Reading Log #4

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Here is what I read from 17th to 23rd 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)