We all are part of hustle around us. The distractions pop-up all the time. There is no singular flow of thoughts & emotions. You just keep wandering in the random thoughts. So, if this is the marathon of life, will running like this really help?

As usual, here are few points that I will revolve around:

• The hustle

• Life, a marathon to run!

• Balancing the stuff!

• The calm in the chaos

• The anti-dote of comparison!

• What’s your end-goal?

• The journey matters!

• The monk who choose not to immerse in the Instagram!

• Is this solitude, really worth the efforts?

Let me start with why this particular topic and why now! Since long time now, I have been thinking about this.

I started running as regular activity around two years ago. This sort of started some revolution that transformed life be it physical, mental, psychological, moral or emotional! A lot of chaos happens to be around us, ample amount of distractions surround us. So, balancing all this matters and that’s why this topic now!

Let’s get started!

The Hustle

A lot of stuff is happening in life. Almost everyday now, I start with the run in the morning, followed by 1-2 Hrs of some reading. Then the usual office work where usual technical stuff happens! The evenings are for the exploration/ writing/ reading! A blog is churned out if started, a book out of 3-4 books that I am reading now gets picked up or I am wondering somewhere on Tekdi in Pune. Weekends are packed with long runs, some good tech meetup, AI study group or some interesting talks somewhere in the city!

All this hustle often leads to a lot of things happening parallelly!

Life, a marathon to run!

What comes to your mind, when you read the word “Marathon”, a 42.2 Kms continuous run by definition! This distance seems a lot when one starts! Most people finish this under 6 Hours of they have practiced for it. For me, the best time stands at around 5 Hrs. One has to prepare ones mindset to run this long marathon. Plan each km, nutrition, hydration and most importantly strategies by studying the route prior to the race!

These all similarities, help one to solve the dilemmas complex ones when one traverses through the route towards the finish line!

Balancing the stuff!

Among the chaos around us, prioritizing what matters the most and choosing something that would be most beneficial is something that one often thinks about, but seldom chooses to do!

The calm in the chaos:

One has limited bandwidth both in terms of time and thinking constrains! Among the modern luxuries, there are certain luxuries that everyone can attain if one chooses to!

Human is social animal. Everyone needs to connect with someone to survive around us. So, we cannot completely ignore the urge to connect and be able to know what’s happening in the lives of most around us.

One needs to clearly understand this, to be able to bypass all this and get that calm in the chaos around you!

The anti-dote of comparison!

Comparison is something that starts with school grades and then reaches to the level of lifestyle. Every time, one feels peer pressure to be ahead of most among us. Live the best lifestyle among all and show that all on the social media! All this raises the standards of those who regularly consume all this content.

But the question is, can we get out of this loop of comparison, instead choose our own goals, own pace and enjoy our own journey?

What’s your end-goal?

That’s the most important question, yet very few choose to ask this! The purpose, the meaning, the goal, all seem to be illusionary words that does not matter. But as you traverse your life, the importance of these starts to increase.

The addictive movies then don’t bother you, instead you choose to immerse in some book. The delicious food does not affect you, instead you choose to do exercise, run that planned marathon, control your diet, meditate the mind and ultimately choose the life, calm one!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

The journey matters!

Just like that, here you have to think about priorities, choices, resolve dilemmas, take that bold step, get out of comfort zone, don’t get trapped in the social media maze and much more!

In short, one needs to focus on real life, real moments, real connections rather than reel life, collection of pixels and virtual connections!

The monk who choose not to immerse in the Instagram!

Nowadays, Instagram is the new social world, most people connect there. See what’s happening in lives of others there, share the photos, status updates and over the time, build a addictive digital persona that one uses to make more connections. This further hits ones dopamine to hook him to reels and all. Even if you use it for minutes, the afterthoughts live for hours to follow!

So, I choose to get out of it, a lot of time ago! The profile was nurtured for years, it had connections, friends, memories, highlights, conversations and all! It wasn’t easy to let it all go! But I somehow managed to pull it off!

Now, I have a lot of free time and I can think about different topics, write about them, read more, understand more and again write with more clarity!
The events in others life’s should never have affected me, but unfortunately it was happening earlier, now I am living that true freedom!

So, I choose to live that wonderland and lead that life of solitude!

Is this digital solitude, really worth the efforts?

Everything seems worth the efforts, if the overall impact of that decision, on all of your life’s aspects, over the axis of time, proves to be the positive!
Just like that, this digital solitude is good to have!

One obviously misses the updates about friends and family. But are those updates really necessary to know if almost everyone around us, not really cares about who you are? It’s just there on their screen for few seconds before the next one appears!

Just like that, life is a marathon of chaos, choices and destiny!

Thanks for reading, that’s it for now! Let me know your feedback!

Leave a comment

As usual, let’s deep dive through some points, good one’s!

• The rat race: now-a-days!

• The calm college life!

• The belief in something!

• The efforts towards something significant!

• An ode of meaning!

• The digital chaos!

• The mental chaos!

• The cycle of linearity that most want us to follow!

• The layers in society!

• What’s your true self!

The rat race: now-a-days

What do you observe when you look around in the society? Almost everyone, has some moat of his own, which he/ she is chasing continuously, be it money/ home/ fun/ some purpose!

Starting from school, you are groomed to be in the top, go to some top college, get some top-paying job, enjoy thy life and just keep growing in this sphere of life, where expectations, tensions, needs never finish, these just pile up! One finds himself/ herself in the maze of life where the central goal is money!

So, what does the day look like, get up late, do some work, watch the reels in the free time, finish today’s tasks, watch some more reels, status and repeat the same!

Let’s say, you become aware about your health, you start going to gym, wake up early, spend some good time for your health but the engaging social feed goes nowhere!

The calm college life!

Well, that’s lot of abstraction, let’s get some specifics. Frankly speaking, I had calm college life. The days were long, a lot of stuff to do. I now realize, I was ignoring a lot of stuff, which I should not have. Be it having more strong bonds, conversations with peers or maybe a little more fun!

Life sometimes behave like the game where a single decision starts the chain of reaction that triggers the dominos of few more good decisions.

That was something that pushed me to be active part of some social, technical clubs that lead to meeting few good people, which ultimately lead to Nirman. Be it VivekVahini, ANIS, Media cell, NSS; all these helped me somehow. This circle, later expanded to Takshashila and other interesting groups in Pune.

The belief in something!

The world is the big chaotic place. You have to navigate in the vast space, trace your own path and try your best to understand what the big picture is! This realization that one has to understand the society, ecosystem around him/ her, leads to some important conclusion, one needs some meaning, purpose to live the fulfilling life!

The belief in some person, process, thing acts as catalyst that acts as a lighthouse and helps you to navigate what seems impossible.

The efforts towards something significant!

One good thing happens, if one realizes all these to some extend, he/ she puts in efforts to get to some significant point in whatever you are doing.

Be it learning something, getting to some concrete understanding, writing some significant number of blogs, running that milestone marathon in stipulated time or switching to some meaningful career that caters what you like to do and what you need to do.

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

An ode of meaning!

There is something interesting about things that you do for others, think beyond your own self. I was sort of lucky to get into circle of people that prompted me to think beyond self, towards some purpose.

At some point, most face existential crisis, one has everything, good food, good money, good job but one simply don’t get answers to question like why am doing what I am doing.

Then one wanders and finds some social activity to do, but that also seems like the temporary fix. One has to introspect, go deep, go wide and put in extra efforts to being that vector of meaning!

The digital chaos!

We all live in digital world where chaos dominates and our attention is the most priced asset that we spend carelessly. The thoughts we have, the knowledge that we gain, the information that we come across is fragmented to the very large extend that one simply does not comprehend/ think about the things most of the times!

One has to transform the the natural habits that took years to form and sacrifice the illusionary bonds that might break if you choose to take some bold decisions.

But, breaking your digital soul free to understand what’s happening around you, in technology, in AI, in society, in nature, with climate and much more is something that one has to do to thrive in the modern technological age where social media is trying to cage you in your own echo-chambers!

Share

The mental chaos!

Along with digital chaos, one has to withstand what society enforces. The mind is never calm, it always has something to do. It’s difficult to follow the silence and just be calm in the chaos around you. The competition against the world, the flood of emotions triggered by plethora of content that you come across and the habit of ignoring the most pressing questions baffles you!

One has to find his own calm and happy tribe to settle in.

The cycle of linearity that most want us to follow!

If one generalizes the lives of most around you, you see pattern and that’s when you see the linear cycle of expectations that most follow. The question is, is it really needed?

The layers in society!

If you see around society is fragmented along multiple axes be it economical, social, affluential, powerful, thoughtful, logical and much more. Barriers for some of which are hard to cross, but you some it’s your own choice! Be it connecting with thoughtfully affluential people, logical, etc.
So, it’s upon you to choose, what barriers are you trying to cross across?

What’s my true self!

So, the final question, what’s my true self reflect? I am detached from the digital social media. That sometimes puts me in the spot and induces that loneliness.

That’s it for now! I know this is random, but thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

A month ago, I purchased myself a claude code license worth 20$, just to make sure that I am uptodate with what’s happening with the claude and have no boundaries to what I can do and cannot do with it.

I am writing around digital well-being since long time now, so, I had good collection of blogs around the topic of Digital Wellbeing on my substack.

I was at AI study group and the idea struck me, what if I design the interactive game based on making people aware about their digital health and well-being using my blogs as source of idea?

Thus the project began. Idea was initially drafted using Claude Creative Projects which created the timeline and the flow of the game. Then came Claude Design, it helped me create interesting and interactive game design. Claude Code further revamped the design and thus my single page interactive game was born!

Believe me or not, this took initial efforts of max 2-3 hours.

What’s happening with vibe-coding?

They say, old style programming line by line is almost out of the picture. Now, we prompt to Cursor/ Cluade and get the code. The most important step here thus is verifying what’s generated and is it really useful!

In short, if you have concrete idea and a claude code subscription, you can literally create anything that you want! Say you are an economist, you draft your idea of app that you want, hand-it-over to claude and boom, the app is ready to deploy! You just have to prompt it correctly.

The idea of digital well-being:

We all have our physical and digital self. One that lives in real world, one that we feed and on the other hand, the replicated persona that we try to replicate in the digital world. Be it sharing the moments, connecting with the peers or learning about what’s happening around us. As we are immersing ourselves deep into the social media, this is leading to some in-intended consequences including attention fragmentation, emotional turbulance to the self stuck in digital echo-chember!

Thus, it becomes important to understand what’s happening to us, our brains, our minds as we delve deep into this! This in turn shapes, what we come across, what we think about and what we choose to become!

Why most among us need to think about this?

This is the age of technology disruption. Everyday, something new comes, that changes the way we fundamentally live! The dopamine rush that prompts you to scroll more, is the result of the algorithmically catered feed that we all consume.

We all are mindlessly consuming it; today, if we choose to take control, a lot of things change. You control your brain, what you think about, the way you live, brings that extra level of clarity in your thoughts and saves you from the emotional, physiological, psychological turbulence that one usually goes through!

So, there is lot beyond one human choice and thus you must start thinking about this, right now!

Subscribe now

The Overall Idea

It’s been long time, since I started writing and experimenting on digital well-being. The continuous experimentation and some concrete decisions lead to some interesting decisions that further positively impacted the overall life.

So, I thought, if reading these 10-12 blogs is tedious task, let’s design something around this that would help one to further understand and lead to the content of blogs!

That was the seed, and since I was thinking of something to work on, I choose this!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Claude Creative Projects: The initial Strike!

Here’s is the initial prompt, that lead to the core idea, you can preview whole conversation here:

Q: What kind of creative project did you have in mind?
A: Game or interactive experience

Q: What’s the vibe or tone you’re going for?
A: Fun / playful

Q: How involved do you want to be?
A: Collaborate back-and-forth

Q: What type of game sounds most appealing?
A: Adventure / story game

Q: Any theme or topic you’d love it to be about?
A: Digital Wellbeing

Use the blogs added below for the core content of the game:
https://sankettambare.substack.com/t/digital-wellbeing
Explore all blog articles and create a brief idea doc
I just want to confirm if you have explored all the blogs, first extract all ideas that you can
extract from all 12 blogs. Explain why you have choosen what you have choosen.

Claude Design: Shaping the design!

Create interactive game design for single page web-app. Make sure it is engaging,
visually good and responsive for tablet/ mobile.
Hi-fi design
Interactive prototype
Game_idea_doc.md

Response =>
The Wanderer’s Digital Escape is live. Here’s what’s built:
4 Worlds, 20 scenes:
🌀 Echo Chamber Swamp — algorithm mirror boss, data reveal showing your real click profile
🎰 Dopamine Arcade — reels vs. long-form mechanic, AI Slop enemies, real 60-second silence timer
🏙️ Validation City — Dunbar’s 5 allies, Instagram deletion modal (2-step confirmation, dissolve animation)
🧘 Nomad’s Trail — 5:30am run, frog zoom-out visual, Sthitaprajnata boss

Mechanics:
4 live meters (Focus, Dopamine, Oneness, Tranquility) — all choices affect them
👻 Ghost state when Dopamine > 75 — “You are elsewhere…” with scanline overlay
Floating +/− feedback on every choice
Win screen with 8-dimension NIRMAN Flourishing Score
Progress saved to localStorage (refresh-safe)

Claude Code: Giving the final touch!

Now we have code for standalone HTML file, simply put it in git folder to host on github pages.

Here’s link the claude code sessions that improved the web-page:
https://claude.ai/code/session_01GxDEXv8PQ9V19muWuwUxHo

https://claude.ai/code/session_01Nu1FhDbaS8XvFn7kBDGxgL

https://claude.ai/code/session_01HVQtCQ4jJg7NqimNFKAXUA

Prompts:

Initial Prompt:
I want to create a separate page on the digital wellbeing game page, where we explain how this game works,
explain the scoring mechanism and give details about the source of the data and ideas.
This is the source of the data:
https://sankettambare.substack.com/t/digital-wellbeing

Issue Found, prompt 2:
not able to scroll the webpage of how it works and it should have dedicated url which can be shared.
also change copyright year to 2026

Prompt 3:
I want to add another section where the different scenarios are simulated 
and different scores are assigned to users after giving test.
add simulated results in how it works page.
also, button to switch mode is not visible on how it works page

Github Pages: Single click deployment!

The game is deployed on github pages and you can explore it here:
https://daredavil01.github.io/daredavil01/digital-wellbeing/index.html

Here’s the video of the product:

It’s Still Work In Progress, a lot to fix, appreciate feedback!

I know it’s still a rough idea, that I have translated into simple web-app, so a lot of fixes are needed. Do check and share your feedback.

That’s it, you see, it’s that easy to develop something interesting, pre-condition is you should have concrete idea! Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

So, as usual let’s deep dive with the help of few points:

• The digital echo-chamber around you!

• Are you siloed in your own world?

• Why should I really care?

• The information conundrum

• What’s your ultimate goal? Peace!

• Breaking the barriers to expand your horizons!

• Why this matters today, the most!

• The seemingly small, but extra-ordinarily good side-effects: improved attention, cognitive health & the well-being!

• Actions to do!

So, let’s start!

The digital echo-chamber around you!

Well, title starts with anatomy of digital wellbeing and why aren’t we thinking about it. The core reason for this is the digital echo-chamber of comfort around you. You have set of friends, who you follow, see their posts, view their stories, interact with them and consume a lot of algorithmically filtered content, which is designed to keep you hooked!

The unseen side never comes in the highlight! Thus it’s acting as an enforcer of your scrambled, narrative-rich thoughts, making it hard to get to the true facts of the picture!

Are you siloed in your own world?

This is the question one must ask, are you continuously engaging in the same narrative? Are you falling for the global narrative and simply believing it?

The silos prevent one from engaging in the complete picture and just push oneself in the recursive loop where one simply wanders in his own limits set by others!

Why should I really care?

If you are okay with this fact and stuff you are consuming, you just keep up what you are doing!

But, if you are keen to deep-dive and understand what’s really happening, this blog is for you!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

The information conundrum:

As mentioned above, information is privilege and one has to understand the fact that we are not privileged in that sense. We have to be conscious, introspect sources and what they are saying, weigh it on one’s conscious and make our own firm beliefs. One might say, most in the world simply fall in this bucket of those who fall easy prey to narrative.

But, sometime, someday, we have to understand the fact and act on it!

What’s your ultimate goal? Peace!

Most of us are struggling to cope up with our physiological needs (food, shelter, clothing, sleep), safety & security (health, empowerment, property, family, social ability), love & belonging (friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection) in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs!

Self-esteem and self-actualization are the topmost layers, but to be able to go there, one has to break the barriers and step up! Realize the true narrative and truly upskill to reach those levels, that seem unattainable!

So, all this boils down to leading a peaceful life in the chaos around us. If one has to get peace, one can get it today, by minimizing what one needs and assess about the things, that one really needs!

Why this matters today, the most!

This is an AI age, one has to work on his/ her cognitive skills, sharpen them and prepare for what would matter the most 5-10 years down the line.

For this one has to inculcate the ability to see the big picture, visualize where the world is going, introspect it, understand it and think through about things that one need to pursue!

The seemingly small, but extra-ordinarily good side-effects: improved attention, cognitive health & the well-being!

Another aspect of this being, the good things, habits that come in the process be it improvement in attention span, reading a long posts, not engaging in addictive reels, process stuff rather than skimming through random things for hours and not remembering anything at all after that!

Cognitive health, here tries to confine one’s ability to think, understand and have stand about complex things happening around us. This takes ages to be firm, but one can at least start preparing for what stands ahead of us in the AI era and keep up with the pace!

Third and the most important being, well-being, be it physical, digital, psychological, emotional and much more! Improved cognition catalyzes one to adopt better to in the challenging times!

Actions to do!

• Improve digital well-being

• Read/ listen/ watch/ consume long form content

• Spend some time in solitude

• Find something to do, that you truly love and devote some portion of time everyday for it! (eg. running, reading, painting, etc.)

• Forge those strong connections than social media connects

• Read books

• Listen to the podcast!

• Learn to learn the stuff human way!

That’s it for now! Do share your thoughts! Looking forward to the engaging discussions!

Leave a comment

As usual let’s start with few questions!

• How I am using it?

• What are different tools and for what should I use them?

  • ChatGPT

  • Gemini

  • Claude Code

  • NotebookLLM

  • Gamma

• Are you using it beyond simple image generation?

• How has it affected me?

• The cognitive offloading/ the critical perspective expander: what you choose to use it for?

• That’s new normal of life now!

Few pointers for the blog ahead:

• I will avoid adding anything that’s already available for you on single click!

• There are 1000s of tools out there, I intend to show the widespread diversity of tools available and implant that seed of curiosity that would enable you to find your own path in the complex web of AI.

• Sometimes some thoughts like advice will be sub-consciuosly added, bare with them!

• I intentionally won’t hyperlink most of the tools, you search that keyword, go to that site and explore yourself! That’s little push that I expect from you!

• Try out the things yourself!

Okay, let’s start!

How I am using it?

I as a software developer has to use it daily. The things which used to take hours, now can be done in an hour or less!

Daily, I use Cursor, claude code to write code, gemini to research things, notebookllm to de-brief large docs, pdfs, generate infographics and much more!

Overall, it has helped me to do stuff pretty quickly but has induced the fatigue to do stuff and just sit doing nothing most of the time! Thanks to the efforts put in to streamline digital habits and digital wellbeing, the deleted instagram & the vicious reels no longer bother me!

In a way, this free time helps to nourish the mind, think more thoroughly and just keeps that human spark alive!

I am trying to use more AI tools daily, but efforts in the way and will share more about it later soon!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

What are different tools and for what should I use them?

ChatGPT

This is something that most of you are familiar with and most of you are using it as well. Some of you might have started using it earlier, saw the hallucinations in the results and reverted back to normal google search! Just FYI, these toools are evolving everyday, something new comes out everyday be it new model or new feature!

I primarily use ChatGPT for:

• Normal web-search with insights

• Image generation and analysis

• To do deep research about some particular topic

• And, much more!

Gemini

Google is the monopoly and has all the services that one needs be it email, photos, calendar and all at the single place. In a way, it is flourishing on all the user data that a user generates and this it is one of the most personalized platform for sure.

As gemini is it’s one of the flagship product, it is integrated in all of it’s tools like google drive, gmail, docs, sheets, slides and all other products that you can think of!

Here’s what I use it for:

• Normal web-search with references

• Gemini Deep Research: One of the best tool out there, which can give you brief reports based on few lines of prompts be it market research or any other analysis

• Gemini Canvas: You can prototype any of your ideas into web-apps in single clicks here, no matter how complex the idea it is, just give detailed prompt to it. If you wish to do some changes, just ask it to update generated web-app! Let’s say, you want to create a personalized portfolio website, a must have nowadays, you give it your resume and it just converts it into the website within minutes!

• Google Stitch: It is the web-app and mobile apps designer for you that can prototype anything that you want and help you visualize and stylize it as you wish!

• Nano-banana: You can use this to generate images based on source prompts/ media!

• Guided Learning/ Custom Gems: This is where it becomes interesting, have you ever thought of guide that you have instructed and shared your end goals, it is learning everyday and you are able to enjoy more crisp, clear and deep sessions, that’s Custom Gems for you!

Claude Code

This is something that will help you to do tasks where there is lot of complexity and you really need detailed report for something, a weekly plan to learn something new, or anything else that you want!

NotebookLLM

This is the most under-rated tool that I have came across. In general your queries are searched upon whole internet. But what if you want to restrict your research to few docs, pdfs, website, youtube video or your own long text, that’s where NotebookLLM comes into the picture! Here are some of the many things that it can do:

• Ask personalized question to your set of sources

• Create audio podcast for it in any language

• Create video for your content in any language

• Create infographic with custom prompt, style and size as per your requirement

• Create a brief presentation with custom prompt and much more

• Create quiz, reports, mind map, etc. etc!

All this is free for use and will be useful for most of us. Do try it!

Are you using it beyond simple image generation?

A lot of things are available, you can use it as tutor for you, as an interviewer for you, as an critique for you, the question are you using it beyond entertainment and media generation?

How to ask it for the information is yet another skill and one masters it with the time, but for that one must start somewhere!

How has it affected me?

Here is what I want to focus on in this part, how it has affected my thinking, cognitive abilities and much more?

I believe that one has to understand the implications of continuous use of technology and comprehend the same to be able to visualize any negative impacts it has and to work on it, be it the impacted attention span due to social media or taking AI-genrated content as it is without verifying the sources!

I personally try to verify the stuff that AI generates and ask it for a source for the information that it is serving me. One needs to intentionally think about stuff and cater your content, than allowing algorithmetically content. This will help you to streamline your thinking!

The cognitive offloading/ the critical perspective expander: what you choose to use it for?

So, now you are Ai-enabled and you are using all the needed tools as you need in your day-to-day life. For sustained time, you keep doing so then someday the question pops up!

Is it helping you to anlyse different critical perspectives and introspect different topics or you are just off-loading your thought process to AI and doing nothing?

That’s new normal of life now!

AI is here to stay and one has to learn to use it, that’s it for now! This is pretty short version, will keep posting things like this!

Do you like it, I would love to know your feedback!

Leave a comment

Well, as usual, let’s think through using below aspects! Let’s start with these!

What is digital well-being?

Here is what the google has to say, “Digital wellbeing is the pursuit of a healthy, intentional relationship with technology, balancing digital usage with real-world needs to support mental, physical, and emotional health.”

If thought upon, maybe we are missing on few or missing on all; what matters here is the realization that something like this is happening with us and I need to do something about it!

The self-centered soul wonders and tries to define the physical, mental, emotional, psychological and social aspects of our lives. We often brainstorm our life choices and decisions, extrapolate them to see what their impact would be on our lives in the long term.

I’d say, it’s this critical use of technology, it’s awareness, intentionality that would help you flourish the inner soul in you! This is something that I mean, when I say digital well-being, what’s your definition of it?

Why does it matter for me?

As we progress, the extend of free will in our tech use, is also interesting question. Are we using it because we want to or is it because of dopamine hits; that’s something that one needs to think about.

As one realizes, something is wrong with my digital habits, one starts experimenting with it. Earlier, I used to ask to the great people around me, how do you use technology in your life. The answer was obvious, but my quest demanded answer from the others, it’s one word, “intentionality”! Having control over our-selves and bringing in that magic of intentionality has helped them to being out the most positive impact in their life!

This intentionality seems easy to understand, but it’s difficult to put in practice. The addictive algorithms, the vicious cycles, one simply doesn’t get opportunity to think about the big picture. The real challenge, then is to get to the depth of level where one incorporates this in the one’s life!

That’s why this understanding of digital part of one’s being, matters to me!

The central axis of your life!

If one thinks about this, it’s just like the central axis that’s impacting all aspects of your life.

This is something that I am trying to do and let’s say, I think I am managing to do it!
Your small digital habits impact the way you start your day, do stuff throughout the day, what you think in your free-time during the day and what are the after-thoughts at the end of your day.

In short, what you plan, think about, manage to do in a day, all depends on what you see in your social feed, what influenced you in the latest trends to your direct in-direct interactions with pears on the social media!

That’s why, this is the digital axis that one has to think about when one chooses to re-design the way he/ she lives the life!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Why most aren’t thinking about this?

Now, that’s the most critical and interesting question, if this is all important and affects all of us a lot, why most around me, aren’t even talking about this?

If you are reading this today, is it the first time you are reading about it or you were earlier familiar with this? If yes, have you explored beyond the screen time in your phone settings?

Being on Instagram, putting out stories, posts everyday; sending snaps to keep others posted and showcasing the shining side of your personality on social media are some of the defaults, that most think as something that they must do.

Share

The hard-ships of the seeing beyond the obvious!

Following the traditional path and doing what most are doing, doesn’t need much efforts!

One often wonders alone on such choices and has to endeavor the sleepless nights, long thoughts, unsolved mysteries, complex dilemmas, all this in addition to daily choices, to-dos and the life questions!

This often isn’t easy and most choose easy option, but those who dare to dream, conquer over the hurdles, traverse through the unknown territories; achieve the peace of mind that one would never experience otherwise!

For eg, if one chooses to delete Instagram, it’s big decision for someone, he/ she has his/ her friends, close friends, family, all over there. He has memories of chatting, stories, posts, comments, likes and much more that traverses one’s mind beyond digital walls to one’s inner soul! In an way, it’s the efforts of months & years, that consolidates one’s profile! One showcases the interesting aspects of his/ her life, to make it interesting for others and most importantly has opportunity to peak into the lives of anyone that he chooses to!

The axis of time: true test of your choices today!

The time is magical thing, it passes very fast when one chooses to immerse in something, yet it ceases to stop, (at least we think so), when we are alone with ourselves. So, one has to judge the decisions against the axis of time, if he/ she chooses to introspect what one must do!

The thinking game!

Let me put up another point that emphasizes need to thin about all this. We are living in the age of abundant of information, but scarcity of knowledge. Everyone is trying to put out their own narrative out on social media. One scrolls through random posts and forms his/ her opinion about stuff. This is highly susceptible to manipulation and one must understand this!

So, to fix this, one has to have his own knowledge sources that feed one the unbiased information; has to have own opinion about stuff and most importantly think about stuff happening around him/ her!

The cognitive revolution!

There is subtle cognitive revolution happening across the population scale, that’s negatively impacting one’s cognitive abilities like thinking, introspecting, having scientific thinking and much more!

That’s it for now, thanks for reading, hope you are now aware of why you need to think about digital part of your being! Do share your views, thoughts, suggestions, comments. I would love to know about your thoughts regarding this!

Leave a comment

So, as usual let’s deep dive into various aspects and questions!

• Why this is the most fundamental revolution?

• Navigating the AI Bubble

• Embracing the change!

• Finding that golden opportunity!

• Keeping up the spirits!

• What the digital monk would do in this digital & information chaos?

First of all, this is an illustrative exploration based on things that I have stumbled upon and thought of! There is no particular order, so, it might feel out of order, yet that’s something that proves the human nature of these thoughts!

Why this is the most fundamental revolution?

19th century saw the industrial revolution which modernized the economy and the focus from agrarian economy was shifted to industrialized capitalized global economy! IT sector saw the boom in early 2000’s and the efforts of which resulted into the wide scale of population in the IT field.

Later Anthropic, Google, Meta and many others joined the race and today, things are releasing at an un-precedented pace! We have Gemini, Claude, Ollama and many others in the house! Cursor, claude code is changing daily development workflows! The defaults of our lives, the way the learn, discuss and organize have changed. Agentic AI is the new revolution, latest in the market!

All this might seem to be the big talk and nothing might makes sense, but this is happening and one has to live up with this fact!

Navigating the AI bubble:

Artificial intelligence, the charismatic words that are part of almost every discussion nowadays! Every technology news has this words in it. Be in AI summit or integration of AI in all products that we use!

All this bluff, sometimes blurs the way we envision and understand the things. This thing, sometimes, becomes so huge that one doesn’t understand, where to start? One simply overwhelms if one follows the news daily!

Someday, a social media platform is created where AI agents are talking about stuff, all by themselves without any human intervention! This all seems sci-fi and it seems Black Mirror episodes are becoming live!

Embracing the change!

Change is inevitable and one has to learn and adopt to new defaults! One needs to be up-to-date with stuff. Sometime, it all seems meaningless, all these changes have almost no impact, yet it’s the cumulative efforts that matter and makes sense! Often changing one thing at a time and streamlining it, helps to move ahead, yet one simply endures the efforts to bring that positive change!

Finding that golden opportunity!

Hustling is the new normal, you have to develop the multitudes of skills and keep working on them parallelly, to strive and thrive in the new age! Often one strives and waits for the right thing, yet this dilemma, further complexes itself and one just can’t bail out of this situation!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Keeping up the spirits!

Motivation to do things, often decides the time for which we keep doing that thing. For something meaningful, purposeful, you have your own reasons, your own why of doing things. The real challenge is knowing why you wish to do it and having clear purpose of doing this stuff!

What the digital monk would do in this digital & information chaos?

We are all striving for peaceful life where thing are moving at our own pace, we know what we are doing today and what we will do tomorrow; one simply keeps oneself in the loop and is able to focus on one thing at a time!

In the times where everyone is seeking your attention, it’s difficult to focus on something that matters all the time. Let’s just assume someone like this exists today.

What such digital monk would choose to do in today’s modern digital world full of information chaos?

This seems pretty difficult to understand, comprehend, assess and be firm about, but one needs to slowly think through all these points and have firm understanding of this! Next thing is, if I have to learn this much and in this much time-frame, what are the steps that I need to take today?

Digital monk is the one who has all these answers to the most extend and he/ she just keeps doing what matters the most!

I agree, there is information chaos, everyone is trying to put out his/ her own content and trying to sell in this market. One just needs to filter based on his instincts & intentions of information there!

That’s it for now, this is pretty scattered, I know, but it’s the only thing as of now, so, beware of it, understand it, embrace it and keep up with the efforts!

That’s it for now, thanks for reading. I would love to know your feedback!

Leave a comment

The Mid-life crisis!

We, in general, face a lot of critical questions in our 20s. Someday when we are earning enough to survive, everything sort of settles down, boredom starts filling the days and then one thinks about what’s the meaning of my life?

That’s when the vicious cycle of thoughts began, you start to see the opaqueness of the life, the rigidness of choices, the rat race of life where everyone is grinding oneself in daily chores, only to grind more the other day!

Some questions pop up in one’s mind, what’s my existence for, am I being useful to someone, am I looking beyond myself, what’s my role in society and many more like this! The daily stock market updates then become a tedious task, you look for something meaningful, something that will derive the happiness for you!

The purposeless explorations!

You might have been wandering, why I have put up point of midlife crisis at the top? Having a purpose to do a set of things in a day, helps you plan your day and activities.

Absence of any central moat like this, often leads to random activities. Doing things, just because you like it and you are enjoying it!

Here I want to particularly focus on content of reels that you scroll mindlessly, is there any coherence in it? Or, you are so much hooked to it that without doing that, you won’t be able to be calm? The dopamine hits do have an enormous effect!

In general, this is creating void, that’s slowly decaying your cognitive, thinking abilities as well! So, better bring purpose in your life!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Are you missing the Big Picture?

Such questions are big questions, that most just never think about. The rat race forces all to follow the same path and they just keep doing those things that others are doing!

To think about them, you have to put in efforts, deep dive into yourself, spend some good time with you, spend some time in solitude in nature; continuously for a sustained time; to instill that sense of thoughts in you! All this requires tremendous energy, the will power and most importantly, know why you want to do all this!

The intentionality!

How many of your actions today were intentional? In physical lives, you have choice to opt for things that matter, that have some intention behind them and are aligned to big goal of yours.

Mostly no, it is recommendation engines that put those content on your timelines and you choose to consume it! That’s why intentionality matters and one has to consciously choose what one chooses to watch!

The burst of emotions:

Social media posts often trigger avalanche of emotions in you, something will trigger the nationalism, while something else will introduce variety of emotions like anger, happiness, fear, pride and much more in the most possible random order.
All this is emotionally draining you and one needs to stay away from these perks!

The crisis of not being to live that oneness!

Oneness is the utmost important feeling that one achieves through his friends, family and actions! Being one with others, means forgetting one’s own existence and being part of that amalgam of souls! It feels beautiful when one experiences something like this!

For this one requires to connect at the most deep levels rather than superficial levels and be in the moment!

Free time and full attention is luxury where first is deprived because of financial issues but other is something that one oneself distances himself from! The deteriorating attention triggers the downstream cycle which further worsens one’s condition!

Thanks for reading, looking forward to listen to your thoughts about this!

Leave a comment

It’s just like that difficult process of getting rid of addiction that has been with you for years! I have been experimenting with these recently and this is illustration of my thoughts, experiments and some conclusion that I was able to derive!

As always, let’s try to understand this with the help of few questions/ aspects:

What’s next rabbit hole that’s sucking your attention?

We are always jumping from one thing to other. Starting from checking updates on WhatsApp in the morning to checking those final updates before you sleep. During this sometimes we are doing something productive like learning something, watching something good, reading a book, listening to someone or emerged in something deep!

The social media platforms which are trying to grab your attention are bound to design your experience such that you keep doing it. But, the real question is, is it worth the efforts/ time? How much do you remember from those hundreds of reels that you watched?

Some might say, some things are for fun, for enjoyment; the question here is, is this really a fun/ enjoyment or endless trap of activity; which when done for a prolonged time, affects your cognitive abilities!

Foundations of enforced digital habits:

Let’s start from first, how and where did it all started? Peers prompted you to open your social media accounts, you started to use it, started posting photos. Then snapchat started peeping into your life and all moments were then shared to all!

The streaks became the new standards of friendship. The likes, comments and followers started to be the status symbols.

In the tender age of flourishing and expanding our horizons of knowledge, thinking and world-view; we emerged ourselves in the vicious feedback cycle of digital life. This dwarfed our exposure, minimized the world view, reduced the critical thinking that triggers our cognitions, one started to ignore everything happening around him/ her in the world, did not felt the need to have their opinions about them; and started engaging in the online trends on Instagram!

This is our condition and such is the nature of our digital habits! It’s not going to be easy to out of this, yet it is the most critical thing that one needs to do to be able to survive in the challenging days ahead!

The Dopamine Flood:

What do you think happens, when you mindlessly scroll for hours. You experience spectrum of emotions starting from happiness, sadness, mercy, fear to empathy! All for few seconds, something violent triggers those emotions and further engages you. You see some good photo, you like it, thoughts about it now start flooding your calm mind! Many such things happen and at the end of session you are tired, you are searching for something that could engage bored mind. This further catalysts the vicious cycle. Once these habits are enforced, it further becomes difficult to get out of this cycle!

You have to start doing one thing at a time! You need not to be aware of latest breaking news instantly. Over the time, you realize filling the mind with the beautiful nature, is more satisfying than capturing them in pixels and putting it out on social media! You start meditating, keep your mind calm, don’t do something for some time of the day and slowly revert back to the lifestyle that does not frequently trigger dopamine hits!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

What to do with your free time?

Okay, now you have realized, there is something wrong with my digital life. I do see some languishing factors in it. Now, I will improvise and improve it! Just like that you start doing a thing at a time!

Now, you have free time in morning, where you can read a book, go for a walk, write those long thoughts, maybe create your bucket list of things to do in life!

Bringing that intentionality in actions:

Most of the time, we are not intentional about what we do watch on social media and on YouTube. There are two aspects of this viz. limited attention and infinite content! You have limited attention with a fixed amount of time. One needs to ration this carefully to be able to thrive and flourish! Infinite content exists on the web, one cannot simply dive into recommended content and spend the time there!

The lone warrior’s road less travelled!

This is the personal one, often when one tries to think out of the box and tries to go nomadic about lifestyle and digital choices, most around him/ her, are not doing that. Rather they are engulphed deep into their digital lives, without realizing the big picture. Here one needs few close friends, whom he can connect to, discuss stuff and most importantly strengthen what one has chosen to do!

Is it really worth the efforts?

I quit Instagram around an year ago, I still consider it, the most important and influential decision of my life yet! With those emotional waves out of life, now I am able to better focus on what matters the most!

The essence of the thing that matters!

Habits that took years to form, won’t break in days, one needs persistent efforts, continuous tinkering and thoughtful intentional actions everyday to achieve this! The big picture and implications of our choices become more clear, when one introspects and manages to visualize what matters most today and what will be the most useful choice for the tomorrow!

So, take some action to reduce your dopamine hits and lead the life, the nomadic way!

Thank you for readind, do check other blog posts on this substack blog. I would love to know your feedback.

Leave a comment

This is pure philosophical exploration and an attempt to illustrate what’s going on in the mind!

As always, I will start with few questions and elaborate on them to go ahead!

• The complex physical-digital dilemma!

• The loneliness paradox!

• Is it really possible to visualize/ simulate what one’s digital sphere looks like?

• Finding tranquility in the chaotic mind!

• Situational awareness (स्थितप्रज्ञता)

• The principles of digital monk!

• The paradigm shift that transforms ones way of looking towards life!

• The concluding remarks!

The complex physical-digital dilemma!

Social media addiction, digital well-being, digital flourishing are some of the terms that frequently come up in the discussion when tries to map his personal digital life.

The direct impact of worsened digital habits on one’s physical health impacts one’s mental health to the extend that one simply gives up and gets trapped in own digital spheres! One starts to loose the edge of cognitive abilities important for thinking, curious mind! As one starts consuming more AI slop content, he/ she gets hooked to screens constantly scrolling through feed!

The irony is one has to put in all the efforts just to get out of it! Introspectively mapping what’s where and what are the effects of what is the next step that most don’t think about!

Thus, this complex dilemma is difficult to crack, below are related aspects that spark the further chain of thoughts!

The loneliness paradox!

When everyone is engaged in their own social digital spheres, one often wanders alone in such spaces. One experiments with the social media and it’s impact on one’s habits, mental health and overall life!

These experiments include isolating oneself and creating a one-way interactive blog, challenging the traditional paradigms of social media usage patterns, trying to map the patterns of dopamine hits, understanding good digital habits, realizing the importance of them and consistently keeping up with them in spite of being alone!

Most of our friends, colleagues are on social media and mainly share things there. The intoxicating tools of engagement, likes, shares, comments keep one hooked and keep his/ her dopamine levels high!

Reels being the medium of communication, one just shares reels, others react and share another reel, this vicious cycle never ends!

If one chooses not to do all this, one becomes lonely to a certain extend, he has to find his own truth/ morals/ principles and keep up with it with high self-motivation. This requires one to visualize the big picture, know the long term impacts, experience them, be part of some other physical communities and just like this one gets out of this rat race beating the loneliness paradox on the way!

Yet, one thing remains here, these two are separate layers, if one chooses to get out of something, one has to live with the fact that, he won’t speak much with those stuck in the opposite layer and that’s okay!

But, you still talk to your friends to see what they are doing in their life, this one-to-one interactions often strengthen the bonds unlike likes/ comments by hundreds on your post!

Is it really possible to visualize/ simulate what one’s digital sphere looks like?

I agree this does need a lot of efforts, need to visualize the layers of society, one has experienced till date. In the social media platforms like Facebook/ Instagram/ Snapchat, you have hundreds of connections, you interact with people there for few seconds and then something else pops up. There is no elongated connection there! You just move to other digital connection if someone is not available!

This sphere although a big one, yet it’s more opaque, one experiences anxiety, jealousy, competitiveness and a lot of other emotions in short span of time!

Once one chooses to meaningfully connect with limited few, he/ she has chance to look beyond shallow layers and connect at deep level of interests, likes and much more!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Finding tranquility in the chaotic mind!

We are living in the chaos. One has to have certain privilege to experience this calm in life. Many try to go to mountains/ forts/ sea, yet end up listening songs on the beautiful serene trails/ beaches!

In the fast paces lives where one scrolls for thousands of times in the day, this is the privilege, the earlier you realize, the better that would be!
One interesting thing being, it’s really difficult to get rid of dopamine hits, this is going to be extremely slow process. It has taken years to form and it will take months, years to retract, you have to embrace it, give yourself time, space and opportunity to flourish that curious soul in you!

Situational awareness (स्थितप्रज्ञता)

In this new age, where distractions pop-up every second, one has to learn this art of inner calm in the outer chaotic world! Rather if you are somewhere in calm nature and there is chaotic mind, one simply cannot reciprocate to more calm nature! You have to put in extra efforts to calm your mind first!
I do think this is the key ingredient of one’s peaceful life, especially the ideal digital monks!

The principles of digital monk!

When I say digital monk, I think about someone who has achieved calm in the chaos and just lives as if distractions never affect him/ her. What could be the principles of such person:

• The controlled social media use

• The intentional digital habits

• Choosing what you watch/ listen/ read

• Limiting the digital sphere

• Add obstructions to break digital habits

• Clarity for each digital action be it watching one’s status/ story to adding mine

One might think, does all this really help, and what this could lead to?

The paradigm shift that transforms ones way of looking towards life!

Once you think about all this, this gives you alternate vision to live the life, one that contradicts the most lives!

You, then engage with limited content/ people meaningfully! Things become easy, you enjoy the process, embrace the obstacles, honor the achievements, focus on stuff, don’t get lost in digital streams and most importantly flourish in your physical, digital and social lives!

The concluding remarks!

That’s it, this is the digital paradox that I am talking about, everyone faces this at least ones. It’s your choice to surrender to it or fight it to live thy life meaningfully!

Leave a comment

• Why is my attention really important?

• Is my attention really shrinking?

• The learning obstacle: shortened attention!

• When was the last you time you deep dived into something really deep?

• What one can do?

• Why should I do it?

• Whom to look up to when one sets goals for one’s attention?

Why is my attention really important?

Someday, AGI will be around us. Even if it doesn’t come, the machine intelligence powered by computing evolutions including quantum computing is bound to transform the world fundamentally.
In simple words, one has to assess and be ready for what’s needed few months/ years down the line. For eg. AI agents have started disrupting every aspect of society, would my job be safe then?

Doing all this requires thorough reading, skimming through the vast content, understand what’s hype and what’s not, stopping commodification of your user behavior including social feed and behavior, long-form reading, being part of communities where people are eager to learn, keep thy curiosity high and much more!
One needs to think thoroughly, have their own opinions, and long chained thinking matters the most for this! That’s where your attention comes in the picture and plays vital role when it comes to your ability to do all this!

One needs to be able to look beyond the visible layers of apprehension and unlock those possible pathways; to be able to choose something that’s meaningful and matters the most!

Is my attention really shrinking?

Ever tried to read beyond 180 characters? Tried listening to that boring lecture for some good time? What’s your source of information/ news, if social media feed, what’s average time you spend for each information?

If one just keeps consuming all this, when he/ she would think about stuff that matters?

There is one hypothesis, you decide weather to watch video/ reel based on first 10 seconds, that’s it, that’s the utmost time, in which one has to get your attention for next minute.
Moreover recommended content floods your feed, grabbing all your energy and shapes what you think about, why you think about it and how much you think about it!
That’s why I am saying, “Your attention is shrinking” and you should care about it!

The learning obstacle: shortened attention!

If one learns to embrace the slowness, one masters the art of slowing down the life, enjoy those precious moments and prepare thy mind to focus on things.
If you agree that you need to learn stuff, then one also realizes, it’s not that easy to always keep your curiosity high enough to be able to keep doing stuff!
Although one has motivation, this needs to be topped-up with elongated attention spans!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

When was the last you time you deep dived into something really deep?

This is an interesting question, think about some topic for eg. radicalization of population and tools that dictatorial mindset leaders/ groups have in their pocket. One thing is keep bombarding the same things from all possible channels, divert the flow of thinking for the most through carefully orchestrated social media/ news campaigns and surround/ embed in the knowledge cluster of the most of the population. The emphasis of language, choice of words, flow of narrative, the manipulated history and many more tactics often help.

Let’s say choice of words, there are two words, “Hindu” and “Marathi”, when one uses either of them in “Happy new ---- year”, the societal, historical, philosophical context everything changes!

The narrative game and everything starts from the basic choice of words and that’s clearly visible today!

Do these thought experiments, these often help to develop cognitive, critical thinking abilities and these matter the most in the changing times!

What one can do?

One needs to reduce the consumption of recommended content, read books, listen to podcasts, watch long-form YouTube content and try to go beyond one’s horizons to think about things!
One simple thing is to start with “Subscriptions” tab rather than “Home” tab on YouTube, choose what channels you are going to watch! Reading books, especially hard copies, gives you opportunity to deep dive into the world that author creates in your own mind, nudging you to understand all aspects of particular topic rather than one perspective!
If one is travelling, one can opt for podcasts/ videos where people converse/ talk and you learn through these conversations, Amit Verma is someone that I recommend!

Why should I do it?

For your own sake, to be up-to-date, to strive and to thrive in these challenging times! Flourishing is something that one pursues, be it in physical/ digital world! Just for being aware of what does it mean to flourish today, one needs to pay attention to what’s happening around us!

Whom to look up to when one sets goals for one’s attention?

We have many thinkers around us who have their own thoughts about what’s happening around us. One should observe them to understand what habits they have adopted. Minimal social media is something that I found is the most common. Choosing what you think about and what you come across on your mobiles/ laptops is something that they do. Every act is intentional, there is some intent and some allocated time, beyond that one just wanders and nothing meaningful happens! So be intentional!

That’s it is, so know why your attention matters, work on it and just keep reading!

Leave a comment

It all started few months back, when I decided to register of Tata Ultra Marathon 50 Kms challenge. Yes, that’s 50 Kms, easy to speak, just few words, around an hour drive, but here I had to run that much along the hills of Lonavala!

“Breaking the barriers!”, that’s the slogan of this race, what barriers are we talking here, mental, physical, psychological, emotional and most importantly human nature barriers!

To put out in numbers, these are the statistics for the run: (From Smart-watch)

Total Distance: 51.31 Kms

Total Time: 6:55:52

Avg. Pace: 8’17” /km

Best Km: 6’23” /km

Avg. Heart Rate: 141 bpm

Elevation Gain: 705 m

Calories: 4871 kcal

Training Load: 566 TL (High)

Total Steps: ~64000

As always, let’s discuss considering few major points:

The Background:

I have been running since last 1.5-2 years. Until now, I had 18 races including 1 Ultra Marathon, 2 Full Marathons and 12 Half marathons! Detailed analysis added here. As I had already registered for TMM Full marathon this year, I went ahead for 50 Kms Ultra Run this year.

The Training:

This race has dual challenge of 50 Kms distance coupled with elevation gain of around 700 meters. Training for TMM Full Marathon scheduled on 18th January, did help in overall process but we only had 3 weeks to prepare for ultra distance and high gradient elevation! Though I have been running long distance for last 3 months, the main challenge here was keeping up with the efforts for few more weeks!

Sinhgad trail runs, hill runs, easy runs, strength training sessions along with brief stretching session efforts ramped up in these 2-3 weeks. Overall, I did 2 long hill runs at Sinhgad for around 21 Kms and 25 Kms. Interesting thing about these being Sinhgad offers 662 m elevation gain in these runs whereas main race has elevation gain of around 700 meters. So, this was enough for elevation training, but the distance was the key challenge now.

You might face unknown challenges like lactate built-up, bristles, calf pain, muscle pain, cramps and much more! The hydration and nutrition strategy needs to be in place for the most part of the race. It definitely is not going to be followed for the whole race, but it helps to prevent injuries! You do need to modify and act as per the situation, but that’s the part of race!

The Race Week

Now, I only had a week left for the race and swollen mouth coupled with small injury to knees wasn’t ideal to start the tapering week. Mindset matters the most when it comes to challenges beyond general human capabilities!

One thinks it thoroughly, plans the moments, kms, hours, nutrition, hydration, and what mental image that need to be projected to push forward the tired body and rejuvenate that exhausted mind! All this starts in mind, you slowly start thinking about everything, run those scenarios and just think it through!

With all this preparation, I reached the expo for BIB collection, collected the BIB and reached the hotel for resting!

Race Day

The day started at 12.15 am in morning. Mere 2 hours sleep definitely wasn’t enough to sustain the day and I had a long run planned today! Woke up, picked up pre-filled bag and reached the venue at 1 am!

The environment was energetic, everyone was excited to run, warming up, storing those moments in the memory, just living those moments!

And, just like that the marathon began! Confetti flying in air, red carpet at start, photographers, capturing the hopes on the faces in the pixels in screen!

First 5 kms, it’s a little bit rolling, but mostly easy part. One just warm-ups the body during this time! Then comes the INS Shivaji climb of 2-2.5 Kms, where steep uphill is observed and it’s better to walk here! Now I was on the rolling planes of Tiger Hill, the specialty of this part being, the uneven terrain where one has to conserve energy while climbing and recover when coming down!

At 14 Kms, you take a detour and complete 6 Kms to join back to same straight road where we continued till 28-29 Kms! Meanwhile we had completed first half of 25 Kms in 3 Hours 5 Mins!

How you manage to cope up with the pressure long distance run, decides the way you finish it. Be it accepting the fact that body is tired now and you just have to keep moving until last mile, be it slow jog, brisk walk or slow walk!

The first one was continuously coming after 35 Kms and I had 15 Kms to complete. So, understanding why you are doing this, definitely matters the most. You are alone, you have to convince yourself to keep with the efforts and only you can do that, so better clear why you are doing this if there is slightest of doubt!

Second, I know I was doing something that less than 1% of population does and it is far more better to go injury-free than some injury! So, that frustration reduced over the span of few kms!

Now, last 8 Kms were remaining, out of which first 3 were steep downhill, comparatively easy to do, but mind you steps, a single twist and you are done! Then comes 5 Kms on relatively flat route! You have already ran 45 Kms, body is exhausted beyond limit and thus you simply keep the rhythm and reach that finish line! This last 5 Kms was difficult, yet the sights of finish line pushed in the last moments!

Then I saw it, “100 meters to go!”, that was it, I had completed 50 Kms run in around 7 Hours! All the route got flash backed in the eyes and I just went ahead towards finish line via the red carpet and pillars were saying, “Breaking Barriers!”

The Race Moments:

The Route Video:

The Key Learnings:

Initially the challenge of 50 Kms seems mammoth, it truly is, yet once you start doing it, the fear sets in, you just enjoy the scenic route and slowly the fear transforms into the confidence, which fully unveils itself on the finish line! You have broken that mental, emotional, physical, psycho-logical barrier to unlock your next best version!

Throughout the race you go through phases, first the challenge seems impossible, then you decide to break it in parts, decide to focus on first half, conquer the first half, the layers of impossibility, now start to loosen up, you push 5-10 Kms further ahead and then comes the hardest of all, overcoming your humble self and push it to the end! This whole cycle happens within those 6-7 hours!

Once you cross that finish line, you become what you always wished to be, invincible! You are happy and glad that you were able to do this and are grateful for everyone involved in the process!

Nothing is perfect in life, you have to take efforts to shape the perfectness of that moment! In this vast world, it’s hard to find those tiny perfect things, I am glad I could collect many along the way!

What Next?

Now, the life’s marathon lies ahead, this was just small part of this grand schema! I just need to maintain the efforts, keep up the spirits, believe in the process and keep doing what matters the most!

That’s it! Thank you for reading! Do share your reviews, feedback, comments and much more!

If you do like this, check below blogposts:

Authors: Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky

Link: https://maketime.blog/?src=app

That’s the place where this book will guide you to alter you lifestyle and daily routine to get out of busy bandwagon and not get stuck in infinity pools!

To go ahead, will elaborate through below points:

• My experiments before the book?

• Why this book?

• The learnings that I adopted!

• Digital lives: The Way Ahead!

• The shadow of AI: what to expect?

Do read till end and share your views, experiments and comments!

My experiments before the book!

Since last few years, I have started experimenting with my digital life! Starting with de-activating Facebook account way back in 2018! Then experiments of Instagram continued in the entangled manner where I first started account, started actively sharing content, got off it for some time, de-activated it along the way, deleted the account, created another account and deleted that again!

Along the way, knowingly unknowingly, I was experimenting and trying to understand, is it really useful, why am I using it, is it helping me to grow, are the connections here really worth the efforts and many more!

Later that addiction transformed towards twitter, where I was mindlessly scrolling through the stuff, realized that and deleted that account as well! Now, WhatsApp is my distraction kryptonite, which I am trying to battle with!

Obviously, there are positives as well, including WordPress, tumblr and blogger blogs that I started along the way and now active Substack, which I am actively writing on!

The core thought behind sharing stuff on social media back then was, it gave me opportunity to think about something and put it in words! There should be meaningful place which helps you understand stuff, yet not engage you in sloppy content for your attention and screentime!

So, after all this, now I am trying to actively push blogs, learn stuff and sanitize my digital life and habits to make the most of evolving tech!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Why this book?

One day, I was wondering in a Blossom book store on Church Street in Bangalore! Books filled across hundreds of shelves and there I got this interesting books filled with lot of small tactics and beautiful illustrations!

The title itself prompted about interesting content that it holds and thus I choose it!

These are interesting times, as tech developed, defaults in our lives started changing. All the physical activities starting from purchasing something to experiencing divine, slowly transformed into digital ones! Along with enormous benefits, the ease in our lives, the goal of technological giants started converging to grabbing one’s attention, screentime and as much time as possible!

The algorithmic recommendations, the infinite scrolling behavior hooked users for hours without even their realization and this slowly transformed into the way we live our life.

Now you started questioning this and are trying to bring in some positive change! That was the thought, for which I picked this book!

Interesting feature of book being the easy and understandable language, simple tricks and to-do’s and a lot of anecdotes to better thy day-to-day life and make that extra time in day!

Share

The learnings that I adopted!

I won’t give out everything, below are few things that would relate to you:

Busy bandwagon and infinity pools: We push ourselves in busy lives with packed calendars and when exhausted, mindlessly scroll in the infinity pools like Instagram, Facebook, You tube, Snapchat and much more! You just have to get out of this vicious cycle, and live your life meaningfully!

Moreover we are increasingly neglecting our physical health with no exercise and a lot of junk/ processed food! We have to change that and I have started working on this with regular exercise and controlled diet!

Digital lives: The Way Ahead!

So, we have to think about all this today and most importantly act!

The shadow of AI: what to expect?

Another big challenge in front of us is the disruption of AI! You have to understand it, embrace it, prepare for it, and nurture your intellect in the challenging times!

Overall, if we started thinking of this big picture and where you are going in this, a lot of societal disruptions are here and thus it is not easy to understand and introspect it. Everything is sort of beyond human comprehension. So, you need something basic to start with and this is that basic book!

Thank you for reading, do share you views and comments!

Leave a comment

Yesterday, in the session, esteemed scientist Dr. Atish Dabholkar, talked about “Survival Bias” and “Being at a place which would seem fortunate when looked upon”!

So, below are few questions, that I will introspect about:

• Was I fortunate till date, culmination of which is what I am doing today?

• The ENOUGH phenomenon!

• The exploring mind!

• Is it really worth the efforts?

• Tracing your net in the wild!

• Introspecting the big picture and evaluating what you choose to do continuously!

We are living in the disruption age where everything we do today will alter in the course of decades! Then the question, pops up, what does it really take to strive and thrive in the modern age! Since last few months, I have been listening to what the great thinkers suggest to us, and increasingly, I found one coherent message everywhere! Be curios, learn stuff and don’t let your attention sink in the wide ocean of social media!

Was I fortunate till date, culmination of which is what I am doing today?

It all started in the small city, then the shadows in the in city, dwarfed the mind, induced fear and instilled feeling of being a looser. Somehow managed to strive & thrive in the college, got some great advice, friends and a community there! Some of them really pushed me to do what I liked the most, prompted to keep learning and had a good connection with a set of caring souls! During the college, I got introduced to the Nirman community which further widened my horizons. The close connections there, are the closest today! Then, Pune comes in the picture! Here, too, managed to be part of communities and integrated myself into running community, which helped me to push my boundaries to run ultra-marathon, starting from nothing! Meanwhile, the dots managed to match themselves and I got scholarship for GCPP from The Takshashila Institution, which further extended to NAST fellowship!

Now, here I am, standing firmly, looking forward to the glorious years, introspecting the keen challenges, trying to grasp the problems from the perspective of social change-maker and an policy wank!

From here, somedays, I sit in five-star conference rooms, discussing the issues on ground, somedays do job of software developer, wander in nature, explore the remotest parts of country where even mobile network coverage fails to reach and rest of the time, try to understand and gauge where I fit the most!

So, am I just fortunate that I was actively involved with VivekVahini & media cell in college, to today’s active Nirman and running community? Everywhere, the bonds are forged, you connect, you discuss, you do something together, you learn something, you teach something and just move on!

I don’t think mere fortune would have lead to this, I think, the spark to do something, explore something, apply without hesitance and much more including sacrificing the comfort zones, just shaped this curious soul!

You don’t just get up and run 42 Kms, it takes persistent efforts of 3+ months, long runs, alone runs, the pain, the endurance which ultimately helps you conquer the challenges!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

The ENOUGH phenomenon!

The soul running in the rat race, often stops and accepts the reality as it is, thinking that’s it for now! Later sometimes the existential crisis hits and life had passed just like that! Does one really want such life or he/ she just accepts that!

The exploring mind!

We are curious soul and should introspect about stuff!

Our personality has many layers in it, you just enrich, nourish and flourish one layer at a time! Sometimes you read to nourish intellect, run to enrich body, endure to strengthen the mind and act to flourish thy inner soul!

Is it really worth the efforts?

Today, it’s tough to convince the struggling mind to keep doing stuff despite no visible outcome. For eg. this blog, I know, very very few would read it. But it’s just helping me to concretize something personally and think more about it!

So, yes, it’s worth the efforts!

Tracing your net in the wild!

We all are experimenting, finding our place in big jigsaw puzzle, so doing a lot of things helps! It just increases the chances of getting something more interesting, beautiful, satisfying!

Introspecting the big picture and evaluating what you choose to do continuously!

So, what one needs to do, is actively understand thy role, nourish your curious soul and keep flourishing in the vibrant space around you!

That’s it for now! Do share your comments! Thank you for reading!

Leave a comment

Technology is increasingly affecting all parts of our life. Starting from what we watch, scroll to what we eat! AI, the newest disruption promises to be the tectonic movement which will alter our lifestyles and society!

Then, these are few questions:

• What’s shaping this digital identity?

• What’s it’s impact on your physical lives?

• Is it affecting your cognitive abilities to comprehend, understand and brainstorm about stuff?

• Are you going deep into the digital rabit hole?

• Then, what would it mean to flourish in this converged world?

• What I can do to better my technology usage and not be susceptible to infinity pools?

Digital Identity:

Let me first clarify what I mean, when I say “Digital Identity”! We have physical self, we live in a society and are playing some role in it. Adjacently, we have our social media presence where we are connected with people in physical world. The information, content, connections that we shape there affect our day-to-day lives. Starting from our lifestyle, thought process, what we think about, whom we talk to, what we like, what we dislike, what are our opinions about stuff to what we ultimately choose to do!

What’s shaping our digital identity?

The answer is easy here, the content that we consume on social media! The interesting aspect of it being, this is quick to adapt, designed to hook us, engage us and keep us locked to it! Some think, social media is the source of information and things happening around us. There are two aspects to this, first being, our shortened attention spans and second being do we really need to be aware of what’s happening somewhere else instantly?

Speaking about attention span, let’s say you scroll for half an hour, how much do you remember after it?

In case we decide it’s good for us to consume it, how much AI slop do you encounter when you scroll, that’s there just to keep you engaged?

All this information is shaping our identity, what are our opinions about things happening around us, what we care about, what’s happening to nature, climate, physical health, psychological health and society in the recent times, the geo-political tug of war, what does it mean to be developed, is our government doing what’s good for us, why we are not caring about climate activist who spent his life serving the nation yet today nobody remembers him and many more important points just get lost in the discourse set in social media!

All this is shaping what we encounter everyday, so better be wise, what you choose to consume!

What’s it’s impact on your physical lives?

The foremost impact that’s observed is neglect of physical health, addiction to games, unhinged social media scrolling, weakened physical bonds, deepened distractions and always busy lives!

How much time do you spend with you everyday alone, when you are free, don’t think about anything, yet just enjoy the serendipity of nature, calmness of the time and beauty of the moments?

If answer is plenty, you are good to go, otherwise you are missing a lot!

Does digitally capturing moments and adding another heap of photos in thousands mean anything, if you are never going to look at them again some other day? Then, why not just focus of capturing and living the moments rather than posting that snap/ story instantly?

Is it affecting your cognitive abilities to comprehend, understand and brainstorm about stuff?

When was the last time, you choose to read something long-form, watch something meaningful and understand things from scratch?

Do you really think short videos, social media posts shape your understanding of the complex world in the best possible way?

Then, what’s causing this cognitive decline where you skip the post greater than 180 characters, skip videos within the minute and keep mindlessly scrolling through collection of irrelevant reels for hours without realizing the time?

Are you going deep into the digital rabit hole?

When you like something about train, all train videos magically line-up in your feed. The content that triggers dopamine hormones most gets most of our attention, and kicks in the vicious cycle of unending social media consumption.

We really need to think about our choices of what we consume, especially recommended content, be picky about what you choose to watch, read and listen to get out of this rabit-hole!

Then, what would it mean to flourish in this converged world?

Ideally it would be a scenario where one chooses what one wants to learn, reads that long-form article, research paper, watched that deep analysis and uses AI to challenge understanding rather than enabling it to control what you see!

Digital flourishing thus would mean to be free to use technology, but not be slave to digital habits, social media consumption or consumption of endless recommended content.

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

What I can do to better my technology usage and not be susceptible to infinity pools?

Infinity pools refer to social media where there is danger of loosing one’s sane and mindlessly scroll the feed. You can better thy digital life by adopting habits like following:

• Be intentional about consuming content be it video, social media post or reel.

• Consume long form content: blogs, podcasts, long videos

• Try to participate in democratic discourse which would enable you to widen your thinking horizons!

• Intentionally engage your cognitive abilities to understand stuff and actively nourish them!

• Choose whom you follow, whom you watch, is it really worth your attention?

• Don’t consume recommended content!

• What more can you think of?

Hope you like it, do share your feedback, comments, suggestions and much more!

Leave a comment

This is second in the series of Digital Wellbeing and 10th in the series of challenge to post 100 posts in the year.

Background:

Frankly speaking, some might think I am already living this peaceful life, what’s all this bluff! Thinking out loud here, I have many people like this around me, but most of the others are sort of embedded deep into the social media platforms!

I de-activated my personal Facebook account back in 2017-18, in first year of my engineering and since then, I have never been to Facebook.

During engineering and in later years, Instagram somehow hooked me in and I went deep into it, sort of got addicted to it, then through the tough learnings, learnt about it, and with intensive efforts, managed to de-activate personal Instagram account.

Obviously, it wasn’t easy to let go the efforts of years, those feed posts, stories, followers, messages and that metadata of my life. Some feel de-activating it for some time and then using it again, simply fixes the problem.

But, this radical view of permanently shutting down, was a momentary one like all others. But, the test of time is proving it to be the most critical decision yet in my life!

The Process:

Initially you sign-up for social media accounts in Instagram/ snapchat just because all your peers are there and you don’t want to be outlier in your group. Slowly you get used to scrolling feed and sending snaps. The interesting thing about all this being, knowingly unknowingly you do start doing this sub-consciously.

I never used snapchat beyond clicking photos with filters. But, this network effect, dopamine hits and the level of social engineering programmed to keep you engaged in the Instagram is beyond one’s imagination. Somehow, these social media platforms know you better than yourself.

What harm does this lead to? You need to be completely free and do nothing for some time of the day. Nowadays whenever you have some time, you simply start scrolling the feed. Hours pass by and reels just don’t stop! This somehow exhausts your mind, brain and body, leading to late nights and continuous switching contexts.

You see something for seconds and then something else pops up. Do you ever remember the content of that reel, or is it like that content on filter screen, which is just reflecting rather than being absorbing?

Is it really useful then? If not, then why are we consuming it? With AI slop (AI generated videos, images) everywhere, does it really make sense to consume all this content?

Those were few questions that popped up, which I thought about and just decided to delete account rather than temporary fixes like de-activation. The question might be, how do I stay updated then? I prefer to consume long form content (videos, podcasts, articles, books) which prompt me to think about it and make informed opinion about the stuff!

The intricacies of the journey:

It’s not easy to get out of rat race, think something different, rather radical, yet decide to act on it and be with your own decision along the way. Sometimes, one might feel he/ she is missing a lot. Other side of the coin being, his/ her deep explorations about things/ topics!

Everyday one has to assure him/ her that he/ she is doing right and he/ she has to continue doing it. This seems difficult when no immediate output is observed for actions taken. As habits needed years to form and strengthen, it definitely is going to take years to reverse it. You do need a good set of peers and keep you engaged in something else to substitute it, otherwise it’s easy to fallback to default.

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Striving for calm in the chaos:

Chaos is the new reality and you have to find your own calm in this new world, be it physical/ digital world. In this tough times, where AI is increasingly conquering every aspect of our life and rising geo-political tensions coupled with democracy turned in beaurocratic autocracy, one needs to have his own opinions about things based on genuine information processed by him/ her. The social media enables spread of large scale narratives designed to mislead the masses, keep them unaware of what’s happening around them and nurturing the image of nation, politician, party in his/ her mind.

Calm mind is the first and the utmost requirement of this complex puzzle then for which one needs to get out of his/ her digital echo-chamber.

Subscribe now

The purpose:

Few weeks ago, I was seating on a calm beach, listening to sound of waves, sort of meditating without closing my eyes and the thought struck me, what’s beyond the visible horizons of mundane life, a beautiful and meaningful purpose, that drives you to do things to flourish you everyday! For this purpose to think about, one needs to start looking at the horizon of visible life which needs calm mind, body and brain! Then only, you can start your purposeful journey! Are you on that meaningful journey of life?

That’s it for now! Do share your comments/ thoughts/ reviews!

Leave a comment

There is one thing that we mostly do, send notes to ourselves on WhatsApp, be it for session notes, something to remember, just a thing that we wish to read/ watch later someday, do you ever find that note when you need it most days later?

Then the question, popped up, is our digital life, really organized one?

Is is creating a net positive impact on our lives or is it creating a negative mental effect on our overall life when over-looked?

If there was some index with which we could measure our digital wellbeing, where would I stand?

What are some of the great practices that the great individuals, thinkers follow in their own digital lives, can we borrow something from it, to better our lives, both in physical and digital world?

In short, our loves are entangled in this messy web of things, where deriving something useful at the end of days, months has became almost impossible and we are just mindlessly scrolling through the content!

Understanding entangled digital lives:

Most of us agree that we spent significant time of our lives online. The web being the omnipotent thing for us. Starting from what to eat, where to eat, how to cook it, why to eat it to what to watch, what’s happening in the world around us and much more!

In India, average user spends more than 6 hours (6 Hours 49 mins) on internet majority of it on mobile phones.

If we look at use of internet, we can segregate the content into different use cases, I am just trying to put out the points and not focus on statistics here, so you won’t see numbers for the statements ahead. What we can do is weigh in about weather it has any positive/ negative impact on our overall health, that way it would be easy to generalize later.

Finding information:

Internet has trove of information about all the topics one can imagine. Every second, we are bombarded with unrelated, engaging, unlimited information. If one stops the time and thinks at the moment, why he/ she is watching that video, most of the times, one never finds the reason for it. He/ she is watching it cause it just appeared in the feed. The content suggested by recommended engines appears in the feed. Algorithms designed to get maximum attention are going to cater interesting, engaging content that will keep you hooked to that platform. Then the question comes, are we finding information or getting scattered information spread randomly around us?

Study and research:

If you are putting in a dedicated query/ prompt to get that particular information is legit use case and this definitely feeds that curious mind which is on the quest of information. Few years ago, on 30th November, 2022, to be exact, Chatgpt was launched. Since then, use of LLM’s in the search results is dominated. Instead of 1000s of results, now you get 1/2 answers which are derived based on information consumed from the internet which is easy to exploit.

So, earlier efforts of searching multiple websites, reading through them and then getting to a conclusion are now reduced to just reading a curated result.

Social Media:

There is one interesting question, “Do I really need to know what’s happening around the world in real time?” Maybe just think about this, I will put out my comments about this later.

When asked what you use social media for, the general answers include friends & family, news, general information and personal sharing.

Now there are multiple facets of each of the point like for personal sharing, ‘why am I putting out that Instagram post out there?’, “Why send that snap everyday?”.

Speaking about friends and family, what is the number of close persons that you have in your circle?

“Dunbar’s Numbers” layers suggest, intimate circle has 5 people (closest ones), sympathy group of 15 people (Good friends), wider social circle of 50 people (casual friends), meaningful network of 150 people (total stable relationships)!

If these are the numbers, does social media connections coincide with these closed ones? If not, are they only for creating the feelings of envy & competitiveness?

These thoughts might seem radical ones, yet I think the positive impact of this usage never manages to surpass the known-unknown negative impact that it does!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

Digital flourishing:

Having a meaning to what one does and to the overall life is something that leads to healthy, happy and meaningful life. Purpose helps to give one that meaning. The purpose and meaning in coherence, create a amalgam of things that leads to flourishing life. This flourishing has many aspects and one that interlinks all is “Digital Flourishing”! If you have a good flourishing life, that balances all other aspects. Then the question is, are you living life with flourished digital life?

More on this in some later blog!

Grabbing that jumping attention:

A thought experiment: can you seat in a place for some quiet time without doing anything? Can you read that long-form news article that’s more than 140 words? Do you prefer to watch short reels or long meaningful content? What answer do you get, does it reach to inference that, “Somehow, my digital habits are deteriorating my attention spans!”

The continuous social media usage has severely impacted our short, long-form attentions spans!

The lighthouse of this wide digital ocean?

In the wide ocean, lighthouse guides the boats wandering in wild to come to shore. Aren’t we browsing just like that in the wide open ocean and never reach a shor? So, what could be the lighthouse of this wide digital ocean? Every era has great thinkers, doers and revolutionary persons. They, through their thinking, have created a sense out of this chaos and in the process, defined how they are going to use technology the way, which would leave a positive impact on their lives.

That’s it for now, that’s first set of thoughts, next parts would elaborate more of such concepts!

Thanks for reading, do share your feedback!

Leave a comment

Sources:

• Digital 2026: Internet use in India in 2026

• Social Media Statistics for India Updated 2025

How it all started?

Running Tata Mumbai Marathon full marathon is something that all runners aspire to. It takes a willpower to continuously run for 42 Kms on the Mumbai Roads, starting at 5 am in the morning, you run throughout the heart of the city, for around 5 hours, facing the humidity in morning, open sea on sea link, scorching heat on the return journey. The Peddar road hits at 35-36 Kms, the challenge of uphill when your energy is all finished and it’s your willpower that driving you!

Your mind constantly swings with emotions, every muscle in your body is in pain. Yet you do not stop, slow down the pace, walk if you can’t run and reach the finish line! This is the story of that journey!

Mumbai:

People say, it’s city of dreams, the buildings, the monuments, everything just resembles the vast horizons of dreams you can achieve. There is some sense of confidence that the city embeds in you, which is enough for you to drive that change yourself. The beautiful Taj, sitting in front of sea, magnificent Gateway of India which has seen history since pre-independence, the vast marine drive which calms you and most importantly the set of people just working hard everyday to earn that night’s dinner.

It just gives you all the experiences, one needs to be humble enough to live graciously, care about society, nature and teach you what’s life like in the absence of peace!

The Training: The Endurance Game

After finishing Satara Half Hill Marathon, now it was time for planning for Tata Mumbai Marathon, the prestigious full marathon event where around 69000+ participated in the event out of which 11000+ ran full marathon.

Everything in this needs to be simulated during the training starting from long distance runs, the intervals, the strength training sessions, the hill repeats, the pain in the muscles and much more.

The most interesting part being long runs, which started from 21 Kms, slowly increasing to 24 Kms, 26 Kms, 28 Kms, 30 Kms, 32 Kms, 36 Kms! It seems easy to write and read, but to compare the distance, for 30 Kms, I have to circumvent the Kothrud, Pashan and Bavdhan Area and yet it did not finish 30 Kms. Sometimes, I myself could not believe, I managed to do that! For 36 Kms, I did loops on DP road. Overall, it was exhausting to run train for 3+ months, really felt good when I completed it!

The race day:

As run was scheduled on 18th January, I reached Mumbai, a day earlier, by Deccan Queen in the morning. Then the planned expo visit to collect the BIB and experience the thrilling expo. I had stayed at YMCA, Colaba. The stay was beautiful. Enjoyed the serenity of Colaba, iconic old buildings, light show at Gateway of India, had light dinner and slept early.

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

The next day, started at 3am in the morning. Wrapped up morning chores, got ready for the race, packed salt tabs, gels, energel tabs and started towards the marathon venue at 4am in the morning. The environment was electric, there was energy in the air, the crowded streets, runners everywhere.

Later, I went to the start wave area where I was supposed to start in start wave E. The marathon started at 5:00 am, and I almost started at 5:25 from the start line.

Started slow at the pace of 6:30 for the first 5-6 km. Then came the Marine Drive where I tried to speed up. Speaking about the emotions that were flowing in the mind, I was just observing the body, maintaining the rhythm and enjoying the moment.

Then came the marine drive patch. Flat part where the crowd was gathered to warm-up you for the long run ahead. This year full marathon route included Coastal Road patch, something that was done for the first time! Usually neither pedestrians nor two wheelers are allowed on Coastal road and Bandra Warli Sea Link, yet on that day, it was reserved only for runners! First half was good one, I managed to finish first half in 2 Hrs 18 Mins. This is a part where you control your motion, maintain the energy in the body and just like that I reached around 33-34 Kms, crossing coastal road on the return journey felt like a bigger challenge because of scorching heat now radiated in the environment. Then came the Peddar Road. This part is especially difficult because of elevation and tired legs. Some motivational quotes in people’s hands do motivate you like, “It’s almost done, last few Kms to go!”, “Nobody goes ahead without paying the toll on Peddar Road!”.

Then came the difficult patch of last 6-7 Kms. And, the inner thigh muscles of left leg started to pain, initially tolerable, but then, I thought, it is surely going to result in cramps, so I walked last 4-5 Kms and managed to finish full marathon in 5 Hrs 5 Mins!

The Route Video:

The Race Day Glimpses:

The medal:

What I learnt in the process?

You decide to do something, train hard for it. Put in efforts worth everyday for significant amount of time. Yet, sometimes, the unforeseen circumstances bring in disturbances. But, you have to endure, adjust and make sure you finish off what you started.

This is an excellent opportunity to understand your body, each muscle, it’s movement, the pain in it, the mind, for those 5 hours, it’s you and your body that matters. This rare chance to understand and listen to body, definitely helps you!

Overall, it was great experience, to train for it for 3 months, sacrifice each weekend, do that long runs on weekends and manage to rest well when available.

That’s it for now, do share your comments and feedback, would love to read it!

Leave a comment

In some days, I will be at critical juncture where I would have completed 27 years of age, a lot has happened in last few years, I started something, devoted myself to it, religiously followed few, diverged myself into variety of fields, focused more on writing and fitness, got a bunch of caring souls in the life, lost few of those forged bonds. Though, it’s tough terrain, I just intend to keep doing what matters the most. So, this question, what’s really worth the efforts?

The Turmoil: Is it worth it?

Few days ago, the thought struck me, is this mental, physical, emotional turmoil, really worth the efforts, even though no output is seen? Getting up early morning everyday, reading few pages before the office starts, wrapping the office work in that time, getting back to put efforts in something like AI explorations, reading, writing and just trying to lead that distraction-free life everyday; where does all this lead to? In a way you are investing your chunk of time in different activities everyday, be it some learning, relationships or work! Everything has it’s own returns be it curious mind, emotions, money, etc.! Exposing myself to variety of experiences early has definitely put in some sparks in the process and rather expanded that canvas of horizons! Maybe that’s the reason, I am thinking all this!

Navigating the unseen gazes!

It’s not easy to peak beyond the visible layers of personality, trying to extract that purpose, motivation, feelings, emotions, caveats of the actions and much more! But, sometimes it feels as if, I am being at a place, I shouldn’t be, I am doing something, which I shouldn’t be doing. There is certain level of tolerance that you expect to endure in the relations, you stretch yourself, to forge that bond; but the willingness of someone at front, becomes visible after certain time. Often hustle of daily life, leads to people, just ignoring the most of the folks, but this threshold needs to be in place! No tolerance beyond particular point, no matter what!

Just believe the process, everything else follows!

Getting back to first point, is this physical turmoil really worth it? Yes, definitely, the compounded effect of doing something everyday, becomes huge one day. Be it reading a book, inculcating good digital habits, running some distance daily! The question here, that troubles the most is, till when? Everything has it’s time and it would drop at that time only, most philosophies tell this in different ways.

One interesting thing being, after some time, you get into this loop of self-motivation, where something new happens everyday, the sparks lead to other sparks and the illuminated path acting as catalyst, pushes you towards that grand goal!

Let’s consider one thing first, reading. What I will do is assess each of this, one by one. Books are great resources of wisdom, the lifetimes of knowledge clustered in few hundreds of pages. This exponentially expands your horizons. You get chance to peek into the history, live that experience, enter the oasis that author has splendidly painted in his book with the words. Sometimes you look at present, briefly understand things. The future always prompts you to go deep.

In this digital age of social media, this is the habit that separates you from the zombies busy in the virtual world.

It somehow wires the neurons in a way that simply enables you to look ahead, look at big picture and clear your intention of doing what you are doing. In a way, the author is your companion and he is narrating his thoughts, you consume it, process it and thus strengthen your thoughts about stuff.

Inculcating good digital habits, is something, that I am trying to adopt since a long time. Initially struggling with Instagram and then permanently deleting it, this taught a lot, brought that positive change of distraction-free life. Organizing digital note-taking efforts was the recent step towards this and let’s see how this would impact me!

The Minimal Motivation:

You need motivation to do things daily, there is certain minimum level of motivation, that’s needed to drive the daily plan. You somehow have to conquer that spirit and keep doing stuff!

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

What Next?

Now, the main question, what’s really worth the efforts? This daily drill of doing variety of efforts! At this juncture of 27 years, there are certain things that I am sure of, confused about some and set of things, which I am not going to do! Few key decisions would drive the way things go ahead!

So, doing all that helps you lead a meaningful life, matters! Be it reading a book, running that marathon, learning that new thing, forging that new bond, being that innocent curious soul!

This is just a set of thoughts, concentrated around a topic, do share your thoughts, would love to read them!

Leave a comment

Thanks for reading, do check other blogs in this section :-)

So, let’s get started in this particular blog post, this being 6th in “100 Days to Offload” challenge where I will publish 100 blog posts in this year.

My personal website: Why it’s there?

It has collection of my personal information, books read, marathons, resume and monthly updates.

Broadly speaking, it’s my own catalog of stuff, where everything is there because I thought it should be there and just coded it out, a piece one at a time.

All these components are self-designed and have custom setup as per requirement, for eg. for “now” page, which hosts monthly updates, is designed in a minimalistic way where I update single file to push changes. Whereas “Sports” page which has data for all marathons, illustrates marathon timing, location, photos and certificate link with filters functionality.

What does it take to challenge you to do something big?

Let’s say you want to run a half-marathon in next month. Basic thing being, you have not run a long distance marathon since a long time for now. You can’t just decide to register and go for it. You need to plan the training for that particular run, start slow, incrementally increase the distance, wake up everyday, follow the plan, plan for hydration, route elevation, how you are going to tackle it and keep in the injury factor in mind, as that could devastate everything that you are planning for. All this is just the back-thought of deciding to run a marathon. After considering all this, you choose to run it, prepare for it and conquer it on the marathon day. Then that achievement is big for you as, you would have managed to run for 21 Kms continuously without an injury and you feel that beautiful sense of achievement.

Another example being to write a good, readable blog, beautifully drafted in a way that would enable reader to immerse in that experience or thoroughly understand that particular topic. Now, to write something like this, you yourself need to have thorough understanding of topic first, out of which, you would extract that 1000-1500 words. First you plot the outline for blog, major sub-topics that you want to focus on, later you dissect each one of them and complete the draft. Then you proof-read it once again and finally publish that. But, how much time does this really need? Let’s say 2-3 hours for research, 2-3 Hours for drafting and finalizing content, designing blog banner, social messages and other blog settings. So, overall, 5-6 hours of efforts.

So, from above two examples, one can infer, it needs following:

• The clear end goal in sight when you start

• The plan to prepare for it

• The outline of efforts

• The estimated time efforts needed

• How much of your commitment matters?

• What’s the minimum level of motivation that would sustain your energy throughout the process?

• Personal commitment to accomplish it

• Any other that you can think of?

The Challenges: A New page on my personal website, why it’s there!

An interesting and important aspect of accomplishing challenge is putting in personal commitment to complete something. So, what are the ways you can implant is, you can just put it on status, commit to close friends that you will complete it. It’s fine for things where you have to do something once and then it’s done.

But, what would you do in case of sustained long challenges, where you plan to do something continuously for a longer time let’s say, 21 days, 100 days, etc.? There may be very few people who have that much attention to spare for that much long time and a have will to do it. So, in short, a lot difficult than thought.

That’s where this page comes in the picture. This is intended to list out the challenges and show near real-time status and progress.

Share The Wanderer's Technical Anecdotes

A new challenge: 100 Days To Offload

Few days ago, I decided to accept the challenge to write 100 blog posts in a year. Earlier in 2025, I was able to write 12-13 blog posts in a year. Now increasing that number to 100 posts is significant change and needs a serious level of efforts every week to nearly put out 2-3 blogs each week.

How it started?

A friend randomly messaged me that he is thinking of doing something like this and has committed to it. Then, I was thinking, should I go for it as well. Just like that, I decided, it was necessary and important step for me to start doing this, to accomplish what I plan to do.

How it’s going?

So, far it’s on track, I have published 5 blogs in first two weeks and I think we are on track. I intend to write about a lot of topics, maybe a series of blogs focused on particular topic, in the future.

Does it really matter?

Oh, yes, at least for me, it has been a great boost to seriously start thinking about topics, that I always wished to and this gave opportunity to meaningfully understand plethora of topics both in horizontal and vertical directions, meaning, to as deep as you can and to as variety of topics of as you can in some cases.

Share

How I vibe-coded my personal commitments page on my personal website?

All this started with single prompt, that’s detailed, defines the features, the required styling for pages, the contents of page, and much more here it is:

I have started working on a new challenge called, “100 Days to offload” where I will publish 100 posts in a year. Details for it are added here: https://sankettambare.substack.com/p/100-days-to-offload Data for blogs in the series is added here:

100DaysToOffload.js . I want to create another page dedicated to tracking of this challenge. First create another menu option called “Challenges” in the main menu. This page will host all challenges that I will work upon in the future. Make sure you add following content on the main challenges page. - About Me: In this section, highlight the fact that i like to challenge myself, create a short answer for this using about.md file data.” - Why This Page? Highlight the need to be accountable and this is my way to be more accountable. Expand on this to write 5-6 lines -Challenges Highlight challenges from challenges.js in the main challenges page. Add stats for the challenges here.

Now, create a separate page for challenge “100 Days to Offload” Write description based on research from substack link added above in the main page. Now for this challenge. Create a github like commits map, but this will be blogs map where each day where blog is published will be highligthed in green. Add stats around tags, total blogs, in the challenge details page. Make sure there is dropdown menu for challenges, which has option to select “100 Days to Offload”. Create SVG logo for the challenge “100 Days to Offload”

After this few iterative prompts to fix errors and enhance the functionality, and that’s all!

Antigravity did rest of the work, and the page was ready to publish:

The features on the page!

Challenges Page:

• About me: Briefs about attitude to adopt challenges and execute them across technology, writing, and physical endurance.

• Why this page? Details about consistency and accountability!

• Active Challenges: Lists out active challenges

• Stats: Gives statistical figures of challenges

“100 Days to Offload” challenge page:

• Can I publish 100 posts on blog in a year?

• About the challenge

• Progress Map

• Stats: Based on tags and summary for overall challenge

• Recent Posts: Highlights recent posts in descending order

You can preview both the pages in light and dark mode as well.

Thank you for reading. I would love to know your feedback for the same.

To know more about me, click here!

Leave a comment