Curious about
the world.

I think of beliefs as forecasts. They are our predictions about how the world works. The results tell us how well our model is tracking reality.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Swami Chinmayananda. There is a talk of his on Karma Yoga and goals that I really like.

I went to Burning Man in 2015 and 2016. I had a catharsis. When I think back to it, identity is one of the things that comes to mind.

When I used to fix computers, there was a thought: most problems are between the chair and the keyboard.

I go back to the neurological levels in NLP a lot. Robert Dilts calls this his logical-levels framework. It gives me a way to look at different parts of a situation.

If I am going to climb a mountain, am I climbing because I want to see the view from there, or because I want people to see me from there?

A friend of mine passed away recently. I have been thinking about how often I used to run away from feelings. Now I try to sit with them.

My mind is like a calculator. Give it something and it keeps calculating. It can turn almost anything into another thing to think about.

Dan Sullivan has a question I like: imagine looking back three years from now. What would have happened for you to feel happy with your progress?

I am a beneficiary of so much that I did not create. Even this website, which I am building with ChatGPT, exists because of the work of other people.

A friend invited me to Poland for a Vision Quest with a group that included people from South America. I ended up alone in a forest for three days, with no food and no water.

I have a user guide. I think everyone should write one. How do you work? How do you want people to communicate with you? What should someone know before working with you?

I need to stay interested in solving the problem and be willing to change the solution. I have spent years on solutions and become attached to them. Over time, the solution became linked to my identity. Accepting that it had failed became fucking difficult.

My first business was Shahab’s Tuck Shop. I was 10. Shahab is my younger brother, who works with me now.

I would not have done what I have done without Madiha.

I became very greedy in learning. I still am.

One thing I learned through YPO is to share my experience. I can tell you what happened to me, what I did and what I learned from it. You can decide whether any of it is useful.

What a delight to be alive right now. If you like building digital things, I think this is a golden age for trying.

When I get stuck with something, I inspect my thinking first. What am I telling myself about this? How am I representing the situation? I often find that the way I am thinking is creating a large part of the problem I am experiencing.

Sometimes I look at who I am and see little pieces of so many other people. Their ideas, their experiences, things they have said that stayed with me. We learn so much from each other.

As a child, whenever I got a new toy, I had this uncontrollable urge to find out what the fuck was inside it. My parents would go to sleep and I would start taking it apart.

One of the coaching questions I return to is: “Okay, what are you going to do about it?”

Does life have an inherent purpose? I don't know. Maybe the purpose of life is living.

I want to live fully in the world. Explore it, create things, pursue my desires and understand myself as I go. That is how I think about spiritual practice.

I like the idea that a man fulfils his manhood by serving his mission and bringing joy to his home.

I see how easily, in religion, we can fall in love with a personality and lose sight of the message. We follow the person. Then we argue about the person someone else follows.

What I notice in another person can tell me something about what matters to me. If wealth is on my mind, I may notice the watch or the car. If I am interested in knowledge, I may notice what the person understands. If I am focused on bodies, I may notice someone’s body shape.

I often make this mistake when hiring people. I keep thinking about how they disappointed me in the job, then realise I did not assess them correctly. I placed an expectation on the person and later blamed them for the gap.

My little defeats happen when I commit to doing something and then leave it undone. I said I would do it. I knew what I had committed to.

Earl Nightingale described success as “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” I like the idea that moving towards something worthwhile already counts.

I like to look at my life as a game. Shahzad is the character, and I am the one playing him. That makes it feel lighter and more fun to me.

Integrity, to me, is when my thoughts, words and deeds are aligned. That means telling the truth, especially when it is difficult.

Wealth, for me, is the freedom to choose. What I experience, where I go, when and where I work, who I work with and what I build.

I think of my thoughts as options. I don't have to review every one of them.

There's a line from Pascal I like. In one English translation of Pensées, he writes that “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber”.

I often return to Polonius's advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet. To me, it is timeless wisdom.

Naval talks about desire as an agreement to be unhappy until we get what we want. That makes me question how I pursue things.

One thing that works for me is service. Find something that feels uniquely yours, keep pursuing it and make it useful to other people. That is the direction I keep coming back to.

Sometimes I question why I am doing this. Why even make this website?

My curiosity takes me into human optimisation as well. I follow Dr Robin Carhart-Harris and find the direction of psychedelic research interesting. I also follow Andrew Huberman and Bryan Johnson.

I think of religion as a harness for human intelligence. Intelligence can go rogue when it's being used to pursue whatever we desire.

In early January I was down with norovirus. Totally flat out. I couldn't move. The only thing I wanted was my energy back.

When I think about AI and the future, I come back to something Terence McKenna said: “You don’t know enough to worry.”

I was listening to Tobi Lütke, Shopify's founder and CEO. One idea stayed with me: we talk about being afraid of superintelligence, but perhaps society is already a form of it.

We can learn almost anything now. There's so much content available through NotebookLM, Gemini, other large language models and YouTube.

When it comes to writing English, AI is becoming an equaliser. My office administrator and the kitchen staff in our Pakistan office can now use AI to write English as well as anyone.

Whatever this AI thing is, we're all collectively midwifing it.

We're making two-year and three-year plans when we don't even know what will be possible two AI models from now.

When I gave my son my iPad, he became frustrated with the real world. It made me think about how quickly technology changes our expectations.

In a group, how easy is it for everyone to assume somebody else is doing the work? That's the question behind a note I saved about social loafing.

The awareness I bring to what I'm doing matters. I can pursue something seriously and still leave room for peace and enjoyment along the way.

My notes on Adlerian psychology bring me back to taking responsibility for my choices and pursuing what matters to me.

When I have a particularly convincing explanation for something, I want to look at what it allows me to avoid.

Knowing that I have a blind spot gives me a question to investigate. I still need feedback, evidence and people who can see the situation from somewhere else.

Direct feedback can be uncomfortable to hear. I want to give the substance enough attention to ask whether it is accurate and what I should do with it.

There is a lot of satisfaction in finding another useful idea. I want some of that satisfaction to come from putting an idea to work.

I can save an idea in seconds. Understanding it takes longer.

Taking responsibility for my work includes finding out when I've done it badly.

I like creating things, changing them and sometimes taking them apart so they can work differently.

If I keep editing my personality to be liked, the relationships I form depend on me keeping that version going.

I can describe a big ambition very easily. What would somebody learn about it by watching how I spend an ordinary week?

The environment around me keeps suggesting what to do next. An open conversation, a notification, something left unfinished in front of me.

Before putting more energy into something, I want to be clear about the direction. What result am I trying to create, and is this activity moving it forward?

When I can make a small mistake and recover from it, I can try something and learn from the result.

I want reflection to lead somewhere. After thinking something through, what decision follows? After the decision, what am I going to do?

A lot of outcomes depend on things beyond me. I can still look closely at the part I can influence and take responsibility for that.

When a feeling is intense, I want to give myself time to notice it before making a decision.

I want to notice what I bring into a conversation. The irritation or impatience may have started hours earlier, in something completely unrelated.

A new opportunity can be very appealing. I want to ask what happens to the work I've already chosen if I take it on.

Leading includes sitting with the discomfort of a decision when I have incomplete knowledge.

I can offer someone an opportunity. They have to bring their own determination to it.

I can get caught up thinking about an exit as the point at which the business becomes a success.

A venture can change what I am capable of. I want to notice what I learn, how I make decisions and what I can do afterwards that I couldn't do before.