Oh boy I missed writing. My days have been hectic lately, and I hardly got time to “think.”

The sad part about being occupied with work or whatever is your brain barely goes on a thinking spiral. When I spend time on YouTube, read books/newsletters, talk to people, watch movies, or listen to podcasts, I either validate or counter my opinions.

It’s been 10 days I explored new perspectives and I feel rusty already. I should get back to reading books for ten minutes a day. Or anything that challenges the way I look at the world.

But I managed to look at a few older ideas from my notes.

Biggest gift from school

I had a beautiful schooling. Sure it had its flaws but I wouldn’t change a bit about it.

Sreekar and I went to school together, and like any two friends catching up, we sometimes talk about old times.

If I can only be grateful for my teachers for one thing, it’s the fact that they never forced us to learn by memory. We Indians cutely call it “By heart.”

I have never seen a teacher not answer a question. We were always encouraged to ask questions and understand why things are the way they are. This kind of learning is slow, but once we understand the concepts, there’s no forgetting or pressure. There was no one way to do things.

I faced problems with this method of learning later in 11-12th and engineering. I like math, but every time I reached out to professors, I heard phrases like “This is not important for the exam”, “You don’t need to know this”, etc.

Looking back, school made me a first-principles thinker.

Now I can’t work on things I don’t understand, and even spend hours understanding minute details. It makes me strong with fundamentals, and I am glad I stuck with what I was taught as a child.

There’s an offline world if we remember

Every hour I spend creating content, selling services, or building products gets me closer to appreciating the offline world I have access to.

I am happy to spend as many hours as I can on my mac, but I don’t want to spend 20-30 minutes straight scrolling reels. It’s not even about productivity and all, but it’s just exhausting.

I work on devices. I don’t want my breaks also to be on devices.

I was talking with friends about how difficult it is to stop working when your bedroom is your office. I am sharing screenshots of some of my messages. Ignore the Telugu words; you won’t miss content.

…

I am jealous and scared of the information access children have

There’s nothing children can’t get access to, and I love it for many reasons. I see kids get into coding, content, crafts, hobbies, engineering, etc., even before they turn 10. It makes them insanely smart. Plus learning concepts early will only compound over time.

I am jealous of the capabilities these kids unlock.

But it has a double edge. It can go either way. With so much access, it’s easy to get into the rabbit hole and get influenced a thousandfold by philosophies that might harm them.

Adolescence on Netflix is a good example of how bad things might go.

I don’t have an answer, so let me end this with a question:

I am curious about your opinions.

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