BOOK NOTE: Smart Brevity by Jim VadeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz

Smart Brevity is a book — or rather, a guide — by the creators of Axios. One that could have benefited from the very advice it gives. It rambles through many disconnected sections and, for some reason, seems to think it’s acceptable to use clunky sentence structures in the quest to demonstrate the “power of saying more with less.”

I’m being harsh. There are many valuable lessons in it. But maybe I’m a snob when it comes to good writing. While I completely see the value of brevity in conversations and communication, I don’t think it should come at the cost of well-crafted sentences — or, more importantly, at the cost of framing thoughts coherently.

I’ll be honest. I need to learn how to communicate more briefly. It’s been a long-standing piece of 360-degree feedback throughout my 20-year corporate career as a strategy consultant. More recently, as someone who does a fair number of presentations and has conversations with senior executives, this is feedback I need to act on. So, I’ve been on a deliberate quest to learn brevity.

Even more so because my Gallup StrengthsFinder has repeatedly identified “Input” and “Intellection” as top strengths — the need to collect, archive, and accumulate information, ideas, artefacts, and even relationships. I’m also a learner, with a strong desire to grow and continuously improve. The process of learning matters more to me than the outcome itself. I love to think (perhaps too much), muse, and reflect.

All this sounds great on paper, but the blind spots are obvious, in hindsight, of course. Pun and inconsistency intended.

One of the most important watch-outs for me has been phrased like this:

You might have a tendency to give people so much information or so many resources that you can overload or overwhelm them. Before you share with others, consider sorting out what is most meaningful so they don’t lose interest.

And another, in the same vein:

Some people might think you create needless complexity during discussions and may want you to make decisions faster. Sometimes it’s better to keep it simple and go more in depth later.

How damning, and how true.

This has been an ongoing area of learning for me. Over the years, I’ve been influenced by Tom Henschel’s advice from The Look and Sound of Leadership: “Short sounds confident.” That has become something of a mantra. But as much as I like that little ditty, I like words too. I like trivia, context-setting, and, above all, a good, powerful sentence.

But the point remains: I need to be brief. So I picked up Economical Writing by Deirdre McCloskey — a great book with some very smart advice — though I haven’t finished it yet. The Just Saying podcast by Joe McCormack has also been helpful.

So when, in June this year, my boss gave me Smart Brevity, I didn’t waste time reading it. Yes, my manager thought it necessary to gift me a book about brevity. And no, I’m not that bad — I take it as a positive gesture.

Anyway, this is a topic I genuinely care about, and I read the book. While it makes some smart points — like simplifying sentences, making them catchy, and using labels — the way those points are communicated feels haphazard. It rambles, trying to connect disparate ideas to its central thesis in roundabout ways.

Here’s an example. The opening sentence of the book is:

Never in the history of humanity have we vomited more words in more places with more velocity.

It’s a strong line, but reading it aloud isn’t a great experience, especially without the advantages of proper punctuation.

Other examples include the before-and-after writing tips:

Before: “The coronavirus variant in California is possibly more infectious and might cause more serious illness than the first.”
After: “California COVID-19 strain is more infectious than the first.”

Is that factually correct? Communicating the probability of might is worthwhile, and it’s lost in this falsely assertive sentence.

Beyond these issues, one stylistic choice really bothered me: the authors refer to themselves in the third person. I understand that’s tricky when there are three authors, but paragraphs like this put me off:

BACKSTORY: Jim and Mike started Politico back in 2007 with John Harris, a friend from The Washington Post. John and Jim were bosses and Mike was the on-the-go reporter, scooping news nuggets and building the little-known Politico brand around DC.

• At dawn every day, Mike would write an email to Jim and John with the subject line ‘How we can rock today’. It was a blueprint for the stories the publication should pursue.
• Mike’s email followed a very specific format. It always started with a burst of fresh news or insight — journalism’s holy grail of ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

This sort of writing goes against the very advice the book gives: never assume the reader knows who you’re talking about. It’s not “skim-resistant.”

In summary, Smart Brevity is a book with solid concepts, but the authors’ insistence on sacrificing good sentence structure for catchy, web-friendly phrasing is a drawback. Not everything worthwhile should be sacrificed for brevity. Brevity is more than that.

Finally, I took away the relevant parts of the book. And now, with the advent of AI, I’ve been using a different workflow to communicate briefly and impactfully. I write in my own way, full of ideas and context. Then I ask AI to edit my writing for brevity — without losing any of the detail. It does a fantastic job. It cleans up grammar, removes redundancies, and helps me structure my thoughts better without losing my style or substance. 

Win-win.

When wealth stops "Making" - the peril of over-financialisation

In my review of The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, I noted a different kind of “eat-the-rich” movement that is portrayed in the fantasy novel. In this revolution it is the merchants who hold the wealth, and it is the nobility—not the poor—who rise against them. This is one unique aspect of the book that I found interesting. But I digress. The focus of what I want to say in this essay is different. It comes from another interesting nugget in Abercrombie’s saga.

The Merchant’s Mansion by the docks - watching one’s wealth from nearby

Merchant's Palatial House: A merchant's grand house overlooks a busy, working-class dock filled with market stalls and ships

What caught my attention most was a smaller detail that resonates beyond the novel. A wealthy merchant builds a grand house near the smelly docks, the only place he can live while keeping an eye on his ships. He does not choose the elegant quarters of the city, too far from the assets he must watch. Later, the merchant is dead and trade has moved on. The house, once palatial, sits decrepit in an unsavoury quarter, unsellable and worthless.

So many real-world investments are made not purely for economic value but because they provide a physical reminder of wealth and control. They allow the owner to see and oversee their fortune. Without that, the sense of ownership feels incomplete. This seems like an archetypal need humans have.

The archetypal urge of visible wealth has always been there

And like most archetypes, the idea runs deep. In Tolkien’s world, Smaug the dragon sleeps upon his hoard to keep dominion over it. In modern pop culture, Disney’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck dives into his vault of coins to reaffirm his control. Both echo the same primal urge: to make wealth visible and tangible and in doing so be in control of it. It is, in a sense, a financial version of Foucault’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was a prison design where inmates never knew if they were being watched, so they behaved as if they always were. Foucault used it as a metaphor for modern systems of control: power lies not in direct force but in visibility. In the same way, dashboards, balances, and ledgers keep wealth under constant surveillance, ensuring its owner never loses command.

Financial Panopticon: A central figure oversees individuals managing their wealth via dashboards in a circular, panopticon-like structure.

That is why, in a finance-driven world, a bank balance is such a powerful status symbol. Why crypto enthusiasts flex their wallets. Why dashboards—Bloomberg terminals, portfolio trackers, real-time net worth calculators—are so compelling. They are the contemporary equivalent of living near the docks, watching the ships as they come and go. Only now, the ships are numbers, charts, and tokens moving across a screen. The owner feels in control precisely because the movement is visible: as long as the dashboard shows the assets, the wealth feels under command.

From making to managing - wealth’s long drift

There is also a pattern worth pausing on. Titans of industry often begin as makers and producers, leading them to their wealth. But once wealthy, their fortunes shift into financial assets, increasingly detached from the act of making itself. This is more than concentration of capital. It reflects how the most productive and creative minds are no longer rewarded for producing or creating, but for managing finances.

Evolution of Wealth: A triptych showing the progression from physical markets to industrial production, and finally to abstract digital wealth on screens.

This drift is easier to see if we step back and look at how wealth itself has been defined over time. We began with barter. Then came fiat money—first backed by tangible assets like gold, or by the means of production. But today, wealth drifts further and further away from the metaphorical dock or market, recast into dashboards, futures, and notional values that exist more on screens than in the real world. The danger is that it squeezes out true creators, replacing them with those who are content to manage charts and graphs without ever making anything. At some point, that bubble will burst.

The numbers illustrate this. Today, the top 1 percent of the world owns about 43 percent of all financial assets. A century ago, wealth inequality was also stark, but wealth was more tied to land, factories, and productive assets. Now, it is increasingly financial, intangible, and concentrated in instruments far removed from production.

Two forces threaten to push this shift further.

AI and the shrinking role of the maker

The first is artificial intelligence. When creative tools—writing, design, music, even art—are programmable and mediated through data, the role of the human maker shrinks. More concerning is if the walled gardens of AI concentrate the access of creative tools to only the select few. Those who build or produce become fewer, while those who control the platforms and dashboards multiply. The value accrues not in what is made, but in how data about what is made is captured and leveraged.

DeFi: Transparency or Abstraction?

The second force is DeFi. At its core, decentralised finance promises to bypass traditional gatekeepers and give individuals more freedom and transparency over their money. On the surface this looks like liberation—capital moving more freely, assets visible to all on the blockchain, and no central authority pulling the strings. But in practice, what it often produces is another layer of financialisation. A house, a painting, or a piece of land can be reduced to a token on a blockchain—valuable less for its use than for its tradeability. Wealth becomes more transparent in one sense, but also more removed, anchored not in production or utility but in speculation and flows of digital transactions. This is financialisation taken another step further, a retreat from the dock into pure abstraction.

A new class of landlords – or shall we say Rise of the Dashlords

Dashlord: A skeletal "Dashlord" figure on a high-tech throne monitors workers and an industrial landscape through digital dashboards.

All of this points to a troubling trajectory. We may be creating a new landlord class—“dashlords,” one might call them—who sit atop dashboards of tokenised assets, feeling powerful while shielding capital, tools of creativity, and even physical assets from those outside.

Over-financialisation is pushing capitalism into a narrower funnel. Wealth is not just concentrated; it is abstracted away from making and producing. AI and DeFi may arise from the right instincts—freedom, access, transparency—but if their development ignores fundamental human needs of power, agency, they will reinforce the problem.

Capitalism in its true sense has to be a win-win: a transaction, an exchange of value. It is not going to thrive if there is hoarding or unjust blocking of access to the tools of production. Efforts at transparency and productivity will not succeed unless they connect to the human psyche—our deep need for agency and control. Without that, the system risks collapsing under its own abstractions, producing not makers but watchers, not producers but Dashlords.

Let us get back to that initial thought about Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself and its unusual “eat-the-rich” movement. At the heart of it all is the vicious, mean Inquisitor Glokta—once a nobleman, now a cripple—who feels righteous in turning the screws on corrupt merchants. Glokta, in this way, becomes a fitting metaphor for what happens when capitalism is drained of its productive vitality. Like a broken enforcer still wielding power, financialisation risks becoming a crippled remnant of productive capitalism—vicious, commanding, but ultimately reducing capitalism to a shell.

Note: All images were imagined and created with Gemini.

BOOK NOTE: City of Small Blessings - Simon Tay

I find it fascinating that many places we now call home or office in Singapore used to be the sea just a few decades ago. Reclamation is the term for the process where geo-engineering is used to create new land where the sea once lapped at the shore. Entire districts have arisen this way, and more will follow given Singapore’s ambitious plans. And with it, what was once a beach road retreats inland.

What has always struck me is the word itself. Reclamation. It carries a sense of assertion, as though we are simply taking back what was ours from the sea. But from another perspective, it may be the reverse: perhaps it is the sea that has been forced to surrender what has always been its own, in the name of progress. I am not complaining, just fascinated by the semantics.

Simon Tay’s City of Small Blessings helped me appreciate this “other side” perspective. Told through the lives of two generations, a father and a son, it spans decades. From the father’s childhood to the son’s adulthood. The novel reflects on change, its pace, and how memory, though personal and mosaic-like, is often painted over by the broad brush of history, leaving a grander but less nuanced canvas.

Without giving away too much, the book is a story of loss and identity, and how physical places serve as artifacts in that journey. The central conflict is the loss of an estate, taken by the powers that be to be redeveloped for foreign interests. For most of us, it makes sense. There is progress, efficiency, development. But for those living there, especially the aging protagonist, it is the taking away of home.

The novel is rich and layered. Through flashbacks, it recalls Singapore’s wartime hardships, the forging of national resilience, and the protagonist’s own rise as a respected educationist which mirrors the nation’s growth from a fishing village to a global cosmopolis. Yet by the 2000s, progress has become institutionalized, a steady hum of growth that often masks in data and statistics, the living memories of those it displaces. The retired protagonist, ousted from his home, becomes a symbol of this tension.

The narrative alternates between father and son, highlighting generational shifts. The son represents a global, hybrid identity. One that is cosmopolitan, yet detached from the pioneer spirit. His loyalties are not to what the pioneers built, but more to the individuals themselves. Their sacrifices, and their worldview, his father’s in particular. What remains for his generation is not so much the physical place, but the personalities and the stories that shaped them.

Amidst the reclamation of the estate, there is the same justification as with land reclamation: progress, executed efficiently and rationally. Yet the novel made me feel that the protagonist is like the sea itself. Pushed back, encroached upon, but no less Singaporean than the land that rises in its place.

One passage captures this beautifully, when the protagonist protests the redevelopment:

The unplanned is a hedge, an insurance policy in times of revolutionary change. The unplanned also has its value…
The places we think peripheral influence and shape evolution in the mainstream.
The unplanned provides surprise, texture and serendipity.
This can be physical. In a modern city, a conserved building, or in the heart of an old city, a gleaming tower. It can be mental and social. In a busy business day in a consumer-centered, rational society, an hour for coffee with a person with an interesting story—or even the prospect of falling in love, like the famous photograph by Robert Doisneau. Amidst the milling, bustling crowd, a couple kisses. The planned schedules are disrupted, put on hold, for something—romance—that no one can really plan for, even if we can hope for it. We can plan our lives, but what happens, will happen. And if we are blessed, what happens will be beyond our grandest plans.

City of Small Blessings itself feels like such an “unplanned” gift. A hidden garden tucked between skyscrapers, a quiet refuge of memory and meaning in the tide of progress. And as the review by the Quarterly Literary Review said, ‘an important marker in the history of the Singapore novel’.

 

BOOK NOTE - The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

As a fan of fantasy books, I have grown accustomed to the slower pace, expansive timelines, and numerous characters that define the great works in this genre. Think G.R.R Martin’s multi-volume A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I have read in full and in the right order. Think of the 20+ volume Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, of which I have managed only three—starting somewhere in the middle. Or the mind-numbingly expansive Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson, which I am reading in chronological order but have only reached book four of the 25+ instalments.

A common thread in all these is the sheer expanse of the universe—the people, lands, and magical systems. They can be enchanting, transporting you to different worlds, complete with maps and side stories to disappear into. But they can also be overwhelming, just to keep pace with the scale and complexity. The Malazan series in particular is so vast and intricate that it can be difficult to get through—and I mean that in a good way. Given my interest in both fiction and non-fiction, committing to such sprawling series can limit the variety of my reading life.

Enter the likes of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle and Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy—both great fantasy series, but relatively faster-paced and, in subtle ways, less demanding on one’s reading cadence.

Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself is a fine example of this. I had been meaning to get to it for at least two years since it was recommended by someone with a good eye for epic fantasy, and I am glad I finally did.

The worldbuilding is both brisk and evocative. The familiar fantasy tropes are here—the vain and prickly hero, the noble brute, the wise wizard, the tragic mentor, the cheeky dame in distress and the evil forces from beyond the borders and within. There is magic that is taboo, historical figures assembling a fellowship, and wars and beasts at the periphery. But what I especially enjoyed was that the politics and motivations felt very contemporary. Perhaps it is Abercrombie’s language, but unlike Malazan, which feels truly ancient, the characters in The Blade Itself often seem modern. The sense of the ancient is there, but the events feel distinctly of our time.

It is a fine balance to strike. Lean too modern and it starts to feel like sci-fi with magic—a tone better suited to young adult vampire dramas on TV.

One example, without spoilers: the book features merchant guilds that are ruthless capitalist empires, sanctioned by the King. Over time, they have grown in wealth and influence, overtaking the old-money aristocrats. This sets the stage for a different kind of “eat-the-rich” revolution—not from the poor masses, but from the royal and erstwhile nobility. Many fantasy novels I have read have powerful merchants, usually individuals, but I cannot recall another that plays with this almost post-capitalist dynamic. For that alone, the book deserves credit.

A great read, highly recommended.

Telling stories from the future

Stories from the future are always interesting.

Yes, you read that right. Stories from the future can be told today, but they are not always what you think they are. They might fall under science fiction or fantasy, but beyond that, they offer us a way to imagine what lies ahead, engaging both our creative and cognitive faculties. They serve an important role in helping us visualize plausible worlds.

I loved reading “The Story of You: What might Singapore look like for those born today?” in today’s (8 Aug 2025) edition of The Straits Times. As the summary puts it, the piece envisions life for a child born in 2025, projecting all the way to 2105 and beyond.

Drawing on current trends and data, as well as interviews with 19 experts, The Straits Times envisions one speculative and possible future for the first members of Generation Beta who are born in 2025, as part of its Born Tomorrow series.

                                                   The Story of You, The Straits Times, 8th August 2025.

Read Here

This kind of speculative futures work, with storytelling at its core, is not prophecy, nor is it pure science fiction. It’s a fascinating discipline at the intersection of science, art, and management that helps us imagine what could be. And rather than predict the future, it helps us prepare for it. We should take this seriously. It’s not just a story emerging from an inventive mind, but from a structured method. It is based on trends, uncertainties, and expert insights that explores the edges of science and culture.

Of course, any attempt to think about the future is always constrained by the past. As futurist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” Prophecy tends to be conservative. I did feel this article didn’t push the boundaries of imagination enough. It’s rather cautious, even. But it’s still heartening to see this kind of scenario thinking becoming more mainstream, rather than being confined to academic circles.

Interestingly, I had written a similar imagined future scenario back in 2016: "October 10th, 2030". It was my own small experiment in speculative storytelling - combining data, trends, and imagination.

And now, with the support of AI, this process of informed ‘hallucination’ and envisioning possible futures can become far more accessible.

Maybe in this field, some of AI’s hallucination problems could actually be a feature, and not a bug.

Banner Image Credit © Edisaacs | Stock Free Images

Pulp fiction - fast plots, timeless lessons

Books come in various styles. One of my favourites is pulp fiction. What do I mean by pulp fiction? It is the genre of books that usually consists of murder mysteries, crime novellas, espionage stories, lawyers solving crimes, and some adventure novels. The common thread across all of these is that they are fast paced, with mostly morally ambiguous characters—either trying to commit a crime, hide a crime, solve a crime, or being a victim of one.

Some of the great authors of all time were pulp fiction writers. Legendary writers like Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick started off writing pulp stories in magazines before they wrote their famous works. But there is an entire league of authors who are great pulp fiction writers, full stop. The best among them, according to me, is James Hadley Chase. Nothing beats a good Chase potboiler when you have a few hours and do not want anything that taxes the mind.

Classic pulp noir: the seductive femme fatale and the hard-boiled detective, caught in a moment of danger, desire, and double-cross.

The hallmark of a great James Hadley Chase book is that the mystery is no mystery at all. As the reader, you usually begin the story already knowing who the criminal is and who the slightly better-off person chasing the criminal might be. The suspense lies in the story and in how the game of cat and mouse plays out. Chase’s characters are never entirely good or bad. They live real lives and are full of contradictions. Sometimes they are hard-boiled criminals with a cruel edge who kill, torture, and commit senseless crimes. But the great author places them in situations and storylines that have you rooting for these terrible characters—and wondering why. And long before George R. R. Martin became famous for killing off his main protagonists (I still cannot believe when Ned Stark died. Genius), James Hadley Chase was routinely offing some of the best characters—the ones you were kind of rooting for. But clearly, the little bit of goodness they had in them is what most likely got them killed.

As an avid reader, I often find myself reading many books at once. I usually try to finish every book I start, but sometimes, between great literature, non-fiction, and other average or hard-to-read titles, the reading mind needs some dessert. Enter a pulp novel. It is usually about 200 pages long, fast paced, and filled with action. I can usually finish a pulp book in less than three days, sometimes overnight. But it does the trick—it gets me motivated to return to my more substantial reading material. Pulp fiction is the original Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts of the analog world. And like their modern equivalents, they can be addictive too—but without any of the side effects that come with doomscrolling.

I have been using books as a way to stay away from consuming media incessantly, and to resist what I call "dopamitis"—a constant need for stimulation. Pulp books help a lot to inject some good-natured fun and adventure.

In the last six months alone, I have read many pulp fiction books. The most recent ones are The Vulture is a Patient Bird by James Hadley Chase and The Best Laid Plans by Sidney Sheldon. These books are among the best by their respective authors and feature all the well-loved pulp tropes—murders, gunfights, damsels in distress, sneaky villains, handsome men, and of course, lots of gratuitous sexy stuff.

Other recent reads include A Case of the Negligent Nymph, a Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner, and Well Now, My Pretty by James Hadley Chase. As a teenager, and well into my twenties and thirties, I must have read at least 50 to 100 great pulp novellas, including series like Nick Carter: Killmaster.

Pulp books are excellent material to learn the art of storytelling from. They are mass market and commercial, and often demonstrate best practices in how to capture a reader’s attention. The genre is also very good at subverting traditional story structures like the Hero’s Journey, often twisting them into darker or more ironic forms.

A familiar pulp setup—tension, beauty, and danger—but with just enough ambiguity to leave you questioning who holds the upper hand.

What pulp fiction does well is to understand its audience. Historically, pulp writers published in magazines, and stories were often serialised. This created a feedback loop. Authors learned from how readers responded to each instalment, and that shaped the next one. Pulp fiction was a consumer product. Unlike literary writers, who had to rely on pure content and critical reception, pulp writers were always responsive to their readers. In that sense, pulp fiction offers great lessons for marketing and advertising, which also work best when grounded in consumer insight.

That said, good pulp fiction did not necessarily cater to the lowest common denominator. While there was plenty of that, the truly standout works knew how to hook readers, keep the pace, and land the ending in a way that kept them coming back. The tools they used were consistency and clear positioning. Perry Mason was about the wily defence lawyer outsmarting the justice system to prove his client’s innocence against overwhelming odds. He usually did this by revealing the actual killer in dramatic courtroom scenes. His clients were often attractive but morally ambiguous young women. Nick Carter was Killmaster, a globe-trotting spy in exotic locales with damsels in distress and gadgets galore. James Hadley Chase told stories of criminals clashing with other, slightly less evil criminals. The bounty was always something attained at great personal cost.

By codifying these tropes, the great pulp fiction writers ensured they kept their audiences coming back for more.

The drama of pulp lies not just in violence but in mystery, tension, and the unknown—books and bullets, both loaded

And finally, one piece of writing or marketing wisdom that can be drawn from good pulp fiction is how the writing leaves much to the reader’s imagination. This, to me, is the master stroke. Great writers know that each reader’s mind is fertile ground for imagination, and they use that to their advantage. The prose is tight and sharp, allowing the reader to imagine what something might feel or look like. By not being overly descriptive and trusting the reader to fill in the gaps, great pulp stories plant seeds in the reader’s mind and immerse them deeply in the experience. That feeling is probably only ever replicated in good cinema.

Note: Illustrations in this post, excepting the book covers, were generated by ChatGPT using AI image tools to evoke the visual spirit of classic pulp fiction.

BOOK NOTE - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

One of the advantages of a National Library subscription is that I get to read many books for free. But a persistent disadvantage is that it seems to drive me to read fast—sometimes way too fast—just to stay within the loan period. Especially since you don’t always get to extend the loan on a book, and you can end up stuck on the waitlist for an indefinite amount of time. This isn’t great for the reading experience. It doesn’t let you reflect or even enjoy the book fully.

I read Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow in under seven days because my ‘Skip the Line’ loan only allowed me to keep the book for that long. The eBook, at about 400 pages, isn’t meant to be a fast read. But the story was compelling and engaging enough that I ended up finishing it. It also helped that I had two flights during that period—nothing like the internet blackout on planes to force some quality reading time. Frankly, that’s one of the best things about flights, and I hate that some now offer Wi-Fi.

NOTE: Spoilers ahead.

The book is about gamers and game developers, which connected well with me. It is also a book about friendship and love. But honestly, the main characters are hard to like. They’re depressed, sometimes psychotic, and go through or inflict a fair bit of mental torture.

Sam, one of the protagonists, has endured several emotional traumas: his parents aren’t together, he witnesses a freak suicide at a young age, and he’s in a horrific car accident that kills his mother and injures his leg badly. Despite all this, he remains broadly positive—rightfully a little reserved.

Sadie, on the other hand, has had less childhood trauma. She comes from wealthy parents, has a sister who recovers from cancer, and turns out to be brilliant—but also more bitter. The only truly likeable character is Marx, a key player in their story. He’s almost tragically good-natured. But I liked that. The idea that someone can be consistently cheerful—and that this could be a sign of intelligence—really stayed with me.

I felt Sadie, the other main protagonist, goes through some self-inflicted problems in life by getting into a torrid relationship with her married gaming professor, Dov. She pays the price by being jilted and ‘used,’ and unfortunately takes it out on her best friend Sam and their co-workers.

Overall, the characters didn’t quite connect with me. Especially with the mixed Japanese-Korean heritage of two of the leads, the whole thing started to feel very Murakami-like. The emotional turmoil, the torrid love affairs, the possessive pining—it was all very Murakami, just without the Murakami authorship.

What made the book work for me was the gaming industry storytelling, and the way computer games and their development shaped an entire generational cohort. I really enjoyed that part.

 

The fog and the mountain - how insight reveals itself

Through the fog of distractions you must go,

The Mountain's wisdom awaits at the far edge

 

Clarity and insight come mostly from dwelling on things over long periods of time.

It might feel like they appear in a moment, like in a flash of brilliance, but they actually come when the mind has been quietly marinating in certain ideas.

For me, insight emerges from looping through a familiar mix: writing, reading, thinking while walking, connecting thoughts, listening, consuming ideas, and then putting pen to paper again.

A busy, distracted mind has no energy to create. Distraction is perhaps the single biggest barrier to creativity. Writing helps anchor the mind.

But beyond writing, there is also a need for clear frameworks that help simplify and clarify thinking. It is only after one understands—by linking one idea to another—that it becomes possible to express what something really means, and make it simple and profound.

To show what this looks like in practice, consider the following example.

I was reading a book about early 20th-century expeditions to the South Pole. One striking detail was how explorers described the grand Antarctic mountains—massive, majestic—and yet often completely hidden behind fog and snow.

That sparked a thought. It is easy to become accustomed to seeing grand vistas like the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas—accessible places with seasons that allow for clear views. But in remote places like Antarctica and the Arctic, some of the most spectacular sights may remain unseen—not just because of their remoteness, but because they’re perpetually obscured by the elements.

There was a compelling fact—fog covers monumental mountains in Earth’s remotest places. And a wishful thought: that maybe some of the most beautiful vistas on Earth will never be seen or felt by humans.

At this point, it’s not yet insight. Just a curious observation. To make something of it, one has to write it down. Then review it. Then revisit it, using a framework like the one below.

This is where the earlier point about inhabiting a thought becomes real. The framework that follows is what allows a fleeting idea to evolve into something meaningful. It is a way of staying with the thought long enough for it to reveal something new—something that moves from noticing to insight.

This framework helps move from absorbing to seeing. From gathering to generating. From skimming past something to inhabiting it.

Here’s how it works.

First, to inhabit a thought, one needs to stay longer with it. Add more stillness between inputs. This is where reflection starts to deepen. Helpful questions include:

What is the emotional core of this?
Which part of me is responding to it?
What does it evoke in me?

Second, one has to make it strange again. Be childlike and indulge in some divergent thinking. Ask:

What would a child or a weird philosopher say about this?
What is this a metaphor for?
Where else does this pattern show up?

Third, one must zoom out and give attention more weight. Let the subconscious do its quiet work. Questions that help here:

What’s the larger truth being hinted at?
How can this be said more simply?

This is how uncommon connections form. And that’s where insight begins to surface.

Returning to the Antarctica example: the emotional core of the thought was longing—for beauty, for inspiration. The part that responded was the curious inner explorer. What it evoked was a kind of FOMO—not of missing out on trends, but missing out on inspiration.

Then, making it weirder—imagining that a philosopher might say that there is beauty out there, but it’s hidden—not because it doesn’t exist, but because it cannot be seen through the fog.

From a note about unseen Antarctic mountains, it became a metaphor about inspiration hidden by the fog of distraction.

That’s when the ideas clicked. There are things that remain out of reach not because they’re distant, but because attention is clouded. This is what people experience when they have writer’s block. Or creative plateaus. Because writing requires us to go to remote places - internally. Insight is often found in the places that are off the map.

What is the larger truth? To see the sublime, one must clear space. Remove the fog.

The mountains are there for the seeing—but only when one clears the fog of noise, haste, mental clutter and dares to venture to the edges where true insight lurks, can they finally come into view.

That is the power of inhabiting a thought—not grazing past it. Insight doesn't come from more inputs. It comes from deeper attention. And writing, more than anything, helps engage the whole of one’s consciousness.

The only caution: this should not become a mechanical exercise. One must not confuse deep thinking with sounding clever. Inhabiting thoughts for longer quietly dissolves that urge. 

BOOK NOTE - Table for Two - Amor Towles

Mark of great writing is when you can imagine a scene so vividly that after a while, you start doubting whether it was from a book or a movie—or even a real-life experience. Especially when you are reading another book, and a scene from that earlier book plays in your mind like a movie and then shapes how you imagine the current book’s scene.

For example, in one of James Hadley Chase’s books, a couple of crooks rob a casino. I read that about a year ago. Now, as I am reading Amor Towles’ Table for Two, there is a novella where a character robs a casino, and I imagined it in Chase’s prose. It is also because of the vivid nature of stories set in Los Angeles.

Chase’s books are pulp fiction. But iconic pulp fiction. Towles’ writing is good literature. And I am sure that sometime later, I will experience Towles’ prose like a movie too, when I am reading another heist story.

Table for Two is a wonderful collection of short stories and a novella. They are characterized by Towles’ evocative prose, rich in history and culture, and written with subtle humour. Towles evokes the sense of the cities his stories are set in beautifully. Reading the ones set in New York in the 90s evokes a deep sense of nostalgia.

For someone who has not visited New York at the time of reading, the nostalgia I am referring to is the one shaped by consuming great New York stories—like The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and from movies like The Godfather and TV shows like Mad Men.

I loved the evocation of the old bookseller who inhabits the literary world in The Ballad of Timothy Touchett, and the simple optimism of Pushkin in The Line. Both are amazing and touching stories. But my favourite was The DiDomenico Fragment, which is brilliant in its description of old money in New York and the art world.

BOOK NOTE - Sharing a house with the Never-Ending Man - Steve Alpert

I recently saw a YouTube short about how the 90s and 2000s in Japan were a kind of nostalgic golden age. Japan then was still the second-largest economy in the world and a major cultural influence—both on its own and through its ties with the US and the rest of the world. Japanese consumer tech was ahead of its time – think Walkman and Nintendo. Japanese cars were state of the art – Toyotas and Hondas were top-notch. Japanese management ideas – kaizen, just-in-time, etc. – were all the rage in business schools. Tokyo, especially, was the world’s biggest city and had this mix of high-tech modernity and ancient, arcane traditions. Tokyo, in particular, was the biggest city in the world and was a unique blend of cosmopolitan, techno-West, embedded in an old-world society.

It’s in this setting that Steve Alpert’s book about his time at Studio Ghibli takes place. It’s an easy read, and Alpert writes with a casual pace, recounting his time as a Gaijin inside the world of Japanese office culture. He captures the eccentricity of people like Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki, while also drawing an insightful contrast with their interactions with large American establishments like Disney and Hollywood. Alpert doesn’t take sides, but it’s clear he has a soft spot for his Japanese colleagues. He often points out how brutal and crass the American style of business could be compared to the more refined, if rigid and dogmatic, Japanese way.

I picked up this book while researching something I was writing – whether the AI threat to art is real – and wanted to understand more about Miyazaki and his potential views on the Ghiblification trend. While the book doesn’t go deep into Miyazaki’s biography, it gave me a good sense of the people, the culture, and a feel for the Ushinawareta Jūnen—the Lost Decade. That period of economic stagnation in Japan, post-bubble, which ironically turned out to be rich in culture.

Alpert talks about the evocative scenes of central Tokyo that were visible out the offices of Tokuma Shoten, the publishing company behind Studio Ghibli. It is very well described and evokes the metropolitan madness that is Tokyo very well – almost like out of a scene from a Stuido Ghibli movie.

Our tenth-floor office also had large corner windows with views that extended all the way out to Tokyo Bay. From my desk I could see all of Japan's various modes of transportation at a single glance. There was the shinkansen Bullet Train just slowing on its final glide toward Tokyo Station. The various color-coded JR local and long-distance lines came and went every few minutes. The newly built and driverless Yurikamome train zipped along on rubber wheels toward the Odaiba entertainment area and the Big Site convention center.

The aging but still graceful Monorail, a leftover from the 1964 Olympics, leaned precariously leftward as it rounded a curve on its way to Haneda Airport. There were the gracefully arching branches of the Shuto, the overhead highways. These were clogged with traffic that barely moved all day. Once or twice a day I could spot a ferry just easing into its berth at the Takeshiba piers after completing its twenty-four-hour trip from one of the far-away Izu-Ogasawara Islands, incongruously an official part of metropolitan Tokyo. There was the newly built Rainbow Bridge standing astride the harbor and linking it to the island of Odaiba. The bridge was silvery white in the morning sunshine or bathed in colored lights against a hazy pink and purple sky at dusk.

All day, passenger jet aircraft banked low over Tokyo Bay on their final approach to Haneda Airport. Immediately below, bustling Shinbashi's wide main streets were packed with cars and buses mired in the heavy traffic. The warren of narrow pedestrian-only alleys in the Mizu Shobai (bar) district were mostly empty in the morning and crammed with wandering pedestrians once the evening rush began. At the beginning and end of the lunch hour, which everyone took at exactly the same time, the sidewalks were full of people.

The more humorous and interesting parts are his observations of Japanese office quirks. One example that stood out was nemawashi (“securing the roots”), where everything is decided before the meeting even happens. I see this a lot in management in 2025 too. It’s just called stakeholder management now, but doesn’t sound half as cool as nemawashi. 

The process of visiting and obtaining the approval of all required persons in advance is called nemawashi (securing the roots). In this way the arguments for or against any proposal or new idea and the decision makers' positions on the proposal have all been fixed long before any formal meeting takes place. Once the nemawashi has occurred, a meeting is called to pretend to discuss the matter in question, and the attendees vote on the outcome in accordance with the positions they have previously (and privately) confirmed they would take. By the time the meeting has been called, everyone attending already knows what's been decided.

Alpert also gives a strong picture of Miyazaki’s temperament and what drives him. Miyazaki is a genius, and like most geniuses, has his own unique quirks. Working with him was tough:

Hayao Miyazaki's way of making a film was particularly stressful, and that was exactly how he thought it should be. He would often say that a person only does his best work when faced with the real possibility of failure and its real consequences.

But Alpert also shows how Miyazaki’s ideas took shape. Miyazaki was always drawing, and out of those loose sketches, something would take hold. It was a long process of trial and error, where many ideas were percolated, thrown away, resurfaced and slowly the one that stuck would emerge. Then, after more iterations and more stress, about two years later, a finished film, a work of art, would emerge.

This reminded me of the classification I had read about how creative people think and create. Some are experimental innovators, who iterate and let ideas and trials percolate before it is finalized. Others are conceptual innovators, whose ideas burst forth like a sudden fount. Miyazaki was clearly the first kind.

Alpert also notes how Miyazaki treated a film once it was done:

When Miyazaki signed off on one of his and it was officially done, he preferred to never think about that film again. It was done. There was nothing more he could do to improve or change it. He always wanted to be moving forward and thinking about the next film.

There’s also what I think is a glorious moment from the book when Miyazaki visits the US for Princess Mononoke’s release. Hollywood royalty, including Martin Scorsese, sends an invite to meet him for after-dinner drinks. To the horror of the American studio executives, who think this is a great honour, Miyazaki and Suzuki decline politely and go hang out with a Japanese architect friend instead This prioritization of personal interests and artistic integrity over commercial networking is a recurring theme in the book.

The book gives a window into a world that feels lost now. Before the digital age flattened everything, and creative edges got smoothed out.

Alpert sees this too:

In a world where more and more of the little things that make one place different from the next are disappearing, it's somehow comforting to hold on to a few bits of the past.

This book was one of those bits. A reminder.

 

BOOK NOTE - The Last Place on Earth - Roland Huntford

 All stories are stories of adventure.

In the dawn of time, when the first adventurer left his tribe’s campfire and dared to wander beyond its glow, he brought back a story. Paul Zweig’s book The Adventurer calls this the source of storytelling itself.

Man risking his life in perilous encounters constitutes the original definition of what was worth talking about.

Roland Huntford’s The Last Place on Earth is one such book about adventure. It is a biography of two men, told through the lens of their grand journey to the South Pole at the beginning of the 20th century. In chronicling Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen's journeys —one ending in death and failure, the other in success that is almost clinical—the book takes us through a world on the brink of the modern era. A world without plastics, vitamins, or germ theory—this was adventure before comfort.

By the late 1890s, most of the world had been mapped. The last unconquered frontier was Antarctica, and at its heart, the South Pole. British explorers like Scott and Shackleton made attempts. But it was the Norwegian Roald Amundsen who won the race, reaching the Pole in 1911.

What drew me to this book was a reference to leadership. Greg McKeown in Effortless talks about consistency over intensity. He compares Amundsen—whose team succeeded—to Scott, whose team did not survive, on this leadership dynamic.

The key difference was in their approach. Amundsen was consistent. His team did 15-mile treks daily, regardless of weather, making steady progress without exhaustion. Scott’s team on the other hand was erratic. Some days they pushed too hard heroically, but on other days they completely stalled from exhaustion and poor planning. That emotional, unscientific style cost them the race—and their lives.

But this book offers so much more lessons for modern leaders. Lessons on preparedness, risk-taking, empowering autonomy, learning from the best, trying new methods, but also valuing cultural knowledge and the underrated value of good humour.

It took me over 4 years to finish reading it. Slowly. For the joy of it. For the story of an adventure from the last great expedition of the Age of Discovery.

The book chronicles the personal journeys of Scott and Amundsen—from their roots to their eventual race to the South Pole.

Scott was emblematic of a declining Britain. By the 1870s, the race of giants that defined the glory of Queen Victoria’s reign was coming to an end. Dickens died in 1870, Darwin’s last major work was published in 1871, and Livingstone died in 1873. Scott, born in 1868, was steeped in a world where that glory was slipping away—a hero for a nation in decline. It is because of this, and Scott’s temperament, that the author argues he made the expedition to the Pole an affair of heroism for heroism’s sake. Amundsen, by contrast, was a cool and calculated Norwegian who turned the conquest of the Pole into something between an art and a sport.

This led to remarkable differences in their motivations and approaches.

Scott, with civilizational pride behind him, expected the elements to align in his favor—and grew resentful when they did not. Amundsen, on the other hand, had the Viking respect for nature and prepared for the worst. When conditions favored him, he responded with gratitude, not entitlement.

Amundsen learned from failure. When his first sledging journey under his command failed spectacularly, he noted in his diary that they had “harvested experience.” Scott, more driven by passion, failed time and again to learn from experience—his ambition clouding his judgment.

Amundsen had a good read of people. Early in his apprenticeship journeys, he realized that under stress, passivity dissolved into apathy—and in extreme conditions, apathy was fatal. He developed ways to identify those prone to such weaknesses and removed them from the team before it was too late. Scott, meanwhile, was more swayed by flattery than by character. His choice of companions for the final push to the Pole reflected personal preference more than competence.

Amundsen had the humility to learn from anyone. He studied how to live under polar conditions from the indigenous Eskimos. He believed no civilization held a monopoly on wisdom—and that so-called primitive people had much to teach the modern man. From them, he learned how to dress in a way that avoided sweat (a deadly hazard in the cold) and how to effectively use dogs for sledging. Scott, rooted in Royal Navy traditions and ceremonies, resisted such learning. His reluctance to adopt key innovations in clothing, and his disdain for dog sledding, proved fatal for his team.

Scott carried the trappings of status as a Royal Navy officer but lacked true connection with his men. Beneath the mask of a gentleman officer, he smouldered with ambition, yet failed to truly move or inspire his followers. Locked into a command-and-control mindset, he couldn’t bring out the best in his team. Amundsen, by contrast, was quietly confident and inspired confidence in others. He preferred trust over control, noting that when “you let everybody have the feeling of being independent within their own sphere, there arises a spontaneous and voluntary discipline, which is worth far more than compulsion.”

This is not to say Amundsen was perfect. But he demonstrated the best traits of leadership where it mattered most.

When Amundsen finally reached the South Pole, there is a poignant passage. He experiences not jubilation, but something closer to emptiness:

Amundsen had learned what the Duke of Wellington had meant when, in the moment of victory, he wrote that ‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’ Such, then, was the attainment of the South Pole: a muted feast; a thing of paradox, of classic detachment; of disappointment almost.

And yet, it is Scott’s ill-fated expedition that lives on in popular memory. Amundsen, almost too perfect in his accomplishments, is largely forgotten.

That, perhaps, is the final lesson in leadership: success demands both science and art. The science of preparation and execution. And the art—not just of living the moment—but of making it live in others.