The Way of Doing Less

It’s the start of Sept. I’m 9 months into my second stint at the startup journey. 90% of my runway is gone (some investments came up) and I’m brimming with ideas and insights to build on.

This Week in AI is growing well – finally! Good week-on-week growth in both readership and subscription.

The AGI School is gaining recognition within my ICPs.

And now, I’m emboldened to build a new brand for freelancing. For this I’ve chosen Substack and Twitter as the channels of growth.

All this while, I get ideas for two new apps:

Birthday Reminder App - still long on it. I believe no app exists that has become the go-to place for saving important dates for people.
Duolingo-like Language-learning app for learning Kannada.

By nature, I’m pragmatic and calculative. But it blinds me to believe that I’ll be able to pull all these off with the “right kind of balance”.

And looking at all the data that I have, I can too.

But here’s the reality: I was nowhere near the milestones that I’d set for myself.

The website, the app, the endless blogs and newsletters, it was as if I was just doing things and the time was passing without any changes.

It was in a moment of unflinching honesty with myself that I finally understood – I was not focused. I had too many things that I was trying to do and I wasn’t getting anywhere with anything.

This became concrete when my mentor and my ex-boss, Ayushmaan Kapoor 🙌, in a session that felt more like an intervention, laid out my choices that felt more like the choices given to Neo in the first Matrix movie – red or blue, focus or drift.

Deeper pondering made it philosophical: The way of doing less.

Doing less is not to say that you become a lazy buffoon but that you actively choose to do less. It is to focus more, care more on the singular action that you are commiting.

It is the discipline of refusal, the courage of restraint.

To choose less is to choose depth. To do less is to care more for the thing being done.

It’s the timeless wisdom, echoed across cultures and schools of thought.

The Japanese way of perfection. The 10,000 hours principle. 99% perseverance rule. This and that, it’s all the same.

Doing the same thing, for longer than most would, with unique experimentations, that leads to evolution.

Each evolution adds to the step-function of the act and allows for leaps to take place.

In the end of the entire cycle, it allows for compounding to happen.

This is the magic of focus – and the result of the way of doing less.

Intentional, focused, deep psychological and spiritual devotion to a single act that it becomes the edge.

So what am I doing now?

Deep focus on only 1 thing: building This Week in AI.

The aim is to get 1.5K subscribers by the end of September. ( At the time of writing this, we’re at ~850 after 9 months FYI )

I’ve identified that we need to only go after high-intent, opportunity-focused entrepreneurs and operators in India. And we need to be cash-positive by the end of the year.

All this while deeply focusing on what I do and straying off of any glint of inspiration ricocheting from the universe.

Not “doing less” but actively choosing to do less – for focussed efforts, allowing greatness to sprout.

PS: Special shout-out to Diven and Tilak sir for their endless feedback sessions, strenuous debates, endless discussions and for simply bearing with me 24x7.

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