The biggest challenge

Learning the right things has been the biggest challenge always!

There are too many topics to learn, too many books to learn from. Nowadays, there are too many podcasts to learn from and too many articles online (substacks nowadays) and too many newsletters to read.

Here's an idea I am working on: Distilling the sources continuously.

1. Pick the topics you want to learn.

2. Pick your sources.

3. Pick which are going to be the active ones.

Once you have done enough (6 months to 2 years) of a particular source, you would see them repeat the same concept / thoughts and by then you would have fully understood, applied in various cases and mastered the concept and you can skip them or follow them passively.

For example, I have buy and read every Outlook Money from 2004 to 2006 during my last year of studies and first year of earning. By going through enough of the personal finance topics, including life insurance, investing, operational issues in investing, stock markets, diversification, tax impacts, etc., I had mastered the concepts of personal finance, the motivations of the parties, the terminologies used and what they really meant and even knew certain aspects which 99.99% of the agents dont know (e.g. Insurance under the Married Womens' Property Act).

Even today, after 20 more years, the rules have changed a bit but the concepts remain the same. If I am doing any personal finance, I just need to read up of the latest rules on them (usually the taxation is what has changed.) Most others are available in niche dominant websites.

Yesterday, I read a very interesting article on PPFAS flexi cap fund https://betatoalpha.substack.com/p/the-flexi-cap-that-forgot-to-flex and I could fully understand this as I was following this fund and the RBI rules at 2008.

So now, I need to follow an insightful commentator to know the changes and impact rather than read through the basics of Outlook money.

Similarly, I started following Dan Koe (a modern philosopher) and a top five at Substack today in that category about 2 years ago. His concepts have not only been thought provoking but changed the way I think and do work. After reading his long articles for over 2 years, the gains I achieve from each new article are lesser and I don't mind skipping them as I know the crux of his viewpoint.

But, there are more such newsletters I follow these days:
Admired leadership, Shane Parish Brain food, Leila Hormuzi letters, Dan Martell, zerodha university.

Apart from this, I have a target to complete about 50% of the farnam street podcasts this year.

I know I am not able to keep up with the onslaught of all these inbound mails and new content.

But I have removed a few recently followed newsletters and plan to re-prioritise my learning sources every 3 months or so to get what I need to at that point in time.

If you have an adapting learning system, let me know the details in the comments.

Secrets of fast success

Abilities:

1. Curiosity to understand

2. Ability to figure out things

3. Determination / Perseverance

4. Double shift / No week-off (Drive to succeed - Making work as play)

Techniques:

1. Life goals (An xls to track the list and track the things we want to do in life)

2. A 1 pager (Dr.Benjamin Hardy) of monthly goals and achievements

3. Daily planner of daily achievements (each day a few bricks on the wall)

Zones of all Relationships

All relationships have 3 areas for each of the parties:
Comfortable, Uncomfortable and Fully Conflicted.

The thoughts, actions, ways of doing, views, risks, uncertainties, priorities are in either of these 3 zones.

For example:

My family member may be comfortable for me to go to meet a friend, uncomfortable for me to go for gocarting (considering the risk element) and maybe fully conflicted for me to go a solo trip to Europe (risk element.

For each thought, action, view, risk, uncertainty, priorities each party can slot it differently. Unless the slotting is clear and accepted and minimized, the conflict can grow.

What messes up this further is the view of the third person about the thoughts, actions, views, risks, uncertainties, priorities of the relationship between the 2 people involved.

E.g.: a spouse may feel that they are being less prioritised when their spouse goes out with friends every weekend. This event may further move from uncomfortable to Fully conflicted as the time goes by.

Relationships are extremely difficult to maintain in comfortable zones with so many views, thoughts, actions, priorities not just of the direct relationships with the people involved, but because it also has to align the 'outside these 2 people involved'.

I think it is a good practice to map the various actions, views, risks and priorities of the close people involved that would be in the 3 zones and discuss with them openly about the agreement to disagree upfront as the conflict may go through frustration and then end up in a 'give up' situation and maybe trying to understand that the other person is different and that they cannot mould them into 'their' ways.

The challenges of sourcing

For all the contacts on linkedin sales navigator and the world wide web, for the real MSME world works, the required information, contacts, business names are not online.

This is the conclusion of the various aspects of sourcing I have had to do in the last 10 years of sourcing for custom made menswear.

From fabric swatches, workshops, tailors to tailoring materials to pattu vendors to embroidery workers. There are only 4 ways to gain sources:
1. Experienced people connecting you to known parties

2. Doing the hard physical search (searching a pin in a haystack)

3. The party comes to you for business due to reference / online presence

4. Creating chance coincidence at exhibitions (much like asking a stranger girl out once you spot one - the unsolicitated direct approach. One needs gonads of steel for this!)

Reality of the sourcing does not lie in the digital realm as these are all uneducated people who are not going to list on google or have a linkedin account. Even if they are educated, most have done the hard work and have decent business and do not have the patience to put in the efforts for the results.

Even if some of them do, there are innummerible number of qualities which are not certified by anyone and difficult to decifer.

Then, there are minimum order quantities and chance to give continuous business to the party while not reducing the existing parties' orders.

Key learning of the year

"Do not believe what you see/read in the media"

They show only about 40% of the truth and without the remaining 60% there is no context and it is engineered to misrepresent, misguide and misunderstand.

Multiple sets of information have made me come to this conclusion:
1. The Iran war while listening to some actual youtube podcasters who have actual domain expertise

2. The happenings in USA from an instagram channel that actually gives voice to the people

3. A defence industry insider telling me how the news are not to be believed and the real truth behind a constantly published story in the news.

4. A villager on how voting is forced in the electoral booth (which would not be published by any newspaper).

5. How come there is no video of the actual damage suffered by Israel from the various missiles of Iran?

This below comments give what objectives are served by these mis-publications.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/pax-trump-hegseth-remix-americas-gun-laws-dehumanisation-and-double-standards-have-been-its-ticket-to-virtue/articleshow/130177189.cms

Real truth is buried deep inside things and we need to learn a sense of detecting the actual dead body beneath the shit it is covered up by.

Why certain gaps that exist will continue to exist?

I came across an interesting study that says that kids cannot do stand up comedy, despite they wanting to be funny a lot and the reason for that is scientific.

It turns out that stand up comedy requires very high intellect and skills and nuances that children are not able to do at their level of development.

Why is this important?

Imagine a person seeing a gap in the market where only adults are doing stand up comedy and feels that a reality show with kids with stand up is missing in the market and gets working on this business, only to fail on this one critical technicality that no general person knows.

So much time and money would have gone wasted.

Sometimes, the gap seems obvious to be filled, but the gap can be due to one of 2 reasons: a technical / unexpected reason or there is lack of motivation/profit for the person to do it.

Complexities of war

Despite all the complexities of war, even a simple question like "Why did Israel-USA attack Iran (all of a sudden) on 28 Feb 2026?"

There are so many different perspectives:

1. Change the focus from Scandal perspective - Over the previous 1 week 7 big names have come out and maybe the next was DJT. Hence, he needed something bigger to distract the media and the accusations.

2. The China angle - DJT was to meet Xi in late march to negotitate and he wanted 2 main keys of oil before this meeting. One was Venezuela and the other was Iran, both of which do a lot of oil selling to China. He blocked Venezuela with picking up Maduro and hoped that Iran would be controlled with the leadership gone and internal infighting/ upraising.

3. The Military Intelligence angle - Israel-USA got to know that there is going to be a meeting of 50 senior leadership of Iran on 28 Feb 2026 and although both were preparing for war, this opportunity was too irresistible to not bomb.

All this, when there was no Imminent threat to USA (As per the counterterrorism chief who resigned) and the war was not winnable (according to both the USA agencies - their intelligence and the Pentagon).

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Layers of knowledge and secrets

Over the last few years, after coming across many new data channels and sources of information, I have come to the conclusion that there are layers of knowledge and many layers are hidden from common view and there are certain types of knowledge which are not written any where so as to protect the lives of the elite people involved.

It is difficult to come into these new layers of knowledge but not impossible. Be it Finance, Economics, Religion, Society, Marketing, Humanity, Power, etc.

To come across these layers, we need to read very different kinds of categories of books / podcasts / youtube interviews and some non-famous and maybe some controversial books too.

Based on these different true knowledge sources, we are then able to understand what is true and to listen/see and what is propoganda and to be avoided. But many things will never be clear as there are multiple logics to each side and different motivations to each side to spread their versions.

1 simple example is of contact with extra-terrestrial beings.