But is it really our phones that we are addicted to? Phones were around long before smartphones, and nobody was losing their evenings to calls and texts. What we are really addicted to are the apps, and for most people that’s mostly social media.

If you like your social media time, and have no trouble spending extended hours on it, more power to you. But if you are someone who actually wants to cut back, here are some methods that have worked well for me.

1. When you’re at home, give your phone a place away from you

Pick a bookshelf in the living room, the top of a kitchen cabinet, or the gaming console shelf. It just needs to be far from where you spend most of your time, like the bed or the couch.

When you can’t reach out and grab the phone without thinking, that’s enough of a circuit breaker to stop a lot of the scrolling.

2. Use social media on your laptop, not your phone

You don’t need to delete your accounts and go cold turkey. Just delete the apps from your phone and log in on your laptop instead. You keep your access, and you still see whatever you think you might miss. It just doesn’t happen that often anymore.

Opening a laptop takes a conscious decision, and that friction alone cuts usage by a lot.

3. Leave the phone behind altogether

I recently started using a cellular Apple Watch in place of my iPhone - for when I am out and about for daily errands. It gives me calls and texts and nothing else I can get lost in. A basic dumbphone does the same job for a lot less money.

I didn’t expect how good it would feel to be out without a phone. It’s genuinely freeing.

4. Change your social media accounts’ passwords and lock yourself out

This is for when steps 1 to 3 aren’t enough, because the apps keep creeping back (the addiction is real).

• Change your social media passwords to something random, and don’t write them down anywhere.

• Make sure you can’t reset them yourself by setting the recovery email and phone number to your partner’s. Tell them not to give you the reset code unless you have a genuinely good reason.

I used this method myself and went well over a year without social media access. It worked so well that I built an app around the idea. Disconnect lets you pair up with a partner or friend and hard-block apps, and only they can unlock them for you.

None of these methods require you to delete your accounts and quit entirely. That’s a good option, but a hard one for most people. What these do is make your phone less of a reflex, so you use social media when you actually choose to.

In the past few years, I’ve gone without social media for lengthy periods multiple times. I realised how unnecessary social media is once you train your brain to not get its dopamine hits from it. Instead, I read a lot more, was more present around my family and friends, and when I did want screen time, I chose long-form: podcasts, or a proper family movie night on the big TV.

These methods also made me less available online, and my friends and extended family complained that I didn’t reply quickly anymore. Honestly, I took that as a compliment. I’ve told most of them that if they need me urgently, they can call me via cellular network, or drop me an SMS or iMessage. I don’t mind not being available on every other channel all the time.

Let me know which of these you try and how it goes.

I finally got around to reading it and finished it just today.

Absolutely loved the book. Yuval Harari walks us through human evolution, from a species that was thinly spread across the globe divided into small tribes, with barely any advantage over other animals. Hunting and gathering for their immediate needs, hardly thinking of survival beyond the next day. To a species that learned to farm, developed agricultural methods, domesticating both plants and animals, and in the process, also domesticated itself. Harari actually questions whether it was us domesticating our food, or our food domesticating us. A valid question.

The book is too long. So can’t summarise all of it. But, the scariest bits of the book are at the very end. Whilst you should read the complete book — it won’t be a bad idea to switch to the very last few sections and start with those, before reading it from the beginning.

I give you a few excerpts from the last sections:

Physicists define the Big Bang as a singularity. It is a point at which all the known laws of nature did not exist. Time too did not exist. It is thus meaningless to say that anything existed ‘before the Big Bang. We may be fast approaching a new singularity, when all the concepts that give meaning to our world - me, you, men, women, love and hate - will become irrelevant. Anything happening beyond that point is meaningless to us.

The Frankenstein myth confronts Homo sapiens with the fact that the last days are fast approaching. Unless some nuclear or ecological catastrophe intervenes, so goes the story, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. This is something most Sapiens find extremely disconcerting. We like to believe that in the future people just like us will travel from planet to planet in fast spaceships. We don’t like to contemplate the possibility that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms whose abilities dwarf our own.

We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

Sapiens came out before ChatGPT and the rest of the LLMs came into limelight the way they have now. And what Harari wrote in 2011 seemed like a distant possibility back then. In 2026, it seems like we are fast approaching what he predicted with scary certainty. Having just finished this book, I am getting a fresh new appreciation for the viral clip where Peter Thiel takes a significant pause before answering the question “you would want the human race to endure?”. Now I think the reason he took such a long pause before answering, wasn’t because he doesn’t “want” the human race to endure, but because he probably wanted to articulate that he doesn’t expect it to endure in its current shape with the way things are going.

What will the human race look like in 2030? 2040? 2050?

Thoughts? Do share.

Deleting the apps — doesn’t work

It works — only for a few hours, or at best a few days. Then these apps reappear again. (I wonder how)

Deleting the accounts — not always viable

Only works for accounts you don’t really use and don’t have a lot of history on. Any account I didn’t have much history on, was really easy to delete. But then there are accounts which have too much history, and even though I don’t want to use it anymore, I still want to have it around.

Giving up access control — the method that works

The only method that worked for me:

1. Changed the passwords on my accounts to something random, and didn’t write those passwords down anywhere.

2. Made sure I had the recovery method for these passwords changed to a medium not in my control. So I changed the email and phone number on those accounts to my partner’s.

Gave my partner explicit instructions that if I try to recover my password for these accounts and ask her for the one time access code, she shouldn’t hand it over to me unless I have a compelling reason.

Voila! I’ve been detoxing and sober for a year now.

Disconnect App — yea I ended up making an app for that

The above method is pretty hardcore but it works beautifully. However the friction in this setup isn’t lost on me. Not everyone might want to go through the hoops of password and one time access code recovery method changes.

So I’ve created an app that allows you to pair up with a friend or partner, and lets you put a hard block on any app. It restricts your access and puts the unlock key in your paired up buddy’s control. In order to unlock the app and get back in, you have to send them an access request from within the app, and once they reply with a yes or no, you either get back in, or stay put. Your buddy can also put a restriction on how long they are letting you back in — after which the app will re-lock by itself once the allowance time expires.

Currently only available for iOS (no plans for Android yet).

Download here.

Would love your feedback. Let me know how well (or not) it works for you.

In December 2025, my thoughts would take a 180 degree turn. The newer models started producing shocking results. I experienced the productivity gains and I knew, things are about to change in a very serious way.

I have been in the software industry for well over 16 years now. When I graduated in 2009, software and internet were still eating the world, and engineers were in high demand. Especially mobile engineers, with iOS SDK only being a year old. Luckily, I have ridden that wave for a good few years. It’s been the case for many. Jobs have been in abundance and not enough skilful engineers to fill them. It gave many, including myself, a chance to immigrate to western countries and make a good living.

Things are obviously changing now. Barely a week goes by without another headline of layoffs hitting the news. Waves of redundancies happening, some well over 40% in a single move. More waves are coming of course.

Amidst all of this, I see a lot of people in despair. Junior engineers, worried, trying to refresh their interview skills, preparing their CVs, getting ready to try to grab a new job for whenever the layoff axe falls on them. However, these layoffs aren’t normal. It isn’t like some company has all of a sudden found itself in a pickle, and done a one-off trimming of the workforce, with other companies ready to pick you up. This is exactly what happened during covid -- bunch of companies not able to take the pressure of the lockdowns, and big tech scooping up everyone that was let go onto the market.

“This time, it is different” -- isn’t it? When so many companies, including the big tech, are trimming down, who are you preparing your CV for?

AI is causing seismic changes. A poorly thought out response isn’t going to cut it.

Well, what are the options?

Surviving the layoff

No big company is going to shrink down to a workforce of one, with the CEO sitting behind their desk, ordering around a bunch of AI agents to take care of the mega infrastructure already in place. That might indeed happen, but not anytime soon on the shorter timescale. Existing companies are still going to need a bunch of people to oversee AI. However, the workforce required to achieve that is going to be much smaller than current numbers. I won’t be surprised if in the next couple of years, many companies shrink by 50% to 80% of their existing size. If you really want to be in the surviving batch of people, make sure you can outwork your colleagues. Show that with AI, you are not only 10x-100x better than your previous self, but also 10x-100x better than your colleagues. A race to the top, where the bottom layers keep getting chopped. Be ready for a 996 lifestyle -- grinding 12+ hours a day, with weekends thrown in as well now and then.

If you are young, have limited family responsibilities, you can probably pull this off. If you are on a visa, which many are in the tech industry, you have limited choice other than to follow this strategy.

Get a job at a different company

Here, it’s going to be a race to the bottom. With fewer job openings and so many folks being put back onto the market, you will be competing against many. If you get an offer, how much of a leverage you have in negotiating a good salary? If you have had experience with freelance contract sites on the internet (e.g. Upwork), you know what this looks like -- many applicants, each eager to get the work, willing to accept a lower price tag.

What are the alternatives?

AI is your friend. Stop fighting it. Embrace it fully.

Given my area of expertise is mainly iOS/mobile, in mid 2024 I decided to get better with building for web in order to become a well rounded full stack engineer. I ordered and started reading the books pictured below, outside my normal 9-6 schedule:

In 2026, does anyone ever need to read another book on a programming language or framework? If I can do the mobile front end, is it really needed anymore that I hire someone separate for doing the backend? Someone else for web?

AI can easily do the backend, web, mobile, all in one for you, and it is exceedingly getting better and faster at it.

The future of software careers

AI is making certain things much easier than before. Such an irony that the industry that is inventing it, CS, is one of the first it is replacing jobs in. But whilst it is replacing jobs, it isn’t going to eliminate all the problems in the world overnight. Many problems still need better solutions, and new problems are going to emerge. With AI on your side, it is ever more possible to create one-person companies to provide viable solution to a niche problem that others will be willing to pay for.

Go indie

You don’t need to raise money. You don’t need to hire a team. Find a problem you are passionate about, and employ AI as your helper. If you find a viable product market fit, you might just end up changing your life for the best compared to what any job could have ever done so for you. However, this route implies that you are willing in getting out of your ‘coding skills’ comfort zone, and eager to put much more energy and time into not just building, but designing, marketing, user research, pivoting, experimenting, data analysing, and all the roles that you would have previously expected being fulfilled by many supporting roles on your big company team.

Join a small team of people that are as passionate as you about a problem space

If you still want to stick to your core competency, and want to delegate your weaknesses, then join a smaller company/startup, with focused and niche problem space and people you enjoy working together with. That last part is going to be important -- if you are going to pursue something with passion, better do so surrounded by people that you get along well with. Otherwise, you might just as well employ that grind at a big company and stick on to your anxiety-inducing job for longer.

What am I up to?

Believing change is the only constant, here are some ways I’ve been preparing for the inevitable:

1. Save as much as I can: Having a financial cushion for the bad days, and having as much of it as possible, is something all of us should always aim for.

2. Invest wisely: I got onto the investment ladder quite late in my life (yea well with that great financial literacy I was provided since an early age -- /sarcasm), however, for the past quite a few years, I have been diligently dollar/pound cost averaging into index funds.

3. Limit my financial obligations: Bought a house in an inexpensive area to keep my monthly mortgage payments low. Utilising state school system for my kid instead of expensive private education. Bought a reasonable car instead of something that would make me look wealthier than I actually am.

4. Never forget that things can change drastically when it comes to job security: Thus I maintain a running list of ideas of potential things I can do.

5. It helps to have a partner who is employed — establishing a second stream of income. Luckily that’s the case for me.

Predicting future with certainty is impossible. Remember what they say about casinos; the house always wins. If house can always win by tilting the odds only so much slightly in their favour (51/49), maybe we can also win by just slightly playing the odds better in our careers?

As I try to adapt to the fast changing environment, I constantly keep on questioning my longer term outlook. For example, I am not sure anymore if my kid will need a university education. What will future job market, and preparing for it, look like in 4-5 years? Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean we drop everything and lose hope. Still have to battle things out, and be ready for quick changes when needed. Amongst many emotions that I am feeling, excitement is one — excitement that I get to break out of complacency, break out of inertia and start preparing goals again. Planning and executing new ideas can be exciting and fun.

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I write here about my parenting journey, the books I read, finances and how to think about it. If you liked this post — consider subscribing.

Thoughts shared are my personal opinions.

To be more specific, most of us spend most of our lives chasing money, mainly for two reasons:

1. To pay our day-to-day bills and expenses

2. To save for our retirement

It’s this second point that Bill has tried to address more elaborately in this book. Retirement has somehow become this golden age that we are supposed to save for—for when we won’t be working anymore once we are retired—and then we can use our savings to enjoy our best life. But is it so…?

Bill is preaching that the aim of life should not be to get “rich” monetarily. Instead, it should be to get the most number of fulfilling experiences under the curve of our life span, at the right age. Because once we are old, it doesn’t matter how much money we have in the bank—we will be missing two other essential ingredients required for living a fulfilling life: time and health.

A fulfilling life requires the right balance of these three components:

1. Money

2. Health

3. Time

When we are kids, we haven’t yet achieved our peak health and have no money of our own. When we are old, we have money, but we have surpassed our peak health years and have very limited time left on this Earth.

Thus, Bill suggests that we map out our life trajectory in such a fashion that we start accumulating the best experiences at the right age, when we have enough money, good health, and plenty of time ahead of us to enjoy our riches. For most people, this age range will be between 40 and 60. Bill suggests that in this phase of life, we should be intentional enough to make sure we are maximizing great experiences, instead of saving endlessly. In fact, we should optimize in such a fashion that at the end of our lives, we are close to having zero money in the bank—because what good is any money once you are dead?

The book also addresses the most commonly asked questions when such an idea is proposed by the author, such as “what about the kids?” or “won’t I go broke that way?”

Personally, this book has made me think about my own life. Here are the questions I am asking myself:

1. Have I crossed my peak health? The answer seems to be yes. I am nearing 40, and my healthiest years are behind me. I am still in good health, but not as much as I was when I was 30 and could walk for many more hours than I can now.

2. How much more time do I have left on this Earth? The average life span in my family is somewhere in the 70-80 range. That means I have crossed the halfway mark.

3. Am I prioritizing making great memories with the people I love the most? I am to an extent, but given my health and the remaining potential time on this Earth, not enough. I think I am still prioritizing chasing money, putting in a lot of precious daily hours toward that goal, instead of enjoying life in healthy ways.

Over the coming days, I will definitely be evaluating my life choices.

This book has been a great read, and I highly recommend it. I bought a copy for my wife as well, encouraging her to read it so we can have good discussions around it.

Let me know what you think of this review in the comments.

Adios!

Personally, I dedicate around 45 to 60 minutes daily to learning time at home, focusing on a number of topics. This doesn’t need to be a single session in one go—it can be broken down into smaller chunks of 15-20 minute sessions spread throughout the day.

Beast Academy for Maths

This was one of the best discoveries I have made. I was looking for something exactly like this—a course that curates interesting topics in maths, teaches them in a story-like method, and fosters problem-solving skills instead of teaching dry arithmetic (think Kumon). Before I found this curriculum, I was pretty much on my own, inventing my own curriculum by searching for interesting math puzzles appropriate for a six year old. It was hard to find such puzzles that could form a cohesive and well-structured lesson plan.

Beast Academy is a very handy resource for teaching kids mathematical problem-solving. The books are colourful, written in a comic book format, and the topic selection—with its associated problems—is fun and challenging enough to engage a child on a journey of discovering what mathematics can be.

All About Spelling

When I was a kid, all the spelling I learned over the years was pure rote learning. Turns out it doesn’t have to be that way. Despite the popular belief that English words do not have consistent rules when it comes to spelling and pronunciation, there actually are rules (though, of course, with exceptions).

All About Spelling is an excellent course for teaching kids how to break down words into syllables and how to spell syllables based on their sounds. This course comes in seven levels, progressively introducing complex words and sounds. It took me a month to finish Level One with my kid when he was only five years old, and we are now six months into Level Two, having almost finished it.

Handwriting Without Tears

Learning Without Tears has a nice selection of books to help teach your kid how to improve their handwriting. Handwriting can be quite tricky for kids, given their delicate hands and lack of fine motor control skills at an early age. As such, I decided to work on this at home to help my kid get up to speed with writing neatly.

It has been more challenging, though. Compared to maths and spelling, my child finds writing exercises unenjoyable and usually tries his best to avoid them. Lately, I have reduced the focus on handwriting practice. However, this set of books is helpful, and I intend to keep it as a resource for handwriting.

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Discovering Music Theory, The ABRSM Grade 1 Workbook

My kid has been going to piano lessons for around ten months now. As a non-musical parent who has never learned an instrument, it has been very challenging to support his lessons at home. However, with this book, I discovered that even though I don’t know how to play the piano, I can actually learn how to read music sheets with a little bit of study. This has now allowed me to at least help my kid with improving his music reading skills and guide him in his practice when he has trouble reading notes from his teacher.

Books I used but won’t recommend

Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons

When my kid entered reception at school, he was only four years old. So my very first goal for his academics was to make sure he picked up reading soon. When I searched around a little, this book came to my attention and had great reviews, so I picked it up. Over the next six months, I used this book with my kid to learn how to read phonetically.

The book has its benefits. It teaches reading using a method that does work so long as you stick with it and do small lessons on a daily basis. However, there is a downside: the book is very boring. The lessons are dry, the included stories lack any real storytelling, and there are no colours or pictures. Thus, I had a lot of difficulty keeping my kid interested in doing his lessons with me. This led to a lot of unpleasant lesson times.

I actually regret having pushed my kid through this book now. Though he eventually did learn to read with it, it came at the cost of him (and me) enduring miserable 20-30 minutes daily.

An alternative that I have now heard about—and may pick if needed again in the future—is All About Reading (from the same company as All About Spelling).

What resources you use at home?

Do let me know if you have used any of these resources and had a different (or similar) experience with them. Also, if you have other resources you used to supplement schooling, would love to know as well.

Adios!