Podcasts - 2024

In 2024, I tried in small ways to “quantify my life”. Logging activities with Strava, books using Goodreads, songs in Spotify, good articles read manually. Not fully successful. Hope to make an app for myself someday to make it easier and instant, along with some notes or learnings. One such was podcasts. After experimenting Google Podcasts and Spotify, I am using AntennaPod app since last couple of years since it had playing history and it has only podcasts with no other distraction. I have subscribed to a few, scan the new episodes once in a while, add some to the queue and listen to it during commute, daily walk or house chores. I listen at 1.5x speed which is now comfortable speed for all accents.

I recently discovered that Youtube videos can be converted to podcasts. NotebookLLM from Google seem to be exploding now that can convert anything (articles, research papers etc) to podcasts.

I lost some of my listening history in August when my phone crashed. Apart from that listened to 90 podcasts. Top one was Lenny’s Podcast which is all things Product development. Others were – The Seen and the Unseen (long conversations with interesting people in India, but it is getting longer and longer), Invest like the best (I don’t listen for investment related ones, but for some good conversations), The Tim Ferris Show (again some interesting interviews or conversations), Infinite Loops, How I write (writing advice, some interesting conversations with good authors), Dwarkesh podcast (with some AI founders, historians).

Few episodes that I liked, if someone wants starting points.

1. What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess)

2. The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG)

3. Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres

4. The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford)

5. Developer Experience is a Critical Issue for Organisations Today

6. Dare to Dissent (from NPR, good stories about dissent. When entire world is silent, how people find courage to speak up despite the risks)

7. Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott (for going from “being nice” to “being kind”)

8. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt (author of one of the Strategy books. It is great to listen to the authors of the books we read.)

9. Freakonomics : The Curious Mr. Feynman (stories about the maverick scientist)

10. Radiolab - Stochasticity (Original GOAT for me – Radiolab in its early days was the one that introduced podcasts to me. This one about randomness.)

11. Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Robert Greene (again, listening to an author. Of “48 laws of power”)

12. Amor Towles: The Secret to Telling a Great Story (one more author, of one of the best novels I read in last few years, “A Gentleman in Moscow”)

13. Claire Hughes Johnson, Building Stripe from 160 to 6,000+ Employees — How to Take Radical Ownership of Your Life and Career (#724) (she wrote the book “Scaling People”)

14. Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose (apart from investing side of it, some crazy stories from one’s life)

15. Sarah C. M. Paine - WW2, Taiwan, Ukraine, & Maritime vs Continental Powers (history and world today)

16. Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group)

17. Visakan Veerasamy — Expanding Our Possibility-Space (EP. 210)

18. Interview with Benjamin Labatut, Author of When We Cease to Understand the World (one more author, of “When we cease to understand the world”)

19. Opinion | How to Discover Your Own Taste - The New York Times (nytimes.com) (Taste is something I read quite a bit about in 2024, this was a good podcast on the subject)

20. The Agent Era - Colossus (on upcoming Agentic AI)

Articles read - 2024

I had been cataloguing long articles that I read. Below were some of the best that I read in 2024.

1. The Magic Loop - A framework for rapid career growth – doing your current job well, asking what you can do to help further

2. The end of 0% interest rates: what it means for tech startups and the industry – there was a low interest rate period where lot of hiring and spending happened and interest rate hikes changing spending behavior and team compositions

3. The Pyramid Principle – came across this in different forms this year. How to answer a question – direct answer, summarize the arguments, detail if necessary. Not the other way around.

4. How will you measure your life? – to re-read once in a while. To value family, relationships and community. “It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.“

5. The brand called you – again a classic to re-read. How to stand out.

6. Power laws in culture – few mega hits, and very very long tail. It is all a network effect.

7. An app can be a home-cooked meal – creating software just for us, for a small group to use, like home cooked meals. This may happen more in future, with Generative AI.

8. The State of the Culture, 2024 - heading towards distraction, addiction and dopamine nation

9. We Are What We Remember - remembering self vs experiencing self, fickleness of memories, journaling

10. How to remember everything forever-ish, Augmenting long term memory – about “spaced repetition” to remember what we learn

11. What I think about when I edit – good article on writing and editing

12. ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything (ft.com) - companies are stopping to care about users, business and moving to maximize shareholder value. No fear of competition, regulation, self help (users finding alternate workarounds) or workers.

13. Enterprise cloud costs spiral despite FinOps adoption, report finds | CIO Dive - Cloud costs are balloooning

14. Benevolent sexism: a feminist comic explains how it holds women back | Comics and graphic novels | The Guardian - gut punch to read and realize. Don’t treat women like fragile creatures that must be protected. Gallantry, putting them in a pedestal, limiting them to tasks that are womanly or needing a women's touch.

15. Innerring - CS Lewis Society of California - know that there are inner rings in any group and we have yearning to enter that and it sometimes compromises our principles. Instead focus on the craft and form natural groups not to exclude others, but for the pure enjoyment of the group of friends.

16. Corporate Ozempic | No Mercy / No Malice (profgalloway.com) - Jobs are being cut year on year, slated for 270k jobs in 2024. But it is said it is not because of AI. But AI is reducing the appetite to hire more. And the companies to reducing people and still being more profitable - which maybe cutting the extra fat hired during pandemic years. Like Ozempic drug reducing the craving for food, AI is reducing the craving for hiring more people to grow.

17. The art of letting-go- Jeyamohan | Unified Wisdom - renunciation as a path of life

18. Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? (hbr.org) – absolute best article about delegation. When someone talks to you, don’t let the monkey on their back jump on to your back, for you to carry around.

19. Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's - Bill Watterson (mit.edu) – re-read once in a while for motivation

20. Reality has surprising amount of detail – brilliant writing. “if you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived.”

21. Notes on Taste – one of the most important reads in 2024. In the age of abundance (with AI), taste and judgment will become important.

22. Story Points are Pointless, Measure Queues | Brightball – why story points are not the right measure for productivity

23. A New Theory of Distraction | The New Yorker - sense of self - our random thoughts. Struggle for autonomy. Distraction vs Attention.

24. Algorithms we develop software by - write everything twice - gets to better solutions.

25. reflections on palantir - Nabeel S. Qureshi (nabeelqu.co) - A new way to think about how to do product development, talent development

26. Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career – Communications of the ACM – a good list to do a self assessment

27. AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End? (substack.com) – beautiful writing, about possible ways to thinking about impact of AI

28. Quit Your Job (palladiummag.com) – read a lot about “Pathless Path” in 2024. How I wish.

29. How We Do the Small Things - by Amit Varma – daily habits matters

30. Are you serious? - by visakan veerasamy – inspiring stories

31. The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

32. Technology is the Problem - Shyam Sankar - Cargo cult companies are destroying value

Books read - 2024

I read 16 books in 2024, against a target of 30 which I hadn’t met for the last three years. I wanted to read 50-50 fiction and nonfiction, but couldn’t meet that too. I am also trying to diversify away from books written by American or British authors, partially successful in that – with some Japanese, Irish, Canadian, Malayalam and a Chilean author this time. Hoping to do better in 2025.

What you are looking for is in the library – Michiko Aoyama (5 / 5) : Japanese translation. A story of bibliotherapy, told well. Language was a bit bland, not sure if it is due to translation. But stories of right books giving answers to people for their difficult situations felt good. Whether it is to get out of a rat race, having parallel careers (a passion project and something that sustains life) etc.

Before the coffee gets cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi (5 / 5) : Japanese translation. Enjoyed this read. Was in my list for long, but knowing the plot, hesitated to pick up. But it turned out to be a good story. About people getting a chance to go back in time and maybe get closure on things that were left unsaid, unresolved.  

Small things like these – Claire Keegan (5 / 5) : Irish. Short book, but hits hard. About someone who stands up against great odds, to have that kind of moral courage. Told in a minimalistic way.

Intermezzo – Sally Rooney (5 / 5) : Irish. One of the authors that I am reading everything they write. Even though in this case, I resolve each time not to read more of her, having had enough of the troubles of Irish youngsters. But still it was a good read, I wanted some contemporary fiction. This was the book release event of the year, so much hype about a book release.

The Sampoorna kodakarapuranam – Sajeev Edathadan (4 / 5) : Malayalam. Set of stories. From the facebook era of good quirky, funny writers who wrote about the “nostalgic memories” and epic fails. Funny stories about the goodness of Kerala small town folks. How people remember so many details.

I came up on a lighthouse – Shantanu Naidu (5 / 5) : India / English. Read it in one go on the day Ratan Tata passed away, late into the night. Liked the writing. While I had seen some social media stories, I had ignored it thinking yet another PR, made-for-social-media stories. But it read like a fairy tale and a glimpse into the (later) life and ways of thinking of a great businessman. I took away some lessons.

The Glass Hotel – Emily St.John Mandel (4 / 5): Canadian. Another of the authors whose every book I am trying to read. After reading Station Eleven which is still her best. This one underwhelmed.

The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene (5 / 5) : Non fiction. It took a long time to finish. Tough read. Like the book written for a devil. How people acquire, retain, use power. Dark arts. But I think it is worthwhile reading, to know and not to be subjected to some of the same dark arts. We tend to recognize some of the games people play after reading this and it looks so obvious.

When we cease to understand the world – Benjamin Labatut (5 / 5) : Chile. Hard to say if it is fiction or nonfiction. It is a mixed genre. Of fiction, science, biography, philosophy. When it is mixed like this, one doesn’t know what is fact and what is fiction, it is unnerving. But still, fascinating to read how when the human mind reaches the edges of knowledge, it starts to lose its grip on reality. I came to buy this book after reading just one paragraph which was outstanding.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin (5 / 5) : American. A story of game developers. A unique background that I hadn’t read before. Enjoyable read.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer – Donella Meadows (5 / 5) : Non fiction. It was pending in my list for long. Must read for understanding the tools for systems thinking. A bible for the field.  

Tharakan’s Grandhavari – Benyamin (3 / 5) : Malayalam. An experiment of a novel that can be read from anywhere, each print starting somewhere else and in random order, making out the pieces of the puzzle as it goes. Good idea, but was frustrating.

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller (4 / 5) : American, but a retelling of Greek story. Historical fiction, fantasy. I hadn’t read any like this before, hence a good experience.

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Varghese (5 / 5) : American, but born in Ethiopia, to parents from Kerala. This book was on Obama's 2023 list. Surprisingly the story was based in my own town. It turned tragic at places and too long, but a good read.

Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus (5 / 5) : American. Unique premise of a Chemist turned cooking show host. Enjoyable read.

Yellowface – R.F. Kuang (4 / 5) : American. Set in the world of the publishing industry, so sort of an inside job. Tragic story. 

the way music used to make me feel

I came across this tweet a few days back, which is like one of those we say “Yes!” to, someone had put into words something we are also feeling. I was thinking about this line yesterday as well.

We lose a lot as we get older, a bunch of habits and moods and proclivities, but the one thing I truly mourn is the way music used to make me feel.

https://x.com/_sairamkrishnan/status/1822639043206598836

I was looking for something to listen to in the morning and nothing fit the mood. Spotify showed a new recommended list as “for the baddies”, don’t know what it meant, but the music felt nonsensical. Daylist didn’t excite, Discover Weekly the same. After some time, the line “Uth meri jaan” somehow came to mind, not sure how as I hadn’t listened to this song for years. I was trying to deconstruct the reason why this came up now. I suspect if it was triggered by the radio ad I heard yesterday about Sonu Nigam coming to Kerala for a concert.

I used to listen to songs from the movie Tamanna non stop years back and this song was a favorite. For the first time, went into a rabbit hole about the lyricist. It is written by Kaifi Azmi, father of Shabana Azmi. He seems to have taken a path towards Communism and worked with progressive groups. This song is written as a poem as far back as 1950 - surprising to see the advanced thought even at that time, it must be as the country just came out of colonial rule as a young independent nation.

TAMANNA (1997)
music: Anu Malik
Kaifi saab’s poem Aurat with the famous lines Uth meri jaan… mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe was written in the early ’50s, supposedly for wife Shaukatji (Azmi). But at a wider level it expresses Kaifi saab’s progressive thought. The mood during Independence was that of sidelining love for the national cause. But Kaifi saab’s Aurat urged the woman to walk along with the man. Ghar ki ladai ho ya mulk ki – his was a contemporary take on the woman. The same poem was sung by Sonu Nigam in Mahesh Bhatt’s Tamanna. My Phataka guddi (Highway) has the similar sentiment of revering the strength of a woman.

https://www.filmfare.com/features/kaifiyat-9678-3.html

It led me further to read the original poem, Aurat (Woman). I hadn’t understood the meaning of some of the urdu words, so the English translation helped. It is just beautiful.

Life is in struggle, not in the restraint of patience
The blood of pulsating life is not in trembling tears
Fragrance lies in free-flight, not in the tresses, of hair
There is another Paradise which is not by the side of men
On its free pathways too you have yet to pirouette
Get up, my love, you have to walk with me

What if we don’t discover anything in the new? There is a wealth still to be rediscovered in the old, to be understood anew. Like the movies, books and movies of the past which we may have watched, read or heard, but now we are not the same and maybe there is more meaning to be absorbed from it and now we are ready for it.

weekly notes - wk 29 / 2024

Traveled to Melbourne, Australia for work for a week. It was my first time to Australia. It was a coincidence of events that led to it. Helping someone out of the blue in first days of 2024 that might have led to a trip to Australia at the time, but didn't. Some goodwill from that episode and others helped to lead to something else. I hope this further results in a positive outcome. 

A new country for me. While I had some notions about Australia, through documentary of their women's football team (Matildas), hearsay, perceptions about Australia cricket team and such, it all changes or clarifies to a different picture once I visit. Vast country, much bigger than India, but less people than Kerala, large Indian and Chinese contingent of immigrants, quick weather changes, closeness to Antartica, stories about dwarf Penguins coming back in the evening at an island beach, wild fires, short days in the end of winter, a city with its high rises quite same as any other metros, coffee culture, lots of restaurants and Australian Football which I found to be weird. It was mostly hotel and office for me as it happens in these work trips. It was cold too. 

Culture of even our own work changes from country to country, depending on what customers there expects. While we Indians stretch the boundaries of work ourselves, here it was friendly, easy going, people who enjoy life and respectful.  

I had been largely thinking and discussing with others on similar topics that are in my mind for few weeks or months - decline of project management competency, software delivery struggling everywhere to meet timelines and quality, reluctance to take ownership, ripple effects of great resignation still, slow change and bureaucracy in IT. Like old generation complaining about the new, we lamented about lack of responsibility from the new generation, rate of growth of people in earlier days, about 5 year of setback in career trajectory of people, bad bosses and culture in some places vs emulating role models in other places.  

weekly notes - wk 28 / 2024

 

1.

I had been in this situation before. Getting bored with a format of writing. It is not writer’s block. I used to write an email to my team every Monday, with whatever was on top of my mind the previous week. I did that over a year or so and then stopped - felt like I am repeating myself, have said everything I wanted to say, that whether anyone would get any more value out of that or that I am forcing myself to stick to that schedule and it should be more natural than that, not a chore. The same is happening to these weekly notes already. I couldn’t get out of the slump that I got into. I think one way out could be to change the format, so trying that from now. I know the cure is to keep going, one step at a time.   

2.

It is raining here, almost all the time. I think of these days as apocalyptic - dark all the time, rain falling with the noise of a train. It is also the perfect mood for a tea, feet up, something philosophical to read and wonder about something that seems a new insight in that moment. It is the kind of day and time I want to remember forever, if possible to bottle it and store away somewhere. Maybe these are the words that will help me remember such days and the feeling in the moment.  

3.

the saddest thing is when you watch a movie, read a book, or listen to a song, and you have no one to talk about it with.

— Sabrina (@neu_rot_ic) July 14, 2024

I guess it should be the ones that expand our understanding of the world bit by bit, so much so that over the years we change for the better. If those books, movies or songs and our interpretation of it can be clarified by talking it out loud with someone and we change together, all the better. Like a word I came across today in connection with the Spanish football team that won the Euro cup yesterday. “cuadrilla” - a Basque word for a group of mates who stay together for life. Similar to another word it reminded me of - Moai, a Japanese, about a group of lifelong friends, a social support group that forms in order to help us throughout life in many ways. 

4.

I guess this blog is one such forum for the quirky things that I come across. One such is the movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. It is around a bubbly, chirpy, good natured person who tries to brighten the moments of the people she encounters. It is diametrically opposite of how I am around people, unless it is someone on the same wavelength. But I admire such people in real life - the ones who can take disappointment in their stride, who won’t get riled up by angry people but rather think it is the result of something they suffered in their lives and hence should sympathise with. Like her reaction when she finds out her bicycle was stolen, remarking she couldn’t say goodbye to it or when her cheerful remarks were met with silence or indifference on the other side, waving it away with a joke. It must be difficult to be sunny all the time, without suffering for it in other ways. Something to try still. 

5. 

It is a Linkedin meme now, about sharing life lessons from any random event. Even the shooting at the Trump rally yesterday. But I can’t help but think about lessons from football. I had been watching the Euros for the last month or so. About nice guys, value of humility vs arrogance, whether one should have an outsized belief in one’s ability to be extraordinarily successful, about when a group of people fight for each other with everyone being equal, winning with stars vs winning with hardworking committed people who are having fun, value of preparation and systems, working with youngsters and finding the next stars, hard task of shutting out the deafening noise of criticism and complaints, going back to the basics, developing a system, having a unique philosophy or understanding of the world, visible cohesion or a group, developing a new theory for something that is hundreds of years old, stamping a unique imprint in a group of people who all believe in the same thing and more. In the end, it is 20 people running after a ball, but making it a model to think about life is interesting thought exercise. 

6. 

I need to write more, to lift some more brain fog. Problems I still grapple with. Interesting connections I see among things. To make sense out of it. Problems such as how to judge people more correctly the first time, trusting gut feel, but still creating checklists to avoid the mistakes made. How is it that despite decades of work, there is an inadequate supply of great people in certain positions and what should I do differently to develop them more. About the need to go back to the basics of software development to fix some mess. About needing to figure out if it is a new normal post covid that is creating stress. About running the rat race vs slow living - whether such thoughts are due to age. The whole meaning of life, purpose and what I really want out of it. It is a tall order to figure out.

weekly notes - wk 27 / 2024

It is going to be one month since some of my routines were broken. I hadn’t gone for a walk/run for a month, didn’t read much till this past weekend and didn’t feel like watching any movies. When I get into such a slump, I typically clean up everything. It gives a feeling of starting from a clean slate. It has been the way since childhood - when life is a mess, cleanup the surroundings. Fold clothes, vacuum clean the house, pay attention to personal hygiene, clean up the todo lists, emails, open tabs in the browser, make new resolutions. It gives the feeling of starting over. 

While passing over some things, I saw the name of someone who I said thank you to on social media for sharing good music. She had passed away during covid and it was a shock even though it was nearly a stranger to me. I have the last text sent to a friend asking how he is doing before he passed away. For a long period of time, people leaving with that kind of finality was not on my mind. People move away to other cities or countries for jobs and while farewells are painful, we know they are there somewhere. Being young (in my mind, I never aged after college, until recently), death was a faraway concept. There is a threshold that one crosses when one does the rituals for a family member. It is real now, not a distant concept. I guess it is still possible to think that they are there somewhere though.