Macro

I am seeing my in-laws in person after almost 4 years; earlier this year when I visited India I could not meet them so I am glad that they are here for an extended time. This time though, I can really see the age creeping up in parents. I’ve always seen them as this young super active elders because of the nature of their lives, but this time I see the old age settling in. Old age is a bitch.

My in laws know how much I love the supari around their area (heck my FIL is a Areca nut farmer) so this time around not only did they bring supari but also brought paan leaves and the whole 9 yards to make a culcutta meetha. I guess from tomorrow I will also start marking the neighborhood like my dog (IYKYK)

I read this on LinkedIn and immediately gave this prompt to ChatGPT. Note that I am an infrequent user and do not pay for a pro account:

You are tasked with analyzing me based on your memory of our past interactions, context, goals, and challenges. Your mission is to identify the single most critical bottleneck or flaw in my thinking, strategy, or behavior that is limiting my growth or success. Use specific references from memory to strengthen your analysis.

Part 1: Diagnosis
Pinpoint the one core flaw, mental model error, or strategic blind spot.
Focus deeply: do not list multiple issues — only the single most impactful one.
Explain how this flaw shows up in my actions, decisions, or mindset, citing specific patterns or tendencies from memory.

Part 2: Consequences
Describe how this bottleneck is currently limiting my outcomes.
Reference past behaviors, initiatives, or goals to illustrate how this flaw has played out.
Be brutally honest but maintain a constructive, actionable tone.

Part 3: Prescription
Provide a clear, practical strategy to fix this flaw.
Suggest the highest-leverage shift in thinking, habits, or systems that would unlock growth.
Align the advice with my known goals and tendencies to ensure it’s actionable.

Important:
Do not sugarcoat.
Prioritize brutal clarity over comfort.
Your goal is to make me see what I am blind to.
Use memory as an asset to provide deep, sharp insights.

And this is the response I got back in return. I will spare the entire detailed response, but suffice to say it was so bang on the money it left me very uneasy.

You habitually avoid committing early because you chase a “better” option, which shows up as scope-shifts, endless micro-iterations and second-guessing. In short: decision paralysis driven by perfectionism + scope creep — you keep the problem open so you can keep improving, instead of locking a good-enough option and moving forward.

The net effect: great ideas and good instincts, but slow execution and lost leverage.

Highest-leverage shift: move from “maximize” to “satisfice.” Set constraint rules up front, timebox decisions, and limit revision rounds. Do those three things consistently and you’ll convert ideas into results.

Brutal summary: you’re great at starting and refining; you’re not as good at finishing because you leave choices open for “one more improvement.” Force constraints, timebox, and limit revisions. Those three moves will turn all the clever ideas in our history into actual wins — instead of perpetual drafts.

Again, I don’t even use ChatGPT much but it has somehow deduced so many right things about my personality just from random asks (most of my asks are around travel related stuff or things I need specific answers to re: products). I find it really uneasy that with only that much data, ChatGPT gets SO MUCH of me right. Shudder.

On first listen, I agree with my kid that The Life Of A Showgirl is an extremely mid album from Taylor Swift who does way better than this. While The Fate of Ophelia and Cancelled are two standout tracks, the rest of it sounds like a 35 year old woman desperately wanting to sound like a 18year old and relate to them. Somebody should tell Taylor that she does need to release albums every 10 fucking months and find ways to be constantly in the news. Like, it’s ok, take your time and give us something more memorable than dishing out one album after another – we can wait.

I don’t know why democrats can’t hamper on simple message that this president loves to run the country via Executive Orders and Proclamations galore – so what is stopping him from just handing out a EO to restart government? Simple message but it’s effective in conveying how stupid it all is.

There is no other show on television like The Morning Show what has mastered the art of spinning around in circles for 4 seasons in a row. Like entire premise of the show is that the news network is just one step away going bankrupt and dead but doesn’t somehow by end of each season.

A part of me is like who the fuck are democrats fighting for? If the majority of the people that the healthcare subsidies expiration are republicans or from red states, fuck them. Let them pay more. Why take away livelihood of a DC federal worker to protect an asshole who doesn’t mind paying more to make America great! Not like they gonna remember who fought for them next election anyway.

The whole TikTok saga will go down as one of the most incredulously self-own by the democrats in a long time. First they went after the wrong problem, then forced TikTok for sale only for Trump to come in and get the sale done for his buddies who have promised to make it into a right wing propaganda machine. What the heck did you achieve Biden? All this for what? What a fucking self-own this that will hurt them so much over time. Idiots.

My kid has been struggling with math in high school. She is refusing help and she is not strategizing how to get around this problem, and that’s driving us up the wall (well mostly her mom more than me), leading to lots of fights between us and the kid lately. Her mom was definitely more accomplished academically so she takes this far more seriously while I have to keep reminding her I nearly failed my 12th grade, took a long time to find myself even in engineering days (and yeah math/mechanics was my nemesis back then) and finally turned it around in grad days. But of course I don’t say all of this to my kid lest she gets similar ideas that it’s ok to emulate her dad lol, so I join forces with mom and go after her knowing fully well that she will probably turn out ok just like us – except maybe hate us along the way. The joys of parenting!