Successful at the Wrong Thing
Imagining a wealthy entrepreneur who might have been happier writing poetry led me to a simpler question: do I even want the life I’m working towards?
Thoughts I liked enough to let escape.
I’m Karan. I like exploring ideas, making things, and finding out what happens.
I share thoughts here and work on ventures. Over time, there might be books, tools, or something I haven’t thought of yet.
A few I like
Latest
Shitty Book Development
A Sunday in a hotel, a little microphone, and the beginnings of a book I want to make for myself.
I’ve Read Too Many Books
I’ve read hundreds of books and collected plenty of ways to live. The instructions don’t all agree. I’m learning to treat them as ideas I can try.
I Had a Work Call With Nobody
I already dictate to AI. I still spend hours reading what comes back. One call from bed made the work feel different.
I Still Post the Stupid Cartoons
I enjoy making stupid cartoons. Occasionally, an adult judge in my head wants to inspect what this says about me. I still post them.
Doesn’t Mean It’s Easy
I asked AI to help me think about how to live my life. Its answer gave clearer expression to something my intuition was already feeling. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s quite right.
I gave myself a board
I gave myself three simulated advisors for our jewellery business. The most useful one supplies the commercial perspective I find hardest to produce myself.
Apparently I Need A Rolls-Royce Box
I had turned a benchmark into the minimum. Apparently the jewellery box needed leather seats before we could get going.
What Am I Asking Money to Do?
Money buys food, shelter and choices. But I also ask it to prove I’m enough, or make up for days I don’t enjoy.
Eventually, Everyone Wants Me To Stop Questioning
I keep noticing a point where advice asks me to stop questioning. Usually, it is the assumption I most want to examine.
Is Wanting My Own Life Selfish?
I’m tired of having to turn what I want into something morally impressive before I’m allowed to want it.
Game Still Has A Winner In It
In June I wrote a post about washing my own brain, cloned my voice, and recorded a script to install the belief that life is something you dance through rather than pass. Last weekend a pop concert did it in one evening.
The Neediest Colleague I Have Ever Hired
In July I guessed my agent waits were about forty seconds, and built a whole practice around making forty seconds pleasant. This week I measured it. I was right, which turned out to be the problem: the number wrecking me was the two hundred times a day it taps me on the shoulder.
How The Hell Do I Curate
I got bored waiting for an agent and asked what Rick Rubin would do with all this. He can't play an instrument. I can't code. The job we're both left with is picking, and picking doesn't respond to effort.
It's Sad How Much You Want To Automate
I'd been sending my wife screenshots all week, mostly of things that were broken. At dinner she said it's sad how much I want to automate, and that it could work. The second half is the interesting bit.
Unsubscribe From Digital Society
Last night I changed my Instagram to a black circle and wrote 'unsubscribed from society' in the bio. With a wink. Then I couldn't be bothered to do it anywhere else. The wink was the tell.
The Accountant Is Making It Up
An AI asked what percentage of my time I'm budgeting towards being free, alive and joyful versus making money. I did not have a number. Which is when I noticed the accountant in my head has never once shown me his working.
Slightly Liberating
Listening to DeMello, a line landed sideways: cling too hard to being a genius and you're the actual fool. I tried swapping the label for madman. It was slightly liberating. Only slightly, which was the honest part.
It's Not Focus, It's Boredom
The agent is off doing the thing, and I'm sitting there like a dog that's been told to stay. On discovering the bug was never distraction, it was boredom, and the fix was never focus, it was play.
One Of Us Is Focused
An agent did four hours of my work in six minutes, and I spent those six minutes checking three apps in rotation. On losing the grinding kind of focus and noticing the world stopped asking for it.
Nobody Else's Problems
I have been building software nobody else will ever use, and ignoring the little voice that asks if it could be a product. The ignoring turns out to be the interesting part.
Remove The Brake
A hard week, one good half of football, and a reminder that maybe the whole point is to take the brake off and play your way.
I'd Take One Fifth The Money
I was building an early customer validation system when I realized I did not really care about the customer I was meant to understand. Maybe the answer is not artist over market, or market over artist, but choosing a customer whose world you actually want to enter.
My Brain Needs A Good Wash
I tried to brainwash myself out of the billionaire chase. Not in a cult way. More like building a tiny belief laundrette for the parts of my mind still waiting for permission to relax.
Who Said Learning Has To Be Boring?
I asked AI to teach me Jung better than most psychologists, then noticed the old desire to be exceptional hiding inside a simple afternoon of curiosity.
It Feels Like Cheating
I made writing for this site so easy it started to feel suspicious. But maybe the cheating is not in using AI. Maybe the cheating is removing the friction between noticing something and leaving a trace of it.
The Big Fucking Monkey Game
On holiday, I tried tearing down every authority figure I had absorbed and ended up with one useful thought: everyone is a monkey playing games.
I Refused The Ritual, Then Invented My Own
I refused to get into a temple purification pond full of fish, then immediately used AI and philosophy to make myself feel better about it.
Very Very Fucking Simple
On holiday, I kept thinking about the learning app and realized the plan might be annoyingly simple: serve 20 to 50 people well, prove the loop, then scale what works.
The Status Game I Still Play
At lunch, I noticed a small status game still running in me: the urge to prove intelligence, taste, depth, and maybe even how little I care about status.
Being Weird Is The Moat
AI is making copying faster, cheaper, and more inevitable. So maybe the moat is not just execution. Maybe it is attention, taste, and a company having a flavour that can only come from the authentic nature of its leadership.
A Permissionless Portfolio Of Playful Rubbish
I thought I was learning AI agents. But after a week of getting my hands dirty, the real thing I noticed was stranger: maybe the business bottleneck is no longer permission, capital, or even me.
I Was Being Cheap With Intelligence
Watching Y Combinator talk about “token maxing” made me realize I was still using AI with a scarcity mindset. If intelligence is becoming abundant, the real bottlenecks are no longer tokens or effort, but aim, taste, review, and iteration.
We Need To Forget How We Worked
The interface for work is shifting from clicking around apps to expressing clear intent into connected systems. If that is true, productivity becomes less about operating software and more about thinking clearly enough to direct it.
Just keep hitting
Learning starts to change when you stop watching from the stands and get back on the court.