Writer’s Block - A term no one likes, and almost all of us experience it! That strange state where words dry up, ideas stop coming, and every blank page with a blink of that cursor feels intimidating.

It’s been months since I've been carrying this quiet guilt. The guilt of not writing. Every week, I told myself, “I’ll start next week.” And every week, I didn’t. It became too normal. Then this morning, I finally decided to do something. I opened the ed

itor with a clear intent: write something today.

Guess what? Nothing came out. Not a word. I kept staring at the blank page just to realise why I had been procrastinating for months. I was avoiding the discomfort of having nothing to say.

But since I had forced myself to write something today, I thought, why not write on Writer’s block!

Why Writing Became So Hard These Days

I was curiously thinking, how did this block appear? I was quite consistent in writing. I remember proudly writing every single week for 21 weeks straight, and consistency is something I usually brag about! It’s part of how I define myself. But for some reason, writing became that hard pill to swallow.

After thinking about this, I realised there might be two big reasons!

Game of Input/Output

Writing doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s not magic. It is a reflection of what you absorb. Books, articles, conversations, videos, even random observations from daily life. Without enough input, your brain has nothing to process, remix, and transform into ideas.

This year, I promised myself I’d finish 10 books. So far, I’ve managed only three. Not because I lost interest, but because life got busier and finding long stretches of time to read became harder. I also did not consume any other form of content, social media, videos, or anything! No input to mind, and I could not think of any ideas.

But how can we change this? What is the smallest step I can take? That’s when I started reading one or two articles a day. Short, manageable. And to my surprise, even this small thing made a difference. Suddenly, new thoughts started forming, and writing felt less overwhelming.

AI (How can I NOT talk about AI)

English isn’t my first language, so I often second-guess my phrasing. Tools like ChatGPT helped me polish drafts, improve flow, and find better words. In many ways, these tools were super helpful in writing. But today I could notice the hidden cost of it - It made me lazy.

Instead of thinking deeply to write sentences, I outsourced them. Instead of sitting with my messy first draft, I could straight get a polished version. That shortcut was helpful and it reduced my struggle! But that same struggle was required to make the writing “writing”.

I am not a pessimist or against AI! AI gave me speed, it made my life a lot easier. But the way I used AI also made me dependent. And this dependency blocked my creativity. I didn’t need to think hard anymore because I had a safety net. But then, fewer original thoughts, less practice, and more creative slump.

The Trick I’m Trying

It’s good that I realised the problems! Now, what can I do about them?

Instead of waiting for the “perfect idea”, I’ve decided to flip the problem. The plan is to write daily, even if it’s only a paragraph or two. I am thinking of it like exercise. Don’t wait for the perfect day, show up, build the habit, and let progress happen slowly.

So each morning, whenever I find some quiet time, I’ll sit down and write. No filters, no editing brain, no rules. Just thoughts in my head at that moment. My theory is simple: if I do this consistently, at least once a week, I’ll have something worth sharing publicly. And if not, that’s still okay. The real win will be showing up.

Realisation

It took me time to realise the problem and admit all this. To say, “Yes, I am avoiding the hard part.”

So here’s the new plan: read daily, even if it’s just an article. Write daily, even if it’s just a scrappy draft. Share weekly, only if it feels valuable. The key is consistency, not perfection.

This is day one of my experiment. Tomorrow will be day two. And hopefully, one day I’ll look back and laugh at how dramatic I made this sound. 😂

And if none of this works, I’ll just write a book titled 101 Creative Ways to Procrastinate Writing. Pretty sure that one will be a bestseller.

P.S. I did not send this email earlier because I wasn’t sure if I could stick with my commitment. But I’ve been writing every day for the past 10 days, and it’s already feeling easier and more fun. That’s why I decided to hit the send button today. If you’ve also been overthinking something, just start. You’ll figure out the rest along the way.

Everyone around us, even people far from the world of tech and startups, are talking about AI. From social media to mainstream news, WhatsApp groups to coffee chats, there is always some mention of AI.

What excites me the most is being part of this revolution.

It feels a lot like the dot-com wave of the early 2000s! When legendary companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft shaped the internet we live on today. That era changed everything. And now, it’s happening again.

Being part of this ecosystem, right here, right now, feels special.

But not everyone is feeling like this. If you look around, you can feel the mixed emotions about AI.

Some are super excited about what’s coming next.
Some are nervous, wondering if it might affect or replace them.
And some are just silent observers, watching things unfold.

All of these emotions are valid.

But in all this, something interesting is happening!! These AI tools are slowly shaping a new work pattern for us.

Stuck on something? Ask ChatGPT.
Need to write something? Ask ChatGPT.
Thinking of what to work on? Ask ChatGPT.
Wondering what to eat? A s k C h a t G P T.

It’s not wrong. But the illusion of instant results that this creates?
That doesn’t feel right.

I was recently reading a few posts shared on social media. All of them were talking about AI. Their new AI workflows. How it made their life simpler. How it automated 10-12 different things for them.

I was curious, how exactly did they do it?

You might also have noticed many such posts, articles, videos! Mostly starting with some hook like -

10 ways I automated my user research with ChatGPT — saved 3 hours a day.
If you're not using ChatGPT to automate cold outreach, you’re wasting time.
I vibe coded an app and now it is earning money passively. If I can do this, you can too....

You got my point, right?

To be honest, I feel a little bad about this. A little annoyed too.

Why? Because this is not how things work. This is how they get marketed.

No, I am not doubting the capabilities of AI or the tools or the workflows! They are the superpowers that we have now.

But most of these workflows shared in these posts are surface-level. They can get basic work done, like an intern might. And sure, for a software tool, that’s impressive. But if you’re trying to build something meaningful, this is not how you do it.

You need to spend time. You need to build systems.

These tools work best when you train them, improve them, and build on top of them. The prompts you see online? Think of them as starting points. But from there, it’s your job to make it better. It is your job to make it suitable for your use case.

But the sad part is, most people don’t do this.

We’re so obsessed with shortcuts that only a few percent of people actually put in the work and effort to use these things to the fullest capacity!

Let me give you a small and simple example to prove my point.
Try this: Ask ChatGPT to write an article with this prompt

“Write an article on AI trends in 2025.”

Then ask again the same thing, with a little different prompt:

“Write an article on AI trends in 2025. I’m a founder writing for a tech-savvy audience. I want this to be in-depth, thoughtful, covering trends like open-source AI, agent workflows, infra-level innovation, etc. Use credible references, no fluff. My tone is direct but curious. Around 1500 words. Make sure it’s not generic.”

Which one do you think will be better?

This is just for a basic task, writing an article! Now imagine when you're working on complex workflows like researching potential companies for jobs, learning about potential clients, writing cold emails, or designing a marketing campaign.

Think about how much data, context, and attention to detail you need to provide for these tools to work well. It might even take a few iterations to get the system right and in place.

That’s why I’m saying we need to build systems.

AI tools are incredible. Training AI is easier and cheaper than training humans. But you still need to know what you’re doing.

Don’t skip the fundamentals.

All these “10 hacks to use ChatGPT” are viral because we love hacks. But real builders don’t rely on hacks. Hacks are one-offs. Systems are what scale.

Use AI smartly. Stick to fundamentals. Build your own stack. Otherwise, AI will make you passive, even lazy. It’ll take away your creativity instead of enhancing it.

So instead of chasing the next “10 ChatGPT hacks”…
Build systems.

P.S. I am more active on Peerlist for writing articles and overall sharing my thoughts! If you do not see me for a while, this is where you should check out!

I am writing another essay for my newsletter after eight months, so who am I to talk about discipline? Honestly, I am still learning it the hard way. But since it’s a common struggle for all of us, it’s worth mentioning. 😄

A few years ago, in my early 20s, my parents would tell me the importance of sleeping on time, waking up early, and maintaining a proper sleep schedule. When I started my founder journey, all my mentors told me to document my thoughts, plans, and ideas.

But, thanks to my overconfidence, I thought I didn’t need to do any of that. I believed I could pull all-nighters, remember everything, and take things as they came, no planning needed.

Not-so-spoiler alert: I was wrong. No one can do that.

Somehow, early in life, we find it cool to live without discipline. After years of structured education, that newfound freedom feels great. So, when someone suggests maintaining discipline, it feels unnecessary, even restrictive.

Recently, I started following a routine and sticking to it. And guess what? It’s addictive! You begin to love your discipline so much that breaking it feels annoying.

But what happens when you’re disciplined? Things start falling into place.

A proper schedule improves your health. Planned tasks reduce surprises and last-minute stress. Fewer surprises mean fewer decisions to make, means you can focus your energy on what truly matters. We underestimate the cognitive load that comes with poor/no planning.

I’m a big believer in consistency—there’s nothing in the world you can’t achieve with it. And to stay consistent, you need discipline.

When I set a goal to read and write more this year, it was tough at first because I wasn’t disciplined enough to make time for it. But after a month of consistent effort, I finished reading a book, wrote my third long article, and even lined up four new topics to write about!

So, why am I telling you all this?

I don’t want to sound like I’m giving unsolicited advice (sorry if it feels that way!), and I’m definitely not here to lecture you. But I genuinely believe that sometimes, just reading about something can spark a shift in perspective.

So, if someone around you talks about building better habits, maintaining discipline, or even fixing your sleep schedule—maybe give it a thought. Most likely, they are speaking from experience, just like my parents and mentors once did. And now, I’m passing it on to you.

So maybe, it’s time to think in depth, what’s that one thing you need to fix with discipline?

Working on a side project is incredibly fun in the early days. You come up with an idea, build something, ship it, and experience the best feeling. The excitement of creating something of your own and building what you envision is unique and enjoyable.

But after a certain point, the excitement drops. The process doesn't feel fun anymore. Why?

You're working on the same idea, you have all the ownership, and everything is almost the same. So, why does this happen?

It's because of the ugly work!

Think of it this way. You've been planning a trip for the past 6 months and it's finally happening. You're excited, everything is booked, your itinerary is ready, you've done all the shopping, but now you have to pack. Unfortunately, you can’t have a fun trip without thoughtful packing, and no one else can do that for you! My metaphor might not be perfect, but I've never met anyone who loves packing.

So, my point is, for every project or endeavor to succeed, there’s always an "ugly" part that has to be done. While you're building your product, project, or working on your idea, to make it a success, this ugly part has to be addressed.

In terms of a software product, you need to understand what your users want and keep building around it. However, finding out what users want might not be the most fun part for you. Talking to users, conducting user research, taking feedback, and reading between the lines are not very exciting. But doing these tasks will make sure your product remains exciting and successful. These are the less glamorous parts that will ultimately make you successful.

When we started building Peerlist, the excitement of shipping something we loved kept us going initially. We enjoyed building features and seeing them come to life. But you can’t build a successful product if you become a feature factory. Understanding users, their needs, and building around those needs will keep your users happy.

It’s similar to content creation: you need to create content, understand your audience, and then keep adjusting your content accordingly. Else, no one will watch or care about your content!

Not all of us enjoy this part. Accepting that your decision or idea might not be right and then building according to someone else’s requirements can feel difficult initially. It’s like working for a boss without knowing who the boss is 😅.

But trust me, these challenging parts will make you successful. These may seem unattractive at first, but once you commit, they can become the most rewarding tasks. Whether you like it or not, force yourself to do that uninteresting work just like you would force workouts in the early days. They might not be fun at first, but they will become fun, and that is what will make you win!

This is one of those hard things I’ve learned (or am still learning) as a founder. :)

Last night, I was listening to Jason Fried’s podcast about writing. If you don’t know, I am a huge fan of Jason Fried, his writing, his way of building Basecamp, and almost everything else.

I first learned about him from his book Rework. I randomly picked up that book a few months before I started working on Peerlist. The impact it had on me was quite huge.

Out of all the books I’ve read, today I am sharing three books that changed a lot for me and helped me in the early days of Peerlist.

1. Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Nearly 4-5 years ago, I wasn’t a fan of reading books. It used to feel like too much of a task to me. In my office, my friends and colleagues would discuss the books they were reading.

One day, randomly, I saw this book at my home. The book was The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Those office conversations and the brilliant title of that book made me pick it up and start reading.

This is why I don’t believe in the phrase, "Don’t judge a book by its cover." 😄

I think I am fortunate that I started reading Hard Things! This book introduced me to how startups work, how hard they are, yet how exciting they can be, and that there is no limit to the possibilities! It made me hooked on it and the story of Ben Horowitz. The first half of the book, where Ben Horowitz walks you through his story, is a must-read.

2. Atomic Habits by James Clear

This one is quite cliché, but yes, this book changed many things for me! I am always proud of my consistency and resilience, and what made me even better at it is this well-known book Atomic Habits!

At the beginning of 2021, I was recovering from Covid and feeling completely lost. I wanted to upskill myself and do better in my career. I wanted to change my lifestyle, and at that time Atomic Habits was making a buzz on social media. So I picked it up and started reading 30 minutes a day.

This book helped me write consistently, work out consistently, and recover faster. My writing helped me reach people which otherwise was not possible. After this, I hardly read any book on productivity because this one does it all for me!

3. Rework by Jason Fried and DHH

We were thinking about building Peerlist. It was just an idea. I picked Rework from a social media post. (I don’t remember what the post was about). The book is in the form of small essays, many of them. And I love books that are formatted that way. It gave me the freedom to read and better understand startups and building products.

After reading this one, I was convinced that bootstrapping is the only way to build a startup (okay, let’s move on) 😁.

Since 2021, I have been quite regular with reading books, but there have been multiple months when work took precedence and I did not read or write much.

Nowadays, I spend some time in the mornings reading books. Audible is my best friend as I can do some chores along with listening—not a perfect way of reading, but I made this tradeoff to better utilize my time.

So, what about you? What are you reading currently, and which book has had the most impact on you?

Do you also find the title funny? Well, this is how I feel every day 😁

So, I am a developer turned founder. Like other tech founders, I also did everything that a normal founder is expected to do — Read Paul Graham’s essays, followed YC’s YouTube channel, watched most of the episodes of Lenny’s podcast, and read a bunch of startup books, so yes, a basic self-proclaimed masters of startups.

While reading/watching/listening, I also felt the same way as you (assuming). This startup stuff is easy, all you need to do is talk to your users, build a good tech team, find distribution and you are a 🦄!

This is how even I started! And honestly, the last 2 years have been one of the best days of my life, I have never enjoyed the process this much before. But while going through it, I had a very interesting observation, that stands true 99% of the time —

We founders are fools!

How?

Once you are a founder, you will see a slight change in the people’s behavior around you. Your family might feel you are stupid for leaving your comfortable life, your friends and colleagues might think you should not have done this and you might regret it later. So mostly everybody around you will think they know things better than you do!

People will consume content about how startups are built through books, podcasts, and videos and everyone will think they can do this better than you!

You will get a random piece of advice every now and then! Everyone may also think, that doing this is so simple. That might be even true. They might have done things better or differently if they had done it. But the point is, it’s you who is doing it!

If execution matched theory, we'd all have rockets heading toward Mars right now! But, no, we don't!

So one of the things that I learned being a founder and I wish I had known this earlier, is that people will come and give their unsolicited advice! Most of the time, they want to genuinely help you. But, don’t forget, you will have much more context than anyone else. This advice floating around may make you doubt yourself and your decisions but don’t lose confidence in yourself.

Early in your startup journey, you doubt yourself. You have never done this before and all you want is a sense of assurance. You get excited when an associate sends you a meeting invite and you think you will get an investment. When someone likes your idea, you think you have a customer. And that is why you start taking every piece of advice seriously.

But sometimes, all you need to hear is, “Hey, you doing good, just keep at it!” And today, I just want to tell you this.

In the last two years, I have gotten all sorts of advice, good, bad, wanted, unwanted, everything 😄. Advice from people who are investors (not in our company), advice from people who are just thinking of starting up, advice from people who just started reading books on startups or listened to a podcast, advice from people who built and sold their companies, and advice from almost everyone you can ever imagine!

Some might make you feel like a fool and some might be extremely helpful. But all of that with a pinch of salt, exactly like this one 😉

Why?

Because founders are fools, you know! They will listen to anything and everything :)

Isn’t the whole purpose of starting up to do things that you love? Spoiler alert: not always. 😁

Starting to build Peerlist was a decision made by the developer within me, because working on a product and making decisions for it is super fun!

We start with just one goal, build a product that users will love. The idea that excites you is the first part of the sentence, build a product. The less thought-of and hard part of it is building something users will love. Because it needs effort! It is not always fun to take feedback, prove yourself wrong, and then iterate on it. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming.

Also, a few users later, you need to follow some processes. You can't just push something to production and feel happy about it And sometimes, this makes me wonder and miss the early days when we had the freedom to be carefree!

Though we still have that freedom, now there is also a responsibility! There is a responsibility to ship better things—not mediocre—for every user who trusted us in our carefree days.

With a growing product comes a greater sense of responsibility towards it! This includes making better decisions, marketing it, increasing sales, making progress, growing, and polishing it! Unfortunately, this isn't always something that excites a developer… but is something you have to do as a founder.

So, in a conflict between a founder who has to do less exciting things and a developer who wants to keep building, who wins the battle?

Do you know who wins? A good product :)

Hello there 👋

I have been thinking of starting my newsletter since Jan 2023, and cannot think of a better time to finally start this.

It’s the 24th of Oct, Dussehra in India. Exactly 2 years ago, on this day, I was feeling calm, nervous, and excited all at the same time.

Leaving a good salary, a comfortable job, and jumping straight into the chaos of building a startup is still one of the hardest decisions I have taken ever!! I always talk a lot about going through this transition so today I won’t bore you with the same. But in this one, I will be sharing about what changed with me as an Individual and as a Professional after this.

Time to look back and reflect!

Everyone says building a startup is a roller coaster ride. The experiences are different for different people, but one thing is constant, learning is exponential. It changes the way you think and the way you make decisions. For me, these 4 things will be the highlight of these 2 years -

Calmer in the Chaos!

Building a startup in its early phase means you will be in a time and resource crunch. There will be many things to take care of and because you are among those few people who have the whole context, you need to pay attention to everything. This leads to a lot of context-switching and you start getting overwhelmed.

Happened many times to me, and I won’t lie, it happens even now. But slowly I learned to be okay with this. You can plan things better, yet there will be 20% unknowns.

This makes you calmer and better at making decisions. Difficult to do than to say, I still need to practice this a lot 😁

Decisions are Binary. It’s Yes or No!

While building Peerlist I got a chance to talk and meet many leaders. One thing was common in almost all of them, clarity! We have to be super clear with our expectations and our goals. It basically comes as a chain reaction, high clarity gives you better priority and better priority helps you execute better.

But how to bring this clarity? It’s a matter of practice!

Not keeping your decision pending and making it in a yes/no way helps a lot in thinking clearly. Yes or No means there is no room for vagueness… you have to be thoughtful about the side effects and move forward. When you restrict yourself to this, you start getting clarity.

Your every binary decision won’t be right, but all the wrong ones will make things more clear for you!

Things will never be Perfect!

I remember the very early days of Peerlist with 100-200 users. Every error msg on our prod-monitoring slack channel used to make me feel bad!

“How did this error happen, why my product is not perfect, why this edge case was not handled 😂”

We used to do deployments and ship once a month because I wanted to make every feature, everything perfect! I used to feel every software in every company has perfectly working clean code written. Well yes, I was this naive!!!

1. No one can write 100% clean code.

2. Your product might not handle some edge cases.

3. Some users might not like some features you built.

4. There will be some errors on the server.

I had a hard time accepting all these. I am not saying that it’s okay to have unhandled scenarios or people not liking some features, but expecting things to be best in the first go is impossible! You have to improve with the feedback.

Software is built by shipping small things, improving what is not working, and iterating constantly. Enjoying that process is the only way to build a good close to perfect software.

I learned this the hard way after many panic attacks (not literally) but I am grateful I learned 😁

Comfort is not always comfortable!

Leaving a good salary throws you out of your comfort zone. You have to build, ship, and do things that you have never done, get exposed to a lot of unknowns, and all this makes you a little uncomfortable.

Things you do for the very first time are the ones that make you learn. This process ultimately becomes repetitive and feeling comfortable at times makes you uncomfortable!

For some, this might feel toxic but trust me this happens. It helps you improve. I remember talking to my cofounder Akash and discussing this many times in the past 2 years.

With the power of hindsight, I can say, I may have made things more complicated than they should have been. But I am grateful for all these learnings and the way my thought process has changed.

Today, while remembering this entire journey, I am glad that 2 years back I took this hard decision 💚

Until next time 🥂