Defining yourself through an about page is an insightful exercise. It requires considerable introspection, which might turn into interesting discoveries. I highly recommend you try it out 😎
This page is my attempt at an accurate snapshot of how I see myself. It is, of course, ever changing and may not reflect the perception of others. I broke this into three parts: now, life view, and influential pieces.
Now
This section describes current interests and activities.
AI and Humanity
My daily activities center around the idea of how humanity will flourish in the age of artificial intelligence. I actively explore this area from multiple angles. I give talks, develop educational material, write posts, and train others in this field. Some of these activities are done under SCADEMY—Human-AI Symbiosis Academy.
Entrepreneurship
I have always loved building teams and creating value. However, there is so much more to a thriving business than these. From recruiting the right people to choosing the right clients, financing, cash flow, and building a larger community, I love these challenges and learn a ton from them. I am a big believer of high-performance teams and work relentlessly to create and develop them. Being part of such a Team brings me joy and satisfaction.
Reading
I am an avid reader, and I pursue quality over quantity. I usually consume a few books at once on different mediums: paper, Kindle, and Audible. I am experimenting with taking notes differently, but I haven’t yet found a method I consistently prefer. I collected some of the most influential ideas I encountered.
Creation
I am always in the process of creating something. These range from material projects to house construction and digital products. My drive is the learning journey and seeing something come together. Interestingly, I also enjoy watching others do their craft or hearing them talk about it passionately.
Explorian
Finding and understanding different concepts is critical to being a lifelong learner. As LLMs became very good at compressing humanities knowledge, Explorian became possible. It’s a lens on that knowledge that lets you explore and navigate concepts with ease.
This is one of the projects I build in my free time. I document the journey in a devlog on this blog.
This blog
I collect practical lessons and thoughts on this blog about a wide range of topics. It intentionally does not have a scope, so I am free to do as I wish. I cover life lessons, ideas, finance, business, engineering, technology, pet projects, etc. – literally anything I find interesting.
Life View
It is tough to distill someone’s life views into a paragraph without getting too abstract. Here is my attempt at doing so 🙂
My stated life purpose is below.
To grow and to serve in harmony, here and now.
It is abstract enough to cover a wide range of activities yet conscious enough to help me decide between things I do. I documented how this came to be in this post.
I am the proud father of three children and a loving husband of my wife. Having them has caused me to grow tremendously, and I am truly grateful. I usually keep to myself about personal matters unless a general lesson might be beneficial for a wider audience.
I consider myself a practical stoic, embodying the philosophy in everyday life. While I am not an advocate, I think everyone would benefit from contemplating its fundamental principles. In terms of personality, I associate myself with the Shaper as described by PrinciplesYou.
Over the years, I have managed to tune down the urge to judge and slow the formation of opinions. I love a good argument and seek exposure to opposing viewpoints. This stems from my belief that ego blinds clarity and that the world is a colorful spectrum instead of a black-and-white image. There is usually more to something than you perceive at first, and the world is often (if not always) a reflection of the person looking at it.
I treasure my inner child to experience the world with fascination and strive not to take myself too seriously.
Influential pieces
None of us lives without external influences; the key is to filter and digest the “right” ones. Below are the books and ideas that most influenced my thinking. This list is never complete and will likely change over time.
Stoicism
My sources are mostly Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations and Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic. I also read Ryan’s other works on stoicism and usually carry one of the daily stoic medallions in my pocket. I am increasingly inclined to read the classics in this field, like Epictetus and Seneca.
Spirituality
For now, I prefer spirituality without religion. Here are my top 2 picks: Waking Up book and app from Sam Harris and Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
Human psychology
This section is relatively large and in no particular order. I find Robert Grene’s 48 Laws of Power very insightful. Seeing how these principles play out in everyday life is still interesting. His Laws of Human Nature is also a good read.
Much connected to power and the 21st century is Higher Loyalty by James Comey. He had tough decisions to make and worked by his principles.
In terms of cultivating inner strength and meaning, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is hard to beat. It is an eye-opening piece on how much we can endure and still emerge. Similarly, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipellago masterfully describes the dark side of humanity.
A lot more uplifting experience is Dan Ariely’s Predictable Irrational. It’s beautiful to see how flawed we are as rational beings. And while we search, we might Stumble Upon Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It explores how much we don’t know what will make us happy in the future while we sacrifice a lot for it in the present.
And yet, our intuitions can be pretty good guides, as Malcolm Gladwell explains in Blink, or they could completely fool us when Talking to Strangers.
I have two classics for the end: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Influence by Robert C. Cialdini. Both are very powerful and offer simple and to-the-point lessons for life.
Perceiving reality
I met David Deutsch’s books relatively late in life, but they have profoundly influenced my thinking. I highly recommend his Beginning of Infinity for a rational and straightforward explanation of how knowledge came to be and why pursuing good explanations is a fundamental goal of the intellect. I was a universe believer before I met Fabric of Reality, which introduced me to the multiverse on a scientific basis. It fundamentally changed my worldview. Navigating life is a lot more effective if you have models you can refer to. Enter Shane Parish’s Great Mental Models. It’s a fantastic reference. Shane’s Clear Thinking also provides a good framework and tools for thinking.
Over the years, I managed to cultivate my inner child and stay immensely curious. I am always in search of explanations and love new ideas, theories and the criticism that accompanies existing beliefs. Our job is to continuously challenge and update our worldview. And for that, we must develop new explanations and test them by experiments.
History
Recently, I heard in a podcast that the older someone gets, the more interested they are in history. I definitely have that. It started with Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Dan Carlin’s hardcore series on Supernova of the East. It was an eye-opener—not just from a historical perspective but another window into humanity’s complexities.
Runner ups
I have a short list of runner-ups. The most notable is probably the Dune series by Frank Herbert. It is so much more than just the story. I also liked Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, especially as I started out in a leadership position. Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s The Goal is a classic in management.
Getting in touch
You have a few options here. You can leave a comment under one of the posts, shoot me an email at [email protected], or ping me on LinkedIn.