Monthly Archives: December 2025

Notes to my child, Philosophy

Why I Read – and my top 3 books of 2025

Why is it that one should read? Or for that matter, why should one read anything? For starters, I think basic reading is an operational necessity if one needs to function in this world. However, even that isn’t so easy to come by for many.

The 2024 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) suggests that almost one-third of Class 8 students in India can’t read at the expected level. I assume, however, that everyone who can read this article – or who will ever read it – has this basic ability to read.

My quest goes further. It is to understand why do we choose to read something that goes beyond our basic day-to-day functioning?

I think I have found my answer.

The reason I read is because I have this innate curiosity to learn about the world as accurately I can and to understand my place in it. I also read to be conscious. As Jeff Hawkins says, “Consciousness is the moment-to-moment memories of our actions and thoughts”. In a way, then, I read to be alive and to incessantly update my understanding of myself and the world.

Where it began for me

Like most things in life, the genesis of anything meaningful (or traumatic) can be traced back to our childhood. When I look back at my own childhood, I feel that I have always had a love for reading, but it was rather undiscovered.

In India, reading is more about the outcome – performing well on a test or getting through a job – instead of a process of enjoyment, discovery, or curiosity.

I first discovered reading as a process that I loved when I read and re-read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare in Grade 9. That was the first real inclination that I loved reading. But there was hardly any way that I could have built on that inclination. Money was short and mobility was limited. All I could read were school textbooks.

That has changed recently. I have been reading more and more courtesy of the ability to not only buy more books but by having spent days and nights developing my reading muscle. And that has really changed who I am. It has changed how I understand the world and my place in it.

How reading changed my perception of the world

Some of my beliefs have fundamentally changed. Here are a few examples –

Earlier belief
(when I would believe what was told to me)		Current Understanding
(based on what I have read)
You are born with talent. It’s in your genes or not. Talent can be developed. Everything and anything can be learned.
We (humans) are created by someone called God out of thin air.Humans are the result of billions of years of evolution and have emerged from a single-celled organism.
My moral choices will decide if I go to hell or heaven. Ex: Attraction towards opposite sex is morally wrong and you should feel ashamed of yourself.There is no hell or heaven. Attraction towards opposite sex is part of who we are as human species. That’s how we propagate our genes.
Money could very well define the true meaning of happiness.Money is important, but only a part of the true meaning of happiness
You always need to listen to your parents/elders because they are always right.Your parents/elders are humans too – and they are wrong many times. You have to learn how to outgrow them.
Your first instinct about something is usually right since it is coming from your gut.Your first instinct is mostly wrong as it depends on your old brain, which is driven by survival.
Eating sugar as much as you can is okay.Eating sugar has many negative consequences and is largely a function of the old brain wanting to gather as many calories as possible

There are many such examples that I can think of. The point is I would never have updated my earlier beliefs had I not read as much as I had over the last few years and applied those learnings in my life.

One may ask what’s the point of all this anyway? My current understanding can still be proven wrong. That’s where what one reads becomes important. My criteria –

  1. I read books that have stood the test of times or what we call are the classics, especially when it comes to topics like philosophy or religion.

  2. I read books written in simple language that explain peer-reviewed scientific concepts. I am not a scientist, so I often seek help – especially from my wife, who is a scientist – to check the understanding I gain from these books.

Reading in 2025

The year 2025 was a decent year for me in terms of what I read and how much I read. I am limiting this article only to full-length books and not including newspapers or online articles.

In total, I read 28 books, which comes out to roughly 2.5 books a month. I would have liked to read more, but this is the best I could do.

THE BOOKS I READ (In order)

  1. Brave New Words, Sal Khan.

  2. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson.

  3. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari.

  4. Lifespan, David Sinclair.

  5. The Disciplined Mind, Howard Gardner.

  6. Changing Minds, Howard Gardner.

  7. How Economics Explain the World, Andrew Leigh.

  8. As Gods Among Men, Guido Alfani.

  9. Mindset, Carol Dweck.

  10. Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Charlie Munger (half)

  11. Origin Story, David Christian (half)

  12. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.

  13. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami.

  14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerers’ Stone, J.K. Rowling.

  15. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling.

  16. The Good Life, Marc S. Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger.

  17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling.

  18. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank.

  19. The Happiness Files, Arthur Brooks.

  20. The Price of Our Values, Augustin Landier and David Thesmar.

  21. Career and Family, Claudia Goldin.

  22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling.

  23. How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil.

  24. The Coming Wave, Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman.

  25. The Journey Home, Radhanath Swami.

  26. Numbers Don’t Lie, Vaclav Smil.

  27. A Thousand Brains Theory, Jeff Hawkins.

  28. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education

Patterns that emerged

Interestingly, as I look back, there emerged a pattern from what I read –

  1. The Future of AI and humans:

    I inherently got curious about AI and where it is going. I started the year with Sal Khan’s ‘Brave New Words’ which talks about how education will evolve with the coming AI revolution and ended up with Mustafa Suleyman’s, ‘The Coming Wave’ and Jeff Hawkins,’ ‘A Thousand Brains Theory’.

    Reading them makes me convinced that AI is NOT becoming more intelligent than humans in totality for many years to come. Yes, it will do some tasks much better than us but becoming better than humans in ALL tasks at once is probably a far-fetched dream.

  2. My childhood Wish List:

    As a young kid, I wanted to read the Harry Potter books but never had the chance. I also tried to read Anne Frank’s diary about her time spent in hiding during the World War 2 (read my post on her book) but found it too difficult to read. This year, I managed to finish four Harry Potter books and the famous diary.

  3. Understanding the World through Economics and Practicality:

    The book that made the greatest influence in this category has to be the one by Claudia Goldin called “Career and Family”. It’s the book that got her the Nobel Prize in Economics. The central idea of the book that in today’s world where women wants both career and family, couple equity matters.

    Another one is “How the World really works” by Vaclav Smil in which he says that despite what anyone says, the world will keep running on fossil fuels for many more years to come. Did you know that almost 83% of all our primary energy needs is still driven by fossil fuels? It was almost similar a couple of decades back too.

  4. Understanding Happiness:

    Since childhood, I always wanted to understand happiness. I have always believed that happiness is not driven by money or accomplishments alone. Rather it is a driven by good relationships.

    This belief was validated by Schulz and Waldinger’s book, ‘The Good Life’, which has to be the best book I read this year since it gives solid evidence by the virtue of being the longest study on happiness spanning more than 85 years.

    Some of what they said was also echoed by Arthur Brooks in his book ‘The Happiness Files’ but if I have to choose one, I will go with The Good Life.

  5. Books on education:

    Being an educationist, this category had to be there. But honestly none of the books I read this year gave me something new.

If I had to recommend my top three books of the year that everyone must read:

  • The Good Life
  • The Diary of a Young Girl
  • How the World Really Works

Add-on: Brave New World (a classic)

I don’t know what the next year will bring when it comes to reading, but I am hopeful that I read more than I did this year – and that I come closer than I am today to better understand this world and myself.

Any recommendations on what should I read in 2026?

REFERENCES

Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024, Pratham Education Foundation
https://www.asercentre.org/aser-2024

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Notes to my child, Philosophy

Why I Chose to Phase Out Social Media From My Life — And How You Can Too

Social media is all around us. And it is making us dumb, dumber, and dumbest. We are spending more time scrolling through our digital profiles than talking to our “actual” family members or “physical” friends. Our relationships have evolved to become more personal with our devices and online connections than with the fellow human beings.

Being born in the 1990s, I do have some semblance of the time when our lives were without mobile phones and social media. Good thing about that time was that me and my physical friends would spend most of our time playing active physical sports instead of being head-down in our phones getting dopamine-laced videos thrown at our faces! Ah, good times!

Recent evidence has supported concerns about early smartphone exposure. A multi-institutional study led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that children who owned a smartphone by age 12 had significantly higher risks of depression, obesity, and poorer sleep outcomes compared with peers who did not (Nagata et al., 2024).

Additional research links high screen time with reduced sleep quality, shorter sleep duration, and increased risk of anxiety and depression among youth (Saepuloh et al., 2023).

Personally, I have noticed similar effects as an adult. By tracking my sleep with an Apple Watch and observing how refreshed I feel the next morning, I have consistently found that my sleep is of much higher quality when my phone is kept away from my bed rather than within reach.

For years, I have been an avid user of social media. I remember using Orkut, one of the earliest social-networking platforms, and later moving to Facebook when it launched in the early 2010s. At that time, it genuinely felt like these platforms could help me reconnect with old friends, express my voice, and access the larger “know-hows” of the world. And, in many ways, I was right. For example, I used social media to raise ₹2,50,000 for a charitable cause a decade ago.

But today, the benefits feel overshadowed by the negative repercussions. My top five concerns include:

  1. Invasion of privacy and associated risks –
    Anyone can know who you are, what you do, if you keep posting about who you are, and what you do! It gives negative actors incentives to harm you and your loved ones by picking your habits etc. Research shows that seemingly harmless social-media activity can reveal personal routines, social networks, home locations, travel schedules, and even personality traits (Kosinski et al., 2013).

  2. Weaponization of social media profiles by governments–
    Governments, especially those interested in surveillance, can use metadata from social media (who you know, what you post, where you are) to track citizens. Globally, there has been growing concern over how social media data can be used for surveillance, behavioral profiling, and influencing public opinion. As more people share personal data online, governments gain more tools to monitor, manipulate or control.

    I predict such weaponization is going to only increase exponentially and it’s a good time to stop sharing your personal data for future manipulation and misuse. Good books to read how such a scenario may look like are the classics: 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New Words by Aldous Huxley.

  3. Manipulation of your thoughts and actions by current and future technology–
    Social-media platforms already use algorithms to shape what you see: what content appears in your feed, what ads you receive, what friends or pages are suggested. These algorithms optimize for engagement — often by exploiting your psychological vulnerabilities.

    As AI gets more advanced, this manipulation may become more subtle, pervasive, and personalized. The more these systems know about you, the more effectively they can influence your beliefs, moods, decisions — potentially overriding your true self. I mean, why deliberately tell machines who you actually are?

  4. Misinformation-
    We all know what it is and how easily it spreads.

  5. Depression, anxiety, and the constant need to compare yourself with others–
    Multiple studies link heavy social-media use to depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, and negative social comparison particularly among adolescents and young adults (Shensa et al., 2018; Saepuloh et al., 2023). The design of these platforms encourages constant comparison, envy, and the fear of missing out, driving cycles of emotional distress.

It is for these reasons – or for the harmful effects of this addiction – that for the last one-and-half years, I have systematically reduced my social media usage. And mind you, doing so has been really hard work and I am not completely out of bounds!

If we take alcohol addiction, we all agree that it is bad for our health and there are both government and non-government support mechanisms to help you get over the addiction. However, despite clear indications that excessive social media usage is harmful for you, there are no widespread support mechanisms in place yet.

So here is a strategy that worked for me:

  1. Track and observe your usage –
    My professor at Harvard Business School used to say that “you can only manage what you can measure and you can measure everything”. Hence, the first step is to measure your social media usage across all the social media platforms (and yes, that includes Whatsapp). Do it for at least a week or ten days and see what’s your average. If it is more than four hours, you probably have an addiction problem.

  2. Deactivate (not delete) your social media profile(s) in a phased manner–
    Don’t believe that you can get over your social media addiction in one go. I have seen many people deactivating ALL their social media accounts in one go (mostly when they have a fight with their partners) only to reactivate them the next morning. And let’s be realistic – you are not going to “delete” your accounts so lets not go there.

    Hence, a better strategy would be to start with the account you are spending the least time on. In my case, I started first with Facebook > Instagram > LinkedIn > Twitter. I am still left with YouTube and WhatsApp – they are being the most difficult to let go.

  3. Temporarily reactive and observe your emotions –
    Reactivate your deactivated account(s) and observe all the immediately occurring emotions and feelings. In my case, whenever I’d do so, I used to get the feeling of unnecessary comparison, anxiety, and FOMO.

    Interestingly, I’d never felt any of these emotions when the account(s) was deactivated. After doing this at least three or four times, I could clearly see that these negative feelings were stemming from the design of these platforms and not inherently from who I am.

  4. Fill the newfound time with meaningful activities or hobbies –
    One of the side effects of phasing out your social media is that you will find that suddenly you have a lot of time. You will realize that you are finally bored! And that’s a good thing.

    Psychological research shows that boredom can enhance creativity, reflection, and intrinsic motivation (Westgate & Wilson, 2018). When you feel bored, it is time to do things you actually enjoy doing.

    For me, it was reading books (I have read 24 books so far in 2025), playing Tennis and being obsessed with my health markers (my VO2max has increased from 26 last year to 43; I can now run a 5k nonstop – last year I couldn’t even run 500m without catching my breath). Each person can find their own meaningful replacement: writing, gardening, dancing, learning a language — anything that genuinely nurtures you.

  5. Keep phasing out and stand your ground–
    Peer pressure is real: people expect you to be “on” all the time- reachable on WhatsApp, posting on Instagram, liking photos, replying to memes. But you don’t have to. Be honest with yourself about what matters. Stand firm. You owe it to your mental health and sense of self.

Imagine a few hundred years ago a person was kidnapped from Africa and transported in a dark, dingy ship compartment to work in forced labor in the fields of England or America. That person had no choice. Slavery was an accepted practice in many parts of the world and was not considered morally or legally wrong the way it is today. It took years- and a great war- for the society to recognize it as a crime and abolish it.

In a similar way, today – though far less visibly cruel – many of us are enslaved to our mobile phones, to social media, and are moving towards a scenario where we will be enslaved by newer technologies and machines that we will create ourselves.

But, unlike those who were enslaved hundreds of years ago we still retain a power they didn’t: the power to say NO.

And NO! we must say. Let us not glorify our own bondage. Let us not be slaves.

REFERENCES

Nagata, J. M., Rahman, F., Fiore, K., Bissonette, A.,-Peterson, K. E., & Cunningham, S. (2024). Smartphone ownership in childhood and associations with depression, obesity, and sleep. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Saepuloh, A., Santoso, M. B., & Hasanah, U. (2023). The correlation between smartphone screen time and sleep quality in adolescents: A systematic review. Medical Sciences, 13(6), 475.

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(15), 5802–5805.

Shensa, A., Sidani, J. E., Dew, M. A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., & Primack, B. A. (2018). Social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms: A cluster analysis. American Journal of Health Behavior, 42(2), 116–128.

Westgate, E. C., & Wilson, T. D. (2018). Boring thoughts and bored minds: The MAC model of boredom and cognitive engagement. Behavioral Sciences, 8(6), 54.

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