I’M TRYING HARD TO DISTRACT, CONFUSE, BAFFLE, DAZZLE, MUDDLE, SURPRISE YOU

This is The Sunday Wisdom, and this is where I try to take things people care about and try to understand them better. It’s basically a collection of explorations and inquiries into many of life’s most profound (and somewhat neurotic) questions. Here are a few examples:

  1. What if being miserable was actually a good thing?

  2. Is god bad at writing screenplays?

  3. Is there any benefit in being irrational?

  4. Can intolerance be fought with tolerance?

  5. Why are some people beyond hope and how do we identify them?

  6. Why does progress always create problems?

  7. What does capitalism want from us?

  8. What’s the most expensive thing money can buy?

  9. Why do men rape and murder?

  10. Are we living inside the Matrix?

The Sunday Wisdom is an exploration of the most neurotic and existential questions about life and the anthropocene

EVERYTHING I WRITE COMES STRAIGHT FROM THE GUT

This is NOT a self-help newsletter or an advisory column. I never give any answers (even if I give answers, you shouldn’t take them at face value). Chances are I’d leave you with more questions than when you started. But that’s the thing. This is how it ideally should be!

The maximum that I can do (rather, the maximum I want to do) is to give you a collection of lenses to look at things from different perspectives, so that you see them better, perhaps understand them a bit more intimately, and then draw your own conclusions. Anyone who claims to have answers is a fraud.

I started writing essays in 2018 on Medium. I was reading a lot on psychology and decision making and figured that writing them down would be a good way to NOT forget them. That’s how it started.

The earliest writing advice I got from literally everywhere was to be cold and logical: use shorter sentences, get to the point fast, don’t waste the reader’s time, make the content skimmable, blah blah. I followed it religiously for about four years. It was super efficient to both read and write, and to be honest I didn’t know any better.

Then ChatGPT happened. And I slowly (in fact, very very slowly) realised something (sometime towards the end of 2023). My prose was not very different from that of ChatGPT and other writers who follow the “standard writing advice.” There was content and communication, but no personality or individuality.

Efficiency is very logical. There’s only one way to it. Humans thrive to be efficient themselves. They also build machines that are efficient. But everything at maximum efficiency — man or machine — starts to look very very similar to each other (if not the same). If everyone follows the standard writing advice, at some point everyone’s writing style would resemble everybody else. That’s what was happening.

In any case, whatever I was writing (am still writing) is nothing groundbreaking. It’s been written and said and preached and cajoled for hundreds of years, if not thousands. The message always stays the same — only the messenger changes. And… in order to be a “unique” messenger, I gotta compose the message in my own style (whatever that is) and not in the likeness of literally every other messenger. I gotta inject my personality (imperfections included). I believe that enlivens the text. And that is precisely what I’m trying to do.

So… these days my goal is to be deliberately inefficient. Rather than get straight to the point, I try to hover around “the point” and take my own sweet time to get to it. I call it “compositional foreplay.” Rather than inform, I’m also trying hard to distract, confuse, baffle, dazzle, muddle, disturb, but also entertain. I’m not very good at it, yet. I consider myself to be a pretty funny person in person, but when it comes to being funny in prose, I’ve got the sense of humour of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. But I do think I’m still a little bit funny in my comicstrips though. I hope you like them.

Everything I write comes straight from the gut. These are personal essays primarily discussing my thoughts, struggles, observations. These are not exactly a treatise, and certainly, god forbid, not a piece of scientific reporting. I write for fun and I hope you read them (principally) for fun. Even if you don’t know this, you are here for the messenger; not the message.

The Sunday Wisdom is written straight from the gut, and principally for fun

MY NAME IS ABHISHEK AND I TRY TO DO A LOT OF WEIRD STUFF!

My name is Abhishek. I’m a Product Designer turned Product Manager who codes (and still designs) on the side. I’ve always worked at startups for the better part of my career, and I take a lot of interest in business, organisational philosophy, decision making with limited information. A lot of that comes up in my writing. I’ve got a Master’s degree in interaction design from IIT Bombay.

In between, I’ve tried and failed building startups. Twice! I’ve dabbled in making YouTube videos on life, productivity, and all that shit, but nothing materialised. I also tried making travel videos, but it interfered with my travelling experience, so I stopped that. I try to read a lot. Usually, as many as 24ish books a year. I try to cover various topics from science, philosophy, history, business, and sometimes a little bit of fiction too. Thankfully this has been going well for the past 7–8 years. I sometimes teach kids on the side — usually programming, maths, and physics. I also build tiny iOS apps in my free time. Two of them are live: InstaNotes and InstaConvert. I’m working on the third one. I love playing board games. I’ve got a small collection. In 2014 I had designed my own board game, which was shortlisted to be bought by a Japanese company (but eventually they went with someone else, and my grand plan to live off the royalty money went down the gutter). También estoy aprendiendo español (porque el francés es muy difícil). I’ve recently started experimenting with various fruity cocktail recipes, and also dipped my hands into making my own kombucha. It’s super fun! I think it’s good to do a lot of different stuff!

The Sunday Wisdom encourages you to do a lot of weird stuff

SO, WHAT’S UP WITH PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS?

Paid subscribers make The Sunday Wisdom possible — they’re the reason I can read books, do my research, write essays, and share them with everybody. If you’re a paid subscriber: a big big thank you and a tight bear hug!

Every subscription counts, and each one pushes this newsletter further. Here is, in order, the things that paid subscribers allow me to do:

  1. Buy books ✅ we did it! All the books I read are sponsored by paid subscribers

  2. Pay rent ← I’m currently working on this!

  3. Not starve

  4. Devote ~80% of my time creating The Sunday Wisdom

  5. World domination

I say thanks to paid subscribers with MYSTERY POSTS. Here’s one. But the real reason to sign up is that you’re voting with your shekels for a world where The Sunday Wisdom exists. I’ll tell you more about this in the intro email after you subscribe.

If you can’t afford it, that’s okay. All new editions (except MYSTERY POSTS) will always be free. If you’re looking for another way to help out, share a post with a friend. Most people find me through word of mouth. And if for any reason you need access to something that’s paywalled, just email me: abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com.

WHAT SHOULD I DO NOW?

If you like anything you’ve read here, stick your email in the box below and push the big black button, and I’ll tell you how to keep the internet party going. I publish every other Sunday at 6:00 PM IST / 1:30 PM CET / 7:30 AM ET / 4:30 AM PT.

The Sunday Wisdom is an internet party where there’s no free booze, but you are welcome to share my six-pack

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Explorations and inquiries into many of life’s most profound (and somewhat neurotic) questions

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I write The Sunday Wisdom