I woke up today (it’s a Sunday) after a decent sleep.

Then I sit back to relax for few minutes to have a slow morning.

I felt BORED.

Every minute, my brain was constantly bombarding me with ideas on what could I do next:

Maybe, work on that idea and build the app I always wanted to build.

Prepare food for kids.

Oh..snap, packing is pending for the upcoming travel..

That work item that I couldn’t do during the week.

There’s a lot in my TODO-list and I am sitting on couch…wtf Gourav!!!

Sh*t, I can’t sit idle.

My mind is now trained to squeeze ‘Productivity’ from every minute I have.

I took a pause before going into auto-pilot: Why the heck am I behaving this way?

And then a thought clicked:

Productivity is a big fat lie.
A market-sized, decades-old, sold-to-your-grandparents kind of lie.

We humans need connection

We need meaning.
We need purpose
…and a sometimes boring time and a few good naps.

Productivity isn’t on that list. It never was.

But try telling that to your brain at 11pm when you haven’t “achieved” anything that day.

You feel guilty. I feel guilty. We all feel like we robbed a bank just by resting.

Sitting idle in on a Sunday? Guilty.

Watch Netflix instead of finishing that “one more task”? Guilty.

Sit on the balcony doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes? Somehow, still guilty.

Wrong.

That guilt isn’t yours. You borrowed it. From somewhere you didn’t choose.

And it’s kind of b*llshit when you actually sit with it.

Let’s get nerdy for a sec

Productivity is just a unit of measurement.

Input effort (mostly time) → Meaningful Output

That’s it. That’s the whole definition.

And the goal is to maximize output per unit of input

It’s the same math used to measure how much a donkey eats versus how much load it carries.

Grass in. Cargo out. Ratio calculated. Donkey rated.

Harsh? Yep.

It’s an economics term. Born in factories, raised in spreadsheets, sent to live with capital owners.

Because more output per worker equals more profit.

Productivity was built to measure machines and the people standing next to them.

It was never built to measure your worth as a human being.

It doesn’t care if you’re a good father. A good friend. A decent human before your first coffee.

It only cares about the output column.

So why does it feel personal?

Because we were taught to.
Through conditioning.
Through marketing.
Through social media.
Through western hustle culture.

And it confused your self-worth and your output. It was never meant to impact personalities and self-image, but it does that today, unfortunately.

We’ve turned a factory metric into a personality.

Most of human history didn’t work this way.

For most of our existence, work had a ceiling.

You worked enough to eat and have shelter. Enough to cover your basic needs and maybe one small pleasure. And the second that bar was cleared?

You stopped.
You rested.
Nobody felt bad about it.
Nobody posted about it either.

People worked to live.

They did NOT live to work.

So, stop it

I’m not saying don’t work hard.

I work hard. I love building things, solving messy problems, shipping stuff that didn’t exist yesterday.

But remember, you are not a donkey being measured for grass-to-cargo ratio.

You’re a person who needs connection, meaning, purpose, rest, and the occasional lazy Sunday with zero apologies attached.

Next time you feel guilty for resting, ask yourself one honest question.

Guilty according to who?

Because it’s probably not you. It’s the metric talking. And the metric was never built to know your worth in the first place.

Being bored and spending time in solitude is a luxury, you have earned. Cherish it before the next race starts

— Gourav

My 3.5 years old boy asked me in his innocent voice.

I was folding laundry. A week’s worth, and I was close to DONE.

So, I’d two choices.
a) Let him in and watch a folded pile turn into a mess.
b) Play with him.

I choose second.

We played two games. He wanted more.
But I had laundry to finish, so back I went.

He couldn’t let me go..he came back.

Same proposal.
Same hopeful little face.
"PLAY WITH ME!!!!"

I resisted. Kept quite.

Suddenly his mood changed: “I also wanna fold laundry..”

My fear was about to turn into reality.

If you’re a toddler parent, you know they want to do what you’re doing. But you resist.

You say no. Not because you don’t love them. Because you’ve done the maths and it doesn’t add up.

Folding laundry, in your head, becomes a disaster waiting to happen.

They’ll grab a shirt. Throw it. Sit on the pile. All that effort, gone in ten seconds.

But this time, something nagged in me. So, I let him fold with me instead.

I braced for the mess. Clothes everywhere. A small storm near the sock drawer.

Surprisingly….that didn’t happen.

He followed what I told him. Folded properly. Didn’t touch the pile we’d already done.

I just stood there. Shocked. Not at him. At myself.

I was still seeing him as the kid who wrecks things for fun. That kid had quietly grown up. I just hadn’t caught up.

Weird, right?

You think your kid’s skills are stuck in one place. They’re not.

Kids keep changing every single day. They grow so fast. Most of us are still picturing the old version.

Here’s the harder truth I realised in the moment:

If you don't include them when they're little, how do expect to be included when they're older.

Invite them into what you're already doing.

Bring them to the garage, let them sit in the office, have them ride along, teach them how to grill.

Let them help, even though it might slow you down.

If you don't take interest in what they care about, or include them in what you care about, when they're teenagers, they won't include you either.

Kids need dedicated time with their parents.

Start early, be intentional.

When they’re young, it doesn’t take much effort from your side. Access later is earned now.

Cheers to the laundry. It survived. So did the relationship.

But…I feel like a fraud writing this.

Not because I don’t love being a dad. I do. More than anything I’ve ever done.

But because right under the love, there’s this quiet hum of guilt that never fully switches off.

Guilt for the meeting that ran long.
Guilt for the phone in my hand when I should’ve been watching them building the magnet castle.
Guilt for being in the room but not actually in the room (mentally).

If you’re a parent, you already know this feeling. You don’t need me to explain it.

Having children is the biggest privilege of my life - a brief, beautiful chance to love someone in the most selfless way that I got.

I know I only have little ones for a short time, a few years where their world is small and I’m at the center of it.

But still, it's easy to miss that, in order to rush through the mess and the noise.

There will come a day when I won't be buckling them into car seats or stepping on toys in the hallway.

Their shoes will get bigger and their need for me will be less and less.

Whenever my brain and mind works fine, I feel so grateful for this Every.Single.Second.

But still, very often, I forget….like many other fathers..

Here’s the poem called “Father Forgets” by W. Livingston, who was able to put into words what no one else has ever done quite so well. Here are his words:

FATHER FORGETS

“Listen Son, I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little hand crumpled under your cheek and blonde curls sticky over your wet forehead. I have broken into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guilty, I came to your bedside.

There are things which I am thinking, son; I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face a mere dab with the towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast, I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. As you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” I frowned and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”.

Then it began all over again late this afternoon. As I came up the road, I spied you down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your socks. I humiliated you before your friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Socks were expensive, and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that son, from a father.

Do you remember later, when I was reading in the library, how you came timidly, with sort of a hurt look in your eyes? I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption; you hesitated at the door. “What is it that you want?” I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, your small arms tightened with affection that God had set blooming in your heart, which even neglect could not wither. Then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, Son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, or reprimanding; this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you: it was that I expected too much of you. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

There is so much that was good, fine and true in your character. The little heart of yours was as big as the dawn itself over the hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else mattered tonight. Son, I have come to your beside in the darkness, I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know that you would not understand these things which I have told you in the waking hours. Tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, suffer when you suffer and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy–a little boy.”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, Son, crumpled and weary in your bed. I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much!”

If you read it and cried a little, that’s fine. I cry too, every time I read this. Thank you, W. Livingston, for this marvellous piece of writing.

However, I wanna tell you: You’re a good dad.

Because you keep showing up after the version of you that snapped this morning. You keep coming back to the bedside, even if it’s just in your head, replaying what you’d do differently.

Your kids don’t remember the perfect days. They remember that you were there. Tired, distracted, imperfect, but there.

Coming home. Showing up. Trying again tomorrow like you mean it.

You work the long hours so they don’t have to think about what they don’t have.

You skip things for yourself so they don’t skip things they need. They’re watching all of it, even when they’re too young to say so.

So…just like me..feel the guilt if it shows up. That’s fine. But remember, it means you’re paying attention.

Then let it go, soz to the perfectionists, and try again tomorrow.

That’s not failing as a father.

That’s literally the whole gig.

Happy Father’s Day, mate. You’re doing better than you think.

— Gourav

Actually, two gaps.

The first one you already know.

You’re somewhere you don’t want to be.

At work, but your brain is with your kids.

Or you’re watching TV, but Slack is screaming and now you wanna answer that. That low-grade pull between where you are and where you think you should be.

That’s stress.

But quite interestingly, the opposite situation could also be stressful.

You’re exactly where you want to be. Doing the right thing, fully believing in it.

And yet, someone else doesn’t see it.

Your partner thinks you’re overdoing it. Your manager doesn’t value it. Your family thinks you’ve gone a bit sideways.

You believe you’re in the right place. The world disagrees.

That creates friction in your head? Also stress.

But here’s the thing, this low-grade stress is actually a side-effect of something we are going through.

The root cause isn’t new. That’s how humanity has evolved and honesty, achieved a lot.

But right now there’s a lot of noise (thanks for social media), exaggerated by the hussle and expectations of the modern life which pushes us to do too much sh*t all at once, causing us to not settle anywhere.

Even when you have achieved a lot in life, the goalpost keeps on moving.

You never feel or lookback with gratitude on what all you’ve achieved.

Because our brains are now trained to just keep on focussing onto the next thing.

Seven years ago I moved to the US with a suitcase and a ridiculous amount of hope. I told myself: if I’d survive a few years here and save few hundred thousand $$$, I’d feel great and head back home.

I have all of that now. Plus, a great family with sweet wife and two kids, a nice home and car - all material stuff I wanted.

Genuinely, more than I ever imagined.

And yet.

Some mornings I wake up anxious. Stressed about things I can’t even name.

Breakfast at office desk. Somewhere else in my head, planning the next move, wanting the next version of life.

Trying to be everywhere but the current moment in time.

We’re now wired like this, but we weren’t like that previously..

Initially I thought something’s wrong with me.

That I cannot control - control over my schedule, my outcomes, what other people think and that is the only way through.

Wrong.

You cannot control other people.
Cannot control most outcomes.
And the harder I grip, the worse it gets.

That’s a slow, quiet breakdown waiting to happen.

Something has to be given-up.

Letting go isn’t quitting. That’s the I missed.

I know it sounds like failure.

But it is not. It’s really liberating.

It means choosing what actually matters and releasing the rest. Focusing deeply on a few things instead of half-assing everything.

It also means accepting that you can be exactly in the right place, doing exactly the right thing and some people still won’t see it.

That’s their gap, not yours.

And it means slowing the sh** down.

Not as a productivity hack. Not as a life tip. Just literally. Slow. Down. Do less. Sit with something small.

Here’s how these thoughts occurred to me.

A medium cup of coffee. Made in my ninja coffee maker.

Usually too hot. Sometimes too bitter. Occasionally watered down.

But every morning without thinking, I walked through to my kitchen, stood in the same corner, made the same drink.

And somewhere along the way, the coffee stopped being coffee. It became a reason to get out of bed. A reason to believe something was waiting for me tomorrow.

One morning I sat alone by the glass, cup cooling between my hands, watching strangers pass by through my window, like they had somewhere important to be.

Nothing remarkable happened.

Just a quiet realisation.

Glad I’d made it to my reclining chair. This window. This completely mediocre cup of coffee.

That’s when I got it: it was never about the coffee.

The coffee hadn’t changed. The morning hadn’t changed. I had.

And for the first time in a while, the world felt like something I could actually hold.

If something as forgettable as a home-made coffee cup could make me glad to see through life and slow down, then maybe there are thousands of other reasons I just haven’t noticed yet.

The gap between where you are and where you want to be?

Sometimes it’s smaller than you think.

You’ve just been too busy to look.

— Gourav

A friend of mine told me this quote:

“the truest form of intelligence is designing the life that you wanna live.”

This stuck deeply with me was because..

I considered that friend very intellectual.

I had many other friends who I’d consider that ‘they’re killing it’..

..but they’re spending their life climbing some ladder that they’re no longer excited about.

They’re doing the right thing, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

They secretly hate their life.

That’s why I kept on living on this premise that the humans should apply critical effort on ‘designing of their life right’..!!!

I didn’t wanna be like ‘em. I thought if I’d figure out:

• What’s meaningful to me? (my Ikigai)

• How do I wanna spend my days (my precious time)?

• Who are the people I wanna spend my life with?

• What are the activities I wanna be doing?

I’d achieve nirvana.

I also read Naval Ravikant’s quote where he says,

“if you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?”

And I’m his big fan.

So, I used to daily spend hours making those determinations and then moving my life toward those things.

So, Am I crazily happy now? Have I figured it all?

Nope.

With a little more wisdom from my continuous failures of understanding life and people..

I can say that it’s half lie.

The first problem: designing life assumes you already know what you want.

(or you’ll definitely find answers to those questions)

You don’t. I didn’t.

Sh*t, most people in their 30s, 40s, even 50s are still figuring it out.

A lot of what happens in life, you can’t think your way to it in advance.

The business you almost didn’t start.
The kid you had no idea how to raise.
The move that made zero spreadsheet sense.
You didn’t design your way into those.
You fell in.
And they became the whole thing.

Meaning shows up on the far side of the decision, not before it.

Yep. After. Not before.

The second problem: happiness becomes a shaky scoreboard.

Some of the most meaningful stretches I’ve lived were objectively miserable in the moment.

Sleepless infant years.
Building something that kept failing.
Sitting with a sick parent.

These score terribly on happiness.

But I wouldn’t trade a single one of those. :)

Finally,

The critical thing every busy professional and parent is doing mindlessly nowadays is optimising and auditing life choices.

Whether this is ‘The’ Right Life.

Whether your years are ‘adding up’ correctly.

Am I making enough money?

That’s exhausting. A little fckd up when you think about it.

Wrong way to live.

The people I actually want to be aren’t the ones with the best-designed lives.

They’re the ones absorbed enough in something that they’ve stopped checking.

Present. Building. Raising kids without constantly Googling whether they’re parenting correctly.

Working on the thing without refreshing their sense of purpose every quarter.

Weird, right?

So here’s where I’ve landed:

Do the work.

For its own sake, without gripping the outcome.

Still, think hard about what matters.

Who you want around you.

How you want your days to feel.

That’s real. Don’t skip it.

But hold it loosely.

Don’t try to control and optimize everything.

Design enough to have direction.

Then show up to what’s actually in front of you.

Navigate and meet the life in front of you well.

That’s the version I am trying to actually live.

— Gourav