I have dabbled in a bunch of different sastras and read a bunch of different texts but I haven’t gotten into any depth. Further, my Inner period is scattered as I feel like I should be reading during this period but then get scattered. This is not working out. I am still on screens and it isn’t actually making me better. I want less screen time during my Inner time. Screens are the definition of Outer focus. Further, my reading has not been to internalize. So I am changing my routine to only focus on a few areas of focus.

The Limb texts should be completely read only during the Outer period. The Inner period is spent in the mind, not in the world. So no podcasts, no external distractions, what happens in the world is not important during this period.

For each of these texts:

1. Memorize. Internalize by making them a part of you.
2. Reflect First on the Verse. Then read the commentary.
3. Contemplate on them when doing your routine

Another year another tax day. I realize that tax day may come once a year, but the stress is year round. The problem I face with taxes is that I consider it as something in the past or something to do in the future. The stress is there year round. This causes all sorts of problems as I never give the taxes their due until the last minute and well I don’t end up doing a good job and likely lose quite a bit in over or under payment. This is a bit annoying to deal with.

So I am forcing taxes to be in the present. They are a daily occurrence and will be handled as part of my daily routine. Like other things that I need to plan for in the future. I don’t do well with calendars, I don’t do well with them. If I bring it to the present and am always dealing with it, it leaves my mind.

Another aspect that I am going to be doing is just paying the estimates that are on the voucher instead of trying to calculate what I owe. This will simplify my taxes as I can just pay what I owe the following April. I was attempting to get an exact calculation trying to play the estimate game, but this is getting confusing.

To be frank the way the IRS does it is actually good because it means you can just focus on growth and not about what taxes you owe. If you just pay the last year’s and you make less you get a refund, if you do better than last year then you get an interest free loan until you have to pay taxes. This is actually a great incentive structure.

The 8 Limbs of Yoga are a pretty great system for giving an end to end system for all aspects of one’s life. I unfortunately divided my life into sevaka and sakha which was supposed to be inner life and outer life which is actually not fruitful. This divides my attention from outer life and inner life even though the point is it is all the same. The outer life informs the inner life.

• I am moving the Team, Capital and Ventures under yama. yama covers Karma Yoga so it makes sense to move the sakha portions under this limb.
• parabrahman is moving under ishvarapranidhana because my goal is to bridge the worship of the East with my life in the West. Further, devotion happens with others so it belongs under this section.
• Move Samaja under Capital. My aspiration with Samaja is to understand the Capital markets. So it is migrated under the Capital section.
• I am moving the biographies section in Yama into Niyama under Gurus. The biographies are actually mechanisms for creating Bhakti and thus fall under niyama.
• Migrate sakha to yama. sakha doesn’t exist independently and is moved to yama.
• Move the sakha blogposts to yama. All the sakha blog posts are now yama blog posts.
• Got rid of the sevaka and sakha altogether. Flattening the structure. Flatting sevaka and move the writing into index
• Update daily to be flattened.
• Moved Bhakti Sutras to be under niyama.
• Move Hinduism study section under niyama to isvarapranidana
• Move guru section under study
• Merge classics in ventures under yama
• Split itihasa and Puranas into Yama and niyama

I have a collection of books I wanted to read. Books that are all over the place and don’t help with my goal or purpose. So I am no longer going to be focusing too much on just randomly reading and will focus on improving the Cycles. While this may seem like it will limit my focus and understanding of the world I do not think that is necessarily the case. The books I tend to read are within the cycles anyways, but they are focused too much on singular pieces.

My goal now is to improve the specific piece of the puzzle for a particular section. This can incorporate any reading that I want but it also drives me to focus on a few things. How this transpires is that I will be focused on reading to improve a single limb or part of a cycle that I want to improve, incorporate the ideas of what I read, and move to the next limb to improve. This means a continuous improvement of the limbs by removing the waste and simplification of each limb.

This also means that any improvements I make also need to be focused on the specific cycle.

I am in the process of deleting YouTube. Whenever I go on there I get captured by the algorithm and end up wasting hours and hours. It is getting worst and worst as there are a million things with very little value and the AI slop is making sifting through it all annoying.

This is not to say there are not valuable insights to be gleaned. I do value the asymmetrical views of Prof Jiang, Peter Zeihan, Glenn Diesen, and Firstpost and such but I feel like I can engage with them in an alternate manner. I believe the best way to make this happen is through a pull method where I get the content send to me to read when I get time.

Second, there is content that I watch over and over again that I can likely just download and have on my machine. Finally, I do not think I need to be on YouTubr for this. I can use alternative methods.

I am getting less and less value from it. I am getting pulled into junk content, I am watching feel good stuff with no real value, and in general what I watch makes me anxious and doesn’t help me feel good. In a lot of way it pushes my attention into the world as opposed to making me better.

I am going to move back to a News Reader to manage this data.

One of the things I realize about spirituality is that there needs to be distinct times where we spend time in the outside world and time when we are focused completely on the inner world. This distinction is important as trying to mix the two is a disaster. When spending time in the inner world the outside world must be avoided as much as possible. When dealing with the outside world we can also combine with the inner world.

But most of the time should be spent on the inner world. Putting order to the inner world so that when we are faced with the outer world we are quick and efficient. The inner world means family, cleaning, meditation, prayer and so on. The outer world is work and whatever is needed to interact with the world.

I have updated the tapas to incorporate how I am dealing with this changes.

On Tuesday, I spent most of the day worried that it was the end of the world. That there will be a nuclear war because of Trump’s tweets in regards to Iran. This proved to be a waste of time as Trump chickened out and no destruction happened. However, I spent a whole day worried, figuring out what my last meal should be, etc. This was all basically fruitless endeavor.

What I realize is that we are ants. We need to work and continuing doing our work and try to make that work useful and better for the world. If in the process of doing our work we get crushed or killed it really isn’t up to us. We need to just be the best at what we do regardless of the situation and circumstances.

This seems to be the true meaning behind pratyahara. To move the senses away from the world and turn inward. The world will be the world, we cannot do anything about it. Our goal is to move inward and let the world be. It shouldn’t move us and who wins and who loses doesn’t matter. Our goal is to see the circumstances and move the world towards the path we think is ideal without having the world move us in the process.

We need to be stable and rooted in Isvara the pinnacle of stability and trust Him to do what needs to be done. Getting tied into the waves is not fruitful.

Sevaka and Sakha have a cycle. These cycles are the 8 limbs for sevaka and the Capital, Team, Venture cycle for sakha. What I realize is that I must simply improve both these cycles. Each of these have simple outcomes. By simplifying the outcomes the cycle becomes easier and easier to manage.

• Sevaka. Each of the limbs needs to be reviewed and improved daily. Find any part that you are not doing well and figure out a way to improve it.
• Sakha. Capital, Team and Ventures all require optimizations. Each piece has simplified outputs.

By focusing on these two cycles the goal becomes in essence an engineering and quality problem. The outcomes for each are now known. Further, the way to approach this is through the quality equation.

• Quality. Focus on what is wrong and improve each piece. Learn as needed to improve that piece without trying to add a bunch of books for no reason. Depth is better than shallowness. Adding knowledge to improve the cycles. Each of these cycles has depth both for the individual and the business.
• Simplify. Simplicity is better than complexity. So each piece will be simplified continuously.
• Output Metric. Each piece also has a specific measurable outcome making it easy to understand how we are doing.

All of this means that the tasks that are done, etc. will be to optimize the above. The goal is to go quickly through each of the cycles and optimize as fast as possible.

The news is devastating and we are all but about to face an economic collapse. It is not an if but when at this point. But getting tied to the news is depressing because it doesn’t allow you to function. I am addicted to how things will fall apart. While this is useful for preparing for the inevitable it is also useful to not pay attention to this and let Isvara do His job.

In that regard I am trying to limit the scope of when I am going to pay attention to the news as well as my scope of worldly topics. I am in a way addicted to the learning aspect and not enough of the action aspect. I like to read more and more, listen more and more, to get more and more knowledge about the worldly affairs, but all of this makes me more and more depressed because we can’t control it in anyway. We can control the little part of life that we have, but not the grand experiment.

This will require quite a few changes.

• Minimize News. I am going to limit my news period to the sakha time meaning I am only going to read and watch news for about an 2 hours during the day at most. This will happen in the evening time when I am already not doing a whole lot of work.
• Optimize for the Real. I am going to focus more on the sevaka side of things and focus on things that don’t change. The only thing real is that which doesn’t change. That which doesn’t change is Isvara. So meditation, gardening, and other activities that are not based on the world are good enough.
• Limit Argument. I am no longer going to argue with people about politics and the news. It just doesn’t provide any happiness, I am up in arms about things, and I am just unpleasant to talk to. It is better to build a better world, than to talk about the dying of the world. I will not discuss or get into it with people.

These three things are going to be what I am going to try to address.

I have started to hate the unfettered capitalism that has lead to the private equity industry which has taken over a large portion of America. It loads up each company with debt and destroys the value of the individual business. However I do find the structure of private equity to be useful. It is an effective strategy because it separates the concerns of the capital from the concerns of the venture. While the venture needs to grow to sustain itself, it is not concerned per se with finances. It is a product that is grown independently.

In that regard I have divided the sakha into three specific components:

• Capital. Will focus on financials and taxes.
• Team. Focused on hiring and training. Standardizing experiences of the team that we hire.
• Ventures. Building specific businesses with a focus on free cash flow.

This structure allows me to have the sakha focused completely on the world. The sevaka piece can then focus on the inner world. The goal is to split the focus such that everything I do is pushed out into the the buckets of the inner world and outer world.

One of the big problems I had was that I was incorporating a lot of the outer world into the sevaka path. While yama can be considered Karma Yoga, it should be more to learn how to be a Karma Yogi not necessarily the tactical aspects. The part should be completely moved to the sakha path.

The inner world includes a lot of things including meditation, gardening, cleaning, exercise, and study. All of these are important and can all be done during the sevaka time. Overall this simplifies a lot of my goals.