habit-formation on S Anand

Learning from Sukumar with questions

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 22:32:11 +0800

Sukumar Rajagopal shared a LinkedIn post about our meeting on 11 June at Chennai, saying:

Had a fanboi moment recently with Anand S who I have been following for a long time. He is prolific. It’s very difficult, no impossible, to keep up with him.

He generously shares his work with full source code; approach; working examples; the whole nine yards. All this I knew before I met him in person. The in-person meeting took me by surprise.

I was hoping to ask him a number of questions about his methods etc. But instead he peppered me with a lot of questions. Curiosity and humility is another hallmark of thought leaders. Anand showed me the way on how to be curious even in a topic like Gen AI where he possesses encyclopedic knowledge.

(etc.)

After cringing for a bit, I jotted down a few things.

Why I still learn: I get a kick out of it. Some get a kick out of wealth. Or power. Or fame (me too). Or learning (me too). It’s just a dopamine hit.

Why I learns topic I already know: I’d rather learn something I’m interested in. Who cares how much I know? It’s how much I like a topic. (Like re-reading books.)

How I learn from people: My current process / philosophy is:

Everyone has something worth discovering, but not every conversation is worth my time right now.
So, meet new people and ask good questions.
Continue if there’s emotional / intellectual stimulation (surprising, interesting, moving, connecting, energizing, challenging), else exit warmly with respect.

Why I share generously: I’m trying to be liked and become famous. (Really.)

Why I am humble: It helps me learn and makes me more likable.

Anyway, I opened my notes from that meeting, where I had jotted down what I learned from Sukumar.

Let me share what I learned from that conversation. You’ll see who’s really generous with their knowledge.

Habits:

Start small. “I started with two pushups. Now I do sixty at one go.”
Anchor to something you already do. “After I brush teeth, I have to do it.”
Hard work is hard to habitualize. Start easy. “If there’s a lot of cognitive or physical effort, it can’t form as a habit.”
Streaks have a hidden cost. “Streaks create pressure. Once the streak stops, it’s hard.”
Prefer cycles. “I do it for 6 days. 7th day, rest. You hit a sixer.”

Leverage:

“I don’t have time” is not a useful perspective. “You have no leverage. You can’t create time.”
Find alternative perspectives. “Look at the same thing from as many viewpoints as you need to.”
Find the Trim Tab: the one step that transforms the system. Uber changed only “the ride-hailing step… everything else remains the same.”
Set extreme goals, not incremental ones. “I want to move the rudder with zero energy and zero time.”

Reflection:

Worse than failing is not noticing. “You’re not achieving higher order outcomes - and you don’t even know.”
Small successes blind us to bigger opportunities. “Zumba, yoga… exciting for three months. Then it dies.”

Changing people:

Look for hunger, not pedigree. “People from disadvantaged backgrounds have the hunger to succeed.”
People ignite at different speeds. “Camphor lights instantly… banana stems don’t.” (Doesn’t translate well from Tamil.)
Don’t tell someone they lack agency. “Reactive buttons get pushed.”

Mentors:

A great mentor compresses years into months. “What takes 10-15 years can be done very rapidly.”
Quiet people make good mentors. “It’s the art of asking the right question.”

Trust and selling:

Anyone can sell, in their own style. “It’s just that their style may be different.”
The real skill is earning trust. “There are many methods. Flashy presentations are just one way.”

Working with AI:

Use models as sparring partners, not judges. “Generate it in ChatGPT… go to Claude and have it reviewed… go to Gemini.”
A model always finds something to say. “These LLMs can never say, ‘I don’t have any review comments.’”
Run a pre-mortem. “You travel in a time machine, you fail, you look back and see what would have tripped you.”
Use the simplest tech that works. “No database, no web sockets, nothing… Just polling.”

And he bought me lunch!

One extra push-up every day

Fri, 29 May 2026 09:57:03 +0800

I’m doing one extra push-up every day.

One of my 2026 goals is to build muscles. I haven’t done anything about it until May.

This month, I figured I would do the absolute minimum, at least to get started, because I seem to have starting trouble more than anything else. I asked ChatGPT:

I want to build muscles. What’s the most effective thing that I can do that would take no more than one minute that I can practice every day without any equipment and I can do this anywhere and will have the most impact on building muscles? Research, give me the top five options and recommend one for me.

It suggested push-ups. So did Claude.

Since I do yoga every day, I decided to do push-ups after that. I kept forgetting, so I decided to do push-ups before that. (This worked.)

Lesson: Habit stacking works. Habit pre-stacking works better.

I remember that story about a boy carrying a young bull as a child, and as they both grew up, he grew into a man strong enough to carry an adult bull. I am applying a similar practice.

I started with 10 push-ups a day. Every day, I’m adding one push-up to it. I just finished 23. That is, I have spent the last ~16 days (with 3 misses in between) adding one push-up each day to my routine.

This seems to be just the right level of incremental difficulty. Every day feels as miserable as the previous one. I began with absolutely not being able to do a single push-up more than 10 push-ups. I just finished my 23 push-up routine, absolutely not able to even one more. And it’s felt exactly the same way as every day.

Maybe it’s because I know the quota and the brain decides that’s exactly the limit of what’s possible. But still, it feels like one extra push-up a day is reasonable progression.

Lesson: Compounding habits seems to work. I’ll keep you posted.

Yearly Goal Tracking FAQ

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:35:37 +0800

I track my yearly goals by publishing and emailing them to my contacts:

Here are questions people have asked about my goal tracking.

How do you know that you have achieved the Better Husband tag?

In 2024, she said that I was “definitely worse in 2023 than 2024.”

In 2025, after a long pause, she finally declared “Yes”. 🙂

Your “Better husband - PASS” made me smile. How do you track relationship/soft goals without making them feel transactional?

In this case, I don’t track. But being serious about my goal makes me mindful. (E.g. during an argument, my mind-voice says, “Remember: Better husband. You’re mailing the entire world!”)

Is living with a stranger something you have never done before? Roommates, staying at hostels, etc.? How are you defining this?

Good point. I had roommates only when I was at IBM in Bangalore. They are such good friends that I forgot they were once strangers!

If I invite myself to stay for 3 nights with someone I don’t really know, I’ll count it.

What do you have planned for Live with a Stranger and what do you hope to get out of it?

Changing environment helps. I hope to get a new perspective
Being uncomfortable is good. It pushes boundaries. I hope to get comfortable with discomfort.

How do you track “buy low”?

By “Buy low” I mean make investmented when it roughly bottomed out. I check if I bought approximately at the bottom of a U curve.

It’s not a systematic behavior, nor a precise metric, nor a sustainable approach. So I dropped it.

What is your process to manage the discipline to stay on course?

Public commitment helps. E.g. I’m afraid to email everyone I know that I failed a goal. I pay upfront for courses. I get others to join me - harder to skip, then.
Environment & habits help. Yoga as soon as I wake up, phone automatically tracks activity, hiding junk food, etc.
Daily tracking helps. I know where I am and whether I’m progressing.

When you “failed” the 80 heart points in 2024, how did you process that? Did you adjust mid-year or accept and move on to 2025?

I didn’t have a choice. I felt very bad (and still feed a bit bad), so I didn’t process it well, I guess. The good part is, whether we process things well or not, live moves on.

How granular should tracking be? I’m building a Git repository with daily logs, XP points, Python scripts for reports… Am I over engineering this? (Probably yes, but tell me anyway!)

I track granularly. I prefer automatic tracking (e.g. GitHub for commits, Google Fit for heart points) over manual apps (e.g. weight on Google Fit, books on GoodReads) over notes (e.g. # of students).

Regular tracking feels more important than granular tracking.
Exception tracking seems powerful, e.g. track days when I miss Yoga. (That never happened, since I was conscious.)

How do you balance “ambitious goals” with “life happens”? Is it okay to explicitly plan for lower standards during chaos (my Q2), or is that pre-planning failure?

I’ve always aimed low - for fear of failure. I tried ambition… but not minding failure so much is working better for me.

What inspired you to start this yearly email tradition? How has it evolved over the years?

I started emailing goals in Dec 2020. Inspired by Tim Ferriss, maybe? It was a way to commit myself, stay in touch, and brag a bit.

My earliest goals list is from 1996. I reviewed those annually.
From 1999 - 2006, I tracked “achievements” on a Rating x Weightage = Points scale without goals.
From 2007 - 2019, I tried various logging mechanisms but don’t remember tracking goals.
From 2020 onwards, I use this email tradition.

What is the year on year short term to long term thread that connects these decisions to your life purpose? Horizons of Focus

I don’t know, so I asked Claude - and agree with its synthesis: Learn, Teach, then Automate.

Habits of a code addict

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 07:41:30 +0000

Walking 10,000 steps a day

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 05:38:17 +0000

Since 2018, I’ve been walking ~10,000 steps a day. Here’s my journey.