, risk mitigation, and so on. I was so wrong, though. I started setting aside an hour or so every day to use Claude, integrating it with all the other tools that I use at work, such as Slack, email, Jira, Databricks, Google Drive, etc., and the results were awesome. I started with small tasks like trying to find a message in slack or summarizing action items from an email. Instead of manually reading and identifying it, I asked Claude to do it for me, and it just noticeably reduced the time I spent on mundane tasks.

I am sure many folks are skeptical about AI or perhaps don’t have the resources to start dabbling with it. But if you do have the opportunity, do not ignore it. Give it a chance and adapt it. Change can be hard, but once you learn how to use it for your own good, you will feel empowered.

I read the Daily Stoic every year. In fact, I start the year by reading that book. I first read it back in 2017 and haven’t been able to stop reading it ever since. With each read, I learn something new. This year, during my 10th read, I came across this quote:

Good habits have the power to drive out bad habits.

The quote was a lightbulb moment for me. It goes without saying that many of us want to get better, want to get rid of our addictions or bad habits, and develop good ones. But getting rid of the bad ones is the hardest part. Reading that quote made me realize that I have been approaching it wrong all along. Instead of focusing so much on getting rid of bad habits, albeit unsuccessfully, how about focusing on adding good ones? Essentially, fill your day with goodness, to the extent that there is no room for the bad ones.

I understand it is easier said than done, but I have been practicing it for a while now, and turning your focus from the bad aspects of your life to good ones will perform the mental shift that is needed to get you on the right path.

My dad sends me a WhatsApp message every morning. Most days it is a “Good morning” card; some days it has some quotes of wisdom. It is part of his daily ritual. Most days, I just ignore them, and they get auto-deleted even before I read them. I am past that age where I feel entitled to tell them that sending WhatsApp good mornings is lame. Who am I to judge? If it makes him happy, he should do it.

When I travelled home for the holidays last year, I learned that he cares about those messages quite a bit; he spends time crafting them, and sometimes he also keeps tabs on who reads or responds. After I got back home, I decided to at least read them before they get auto-deleted.

This last week, he sent a quote that I really liked—
The greatest treasure on earth is the people who love and support us.

Though simple, those words are powerful. At the end of the day, it’s not the money or wealth that keeps us going; it’s the ones who love us. And while I may not have everything in the world, I do have a loving family, which I treasure.

Now, my dad doesn’t know that I like quotes of wisdom and that I collect them. I don’t even think he’ll read this blog post, but that’s ok. I know he’ll be there when I need him, and so will I.

Happy New Year, everyone!!! 2025 was an year of content for me. After a lot of waiting and planning in 2024, I was finally able to make a lot of travel plans in 2025. I took 11 trips (almost one each month), throughout the year, some to places that I had visited before and some to new places like Costa Rica and Coeur D’Alene in Idaho. I also visited my parents for Christmas and Thanksgiving. This was my first Christmas with them after 18 years, so it was very special. I also continued to maintain my daily workout schedule throughout the year in addition to maintain a consistent schedule for blogging, reading (I read 23 books last year) and painting. I am hoping to continue on the above and add more goodness to increase my overall wellbeing in this coming year.

As has been a tradition in my blog, I publish the list of books that I read in the past year along with what I plan to read in the upcoming year. I hope you enjoy the list, and do share your reading list as well.

Here’s what I read in 2025 –

1. The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday (I read this every year)
2. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World – Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu
3. The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin
4. Love yourself like your life depends on it – Kamal Ravikant
5. Everyday Stoicism – Gareth Southwell
6. The Gifts of Imperfection – Brené Brown
7. The Power of Letting Go – John Purkiss
8. A whole new mind – Daniel Pink
9. Sapiens – Yuval Norah Harari
10. The Power of regret – Daniel Pink
11. Be Kind, Not Nice – Marcia Sirota
12. When – Daniel Pink
13. Somehow – Anne Lam lot
14. To sell is human – Daniel Pink
15. Right Thing, Right Now – Ryan holiday
16. Revenge of the tipping point – Malcolm Gladwell
17. The Transformative CEO – Jeffrey J. Fox
18. The Happiness Advantage – Shwan Anchor
19. Creativity Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration – Ed Catmull
20. Wisdom Takes Work – Ryan holiday
21. Strong Ground – Brené Brown
22. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – Max Tegmark
23. The infinite game – Simon Sinek

And here’s what I plan to read in 2026. As with each year, I am pretty sure, the list will evolve as I make my way through them-

1. Never split the difference – Chris Voss
2. When You’re Ready, This Is How You Heal – Brianna Wiest
3. Read People Like a Book – Patrick King
4. Your Complete Posture Guide – Dr. Graham Jenkins
5. A psalm for the wild built – becky chambers
6. Surely you’re joking – Richard Feynman
7. Graceful – Seth Godin
8. Mastery – Robert Greene
9. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck – Mark Manson
10. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

I hope you enjoyed the list. Happy Reading!!!

Each year as the New Year kicks in, we start with a feeling of hope – hoping that this year will be much bigger and better than the previous years. As 2025 rolled in, I too had many such hopes, and as we close out this year, I feel extremely contented.

The highlight of this year was travel. I made 11 different trips this year, with the last one to visit my parents, which was the highlight of the year. I also visited Costa Rica a few months ago and got to see turtle nesting, which was a unique experience.

I also continued to maintain a healthy lifestyle, working out every single day, and was able to keep up my reading schedule (I read 23 books this year; more on that in my next post) and managed to work on a few art projects as well.

I hope to continue to invest in myself and my well-being in 2026 and hope to have another wonderful year. Here’s to a wonderful New Year 2026, everyone!!!

Sometimes being patient and keeping calm is all you need to get by. I was recently traveling for a business trip, and 2 days before the trip ended, the FAA announced 10% flight cuts that would start on the day I was supposed to return, and the list of airports included the one I was flying out from. As soon as the news came out, pretty much everyone changed their flights to fly out a day early to avoid getting impacted, most of whom took a flight that would get them home by midnight.

While I could have done the same, I felt it would add unnecessary chaos to the already strained system. Besides, the worst thing that could happen was my flight getting cancelled and me having to take a different flight and/or extending my stay. Given this was a business trip, I didn’t really have to worry about the cost, and since I had nothing waiting for me at home, I didn’t really have anything to lose. I stayed calm and decided to just travel as planned and face the situation should anything change.

As it turns out, there were no cancellations, my flight was on time, and I was home just like I had planned. Sometimes, well-intended decisions made due to panic can cause more issues than letting the situation play out.

Every so often, we come across situations where someone might be driving you crazy, you might be finding it hard to work with someone, or you might be getting your thoughts across to them. You may tell them one thing; however, they might not have understood it or misinterpreted it, resulting in a lot of chaos and frustration.

Sometimes, it could be straightforward. Someone straight up might be acting crazy or difficult to work with. Often for situations like these, our first reaction is to get annoyed at the other party or try to get back; however, the better solution would be to take a step back and think about why the other person is behaving the way they did.

Did they have more context than what you have? Did they have a better idea that you didn’t think of, or is there something else going on that’s causing them to act up? The answer could be any of the above or none of the above. By choosing not to judge them and assuming good intent goes a long way in de-escalating the situation.

The above behavior is hard to come by. For instance, it may be a lot easier to apply this with people that you know well. For example, if your close friend or sibling or spouse is acting out, it’s easy for you to assume positive intent. However, if the same thing was done by someone you dislike or generally find irritable, it can take a bit of practice to get there.

Net-net, the above mindset will go a long way in processing ambiguous situations, reducing negative feelings, and promoting understanding without causing excessive harm.

It’s been a while since I wrote about psychology concepts, and as I contemplated content for my blog today, I decided to write about self-awareness, and what better way to do that than by explaining the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

I’ve been a people manager for about 4 years now and have been leading teams for 10+ years. As a leader, I try to be humble and paint the most realistic picture of myself to my team—this includes demonstrating what I am good at by my actions and also sharing about my weaknesses or accepting misses (when I make them). After all, success and failures are part of your development journey, the growth mindset that we all have heard so much about in corporate life. No matter how good you are at a particular thing, there is always room to grow and get better.

However, sometimes I come across folks who lack that level of self-awareness. They are overconfident about their skills or seem to think they are the best, and there’s no better way to do a certain job than what they have proposed. This at the crux is the Dunning-Kruger effect—it is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area.

Researchers have attributed this to a problem of metacognition—the ability to analyze one’s own thoughts or performance. Anytime someone believes they are more skilled or knowledgeable than others, they are engaging in overplacement. This form of overconfidence can lead a person to take unnecessary risks because they believe they possess superior skills. Overplacement occurs most frequently in people with low abilities who lack the competence to judge their skill level accurately; it is associated with an egocentric perspective and narcissism [1].

So, how can one avoid it? Being open to feedback, accepting that you may not know all the answers, developing a growth mindset, and seeking to always grow and improve can help you be grounded and come out of this. Even if you are a gold medalist, you can still push your boundaries and break your own record. Being open to learning more and getting better will eventually help you avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Often we do things that we feel are right for the current situation. In many cases, that may work; however, in the long run, that may not end up being the right decision. For example, one may have a short-term goal of losing 10 lbs, and there are possibly several options to achieve that— 1) Going on a strict diet 2) Excessive workout plan 3) Making minor lifestyle changes that include a balanced diet and a workout plan.

While option 3 may seem like the best option from the outside—often for the person that is driving the goal, they may not think of it the same way. Option 3, although balanced and won’t put a lot of strain on your body, also won’t help you achieve the results in the short run. For someone that is looking to get results in a few weeks would likely pick option 1 or 2. And while those options may help achieve short-term results, they are not sustainable in the long run. One cannot go on a strict diet forever. Even if they do that, they will run into health issues due to vitamin and other deficiencies.

For a sustainable long run, one needs to keep the bigger picture in mind. Is reducing 10 lb really the goal, or is getting fit and being able to sustain it the end goal? Patience and consistency are equally important for sustaining the goals in the long term. It helps if you make small changes to your lifestyle in the right direction until that becomes a habit and eventually helps you not just achieve your goal but also sustain it.