Someone sent me a message last week: "I've read most of your newsletters. The action items one helped. The FAQ one changed how I think about problems. The recruiting delays one made me stop blaming my team. But I can't figure out how they fit together. What's the through-line?"
I sat with that question for two days.
Then I realized: I've been sharing the same thing from seven different angles. I just never named it.
Iqbal said:
"Khudi ko kar buland itna, ki har taqdeer se pehle, Khuda bande se khud pooche: bata teri raza kya hai."
(Build your self so strong that before God decrees your destiny, He asks for your command.)
That sounds like philosophy. Like motivation. Like something you put on a poster.
Here's what it actually means for people who ship: build a self that doesn't leak.
Duniya bhari hai un logon se jo rai ka pahad bana dein. Zaroorat hai unki jo pahad ka rai banayen.
(The world is full of people who make mountains of molehills. We need those who make molehills of mountains.)
Most operators don't fail because they lack skill. They fail because their cognitive system has leaks.
You make a commitment in a meeting. You forget to follow up. That's a leak.
You face a complex problem. You can't map all the inputs. That's a leak.
Someone asks why a project is delayed. You blame circumstances instead of surfacing the real constraint. That's a leak.
You get promoted. The skills that got you here stop working. You keep doing the old job. That's a leak.
You finish a project. But you're not sure if you're actually done. That's a leak.
You feel overwhelmed by the mountain of work. You never start. That's a leak.
You complain about a broken process. But you never close the loop to fix it. That's a leak.
Every leak is a place where intention becomes excuse. Where effort becomes entropy. Where "I tried" becomes "I left room for koshish ki gunjayish"—I left room for the excuse that I tried.
Khudi, in practitioner terms, is this: plug every leak.
The 7 Frameworks as Leak Plugs
I didn't set out to write about khudi. I set out to solve problems I was facing. But when I look back at what resonated most, I see a pattern.
Each piece shares what worked in practice to plug a different leak.
Leak 1: The Forgetting Problem
You can't follow up on what you've forgotten. Action items fall through. Commitments evaporate. You become unreliable without meaning to.
The forcing function: track everything. Review constantly. Make forgetting structurally impossible.
Leak 2: The Mapping Problem
You can't solve what you haven't mapped. Complex problems stay complex because you never modeled all the inputs. The FAQ isn't just documentation. It's a thinking tool that forces you to externalize every question the system will face.
The forcing function: write the FAQ before you build. If you can't articulate every question, you don't understand the problem.
Leak 3: The Agency Problem
You can't do revenue. You can't control what isn't an input. Most frustration comes from trying to influence outcomes instead of owning inputs. The shift: identify what you actually control, then execute those relentlessly.
The forcing function: map your input variables. Stop measuring yourself on things you can only influence.
Read: You Can't Do Revenue
Leak 4: The Overwhelm Problem
You can't act on what feels like a mountain. The work is real. But the paralysis comes from not breaking it down. "Pahad ko rai banana"—make mountains into grains. Not motivational. Mechanical.
The forcing function: decompose ruthlessly. Every large task hides 10 small ones.
Leak 5: The Adaptation Problem
The syllabus changed. You got senior. The game shifted. What worked at Level 5 doesn't work at Level 7 (using Amazon's leveling system—L5 is typically senior IC/manager, L7 is senior manager/director). Most people keep playing the old game. They leak value because they won't rebuild themselves.
The forcing function: recognize the new syllabus. Stop optimizing for tests that no longer exist.
Read: The Syllabus Changed
Leak 6: The Closure Problem
You can't finish if you don't know when to stop. The Keertimukha principle: some problems are designed to consume you. Recognition is half the battle. Knowing when you're done—when there's no koshish ki gunjayish left, no room for the excuse of effort—that's the other half.
The forcing function: define done before you start. Otherwise you'll iterate forever.
Leak 7: The Accountability Problem
Most delays aren't about recruiter effort. They're about you not tracking your own dropped threads. Blaming others is easy. Closing every loop you opened—that's hard. That's where the leak is.
The forcing function: own the entire chain. If you triggered something, you track it to completion.
Duniya bhari hai un logon se, jo rai ka pahad bana dein. Zaroorat hai unki, jo pahad ka rai banayen.
Here's what connects them all.
Each framework eliminates one excuse.
"I forgot" → forcing function for tracking
"It's too complex" → forcing function for mapping
"It's not my fault" → forcing function for agency
"It's overwhelming" → forcing function for decomposition
"I'm doing what worked before" → forcing function for adaptation
"I don't know if I'm done" → forcing function for closure
"They dropped the ball" → forcing function for accountability
Remove the excuses. What's left is khudi.
Not confidence. Not willpower. Not positive thinking.
A system that makes dropping balls structurally difficult.
When Iqbal said,
Khudi ko kar buland itna, ki har taqdeer se pehle, Khuda bande se khud pooche: bata teri raza kya hai
(Build your self so strong that before God decrees your destiny, He asks for your command.),
he wasn't talking about manifestation or self-belief.
He was talking about building a self so integrated—between what you say and what you do, what you commit and what you deliver, what you start and what you finish—that reality has to bend.
Not because you're special. Because you don't leak.
You track every input. You map every dependency. You own what you control. You break down mountains. You adapt when the game changes. You know when you're done. You close every loop.
That's not philosophy. That's engineering.
Duniya bhari hai un logon se jo rai ka pahad bana dein.
( The world is full of people who make mountains of molehills.)
Zaroorat hai unki jo pahad ka rai banayen.
( We need those who make molehills of mountains.)
You don't need motivation to do that. You need systems.
Akhir mein kya hoga?
Woh takdeer hai.
Bas yeh yakeen hai,
Ki koshish ki gunjayish,
Na kabhi rakhi hai,
Na rakhenge.
(What happens in the end is destiny, but one certainty remains: I've never left room for the excuse of effort, and I never will.)
If you want to build this version of khudi:
Audit your leaks. Which of the seven shows up most? Where do your commitments evaporate? Where do you blame circumstances instead of tracking inputs?
Pick one framework. Don't try to fix all seven. Pick the leak that's costing you the most. Start there.
Build the forcing function. The framework isn't insight. It's infrastructure. Set up the review cadence, the tracking system, the FAQ document—whatever makes the leak structurally impossible.
Run it for 30 days. Systems don't work in theory. They work when you've stress-tested them through real work.
Then add the next one. Once one leak is plugged, the next one becomes obvious.
This isn't fast. It's not supposed to be.
You're not building confidence. You're building a self that doesn't drop threads.
That takes time. But once it's built, it compounds forever.
Not the only way. Perhaps not the best way. Just what held up under real operational stress. A Pratitioner’s perspective
What's your biggest leak right now? Let me know in comments.
PS: If this resonates, here's how to help it reach more people: Share it. Repost on LinkedIn. Comment on LinkedIn to increase reach. Forward the newsletter from your email inbox. Comment on the blog where it helped you.
Let me be honest—this gives me energy (dopamine is real). But the real reason I started writing is to pay forward what my mentors and working with great people taught me.
I succeed if I positively influence more people. For that, it has to reach them. LinkedIn shares and comments get it in front of more operators who need it. Newsletter forwards and blog comments give me input and energy to keep writing.
The rest is just vanity.
~Discovering Turiya@work@life
