Reading Log #4

Here is what I read from 17^th to 23^rd August 2026.

Blogs

• Build something to disagree with

  Loved it!

• Build Wide, Ship Narrow

  I have been personally having trouble in asking AI to come up with a design doc because it usually dumps a whole lot of 8 to 12 pages for a simple feature work. I arrived at a point that this post suggests to do first after experimentation: first thing to do is make AI ask you a lot of questions. The blog author tells about a skill for it: grill-me (tried it, pretty awesome!).

• Thirty Percent Feedback

  If you are working at / building a startup, this might be a good read. My guess is that building a culture like this is probably what we might want for a startup and people in those startups to succeed. I don’t know if I am making sense, but I like blog posts like this which give a new or contrarian mental model that I might want to consider. TIL YC makes startups demo every week. The post is from 2014, so not sure if this is true anymore.

• The Personal Reset

  Nice to associate a term for this. I personally am into a personal reset, 3 weeks in. My main personal reset component is to read blogs/books before sleep. More strictly until I find myself in a sleepy state.

• Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

• Devtools must be open source

  Made sense before AI and makes sense even more with AI.

• drop that meet link

  Reminded me of the times I used to work in offices and the random chats that occur with colleagues in the physical space. I do miss those chats in remote setup sometimes.

• AI;DR (AI; Didn’t Read)

  I am going to use this acronym both with humans and AI to let it rewrite the response in a manner that will help in unslopping. But yeah, never send slop to friends. Always handcraft.

• How things win

  Post from the creator of Obsidian (one of my favorite pieces of software).

• The Antithesis Principle

  I couldn’t fully internalize it.

• the task isn’t the job

• This too shall pass

• 24 things I believe

  Loved all the points. My favorite is point (1). I was thinking of getting into music. Point (10) was a surprise and I consider it my signboard to pick up some music lessons.

• When to join a startup

  Identify the risks and understand what you are dealing with.

• How to Choose a Startup

  If you are working in startups or planning to go work for one, then this might be the good read for you.

Books

• Essentialism

  (read 29 pages)