I remember going to school with a bag full of heavy books, my shoulders crumpling under the weight, but my feet moved faster than ever because my eyes were fixed on the goal in front of me. But now that I’m an adult, now that I don’t have a backpack to weigh me down, why do my shoulders feel heavier than before?

There was a plan. I remember it clearly; the way children remember things they’ve never actually thought through but somehow believe completely.

Grow up. Get educated. Get a job. Buy a car. Maybe a house. Travel. Make your parents proud.

The kind of plan that comes pre-installed, like factory settings on a phone. Nobody tells you to want these things. You just do.

I spent years in school watching the adults around me and thinking: that’s where I’m headed, baby. That’s the destination. A steady salary. A life that fits inside a weekend trip, where I can buy the stupid things I see online, like that Pikachu lamp on a desk or a PS5 to waste time on. Ordinary and sturdy and mine.

But as I grew up, nobody told me the destination had moved.

The World We Were Promised (Math)

Let me tell you about 1975. In 1975, a new house in America cost $39,500. A new car drove hot on the street for $4,000.

A hundred dollars had the buying power that nearly $600 has today.

Salaries were modest, yes, but the math worked. A middle-class family could buy a home, run a car, and put food on the table without panic and fear constantly whispering in their ear

And all the numbers I am writing have been sourced either from articles or valid news outlets, which shocked me even more.

Now, the median home costs $416,900. A new car averages $49,500 (seven months of median income, on a good year). The same $100 that bought groceries for a week in 1975 barely covers two bags today. Prices have risen in fifty years. Wages have not kept pace. Not even close.

The median homebuyer age in the 1980s was 29. Today it’s 40.

A ‘Low-Hiring, Low-Firing’ Economy (Which Is a Very Polite Way to Say: Good Luck)

You graduated. Or you’re about to. You did the thing you were told would protect you. And then you looked at the market and found nothing.

You find a job, you alter your resume, you make it as perfect as possible, only to be ghosted. I have 50+ pages of emails lurking and slapping me with the Unfortunately word.

Not because there are no jobs. But because the jobs that used to exist for people like us are quietly, steadily being erased.

In 2024, over 150,000 tech workers across 549 companies lost their jobs. Another 50,000 cuts followed in the first months of 2025. The tech layoff tracker (yes, there is a tracker now, because we live in an era where we track things like this) shows that the latter half of 2025 alone saw more than 60,000 additional roles disappear, specifically as companies restructured to feed money into AI instead.

In the UK, 1.2 million graduates competed for just under 17,000 entry-level positions in 2024. In the US, youth unemployment hit 10.8% last summer — more than double the 4.3% overall rate. In India, it sits at 17%. In China, 16.5%.

We are living in the “low-hiring, low-firing” economy. Which sounds almost reasonable until you realise what it means, companies are not firing people dramatically. They are just quietly not hiring them. The door doesn’t slam. It just doesn’t open that often anymore.

Entry-level job listings have declined 15% in the past year alone. The roles that used to serve as the on-ramp, data entry, customer service, admin, junior analyst, are the exact roles being automated first. Not because companies are cruel, but because they can, and it’s cheaper. The Anthropic CEO has predicted that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.

Half.

The Cruellest Part

I, (like you probably) want a happy, stable life, where we don’t wake up every day getting mini panic attacks by watching the news, where every mistake at our jobs doesn’t feel like a hammer on the toes, where we are driving my passion, not by fear.

In the current times, there seems to be no space for people that are just ordinary. But the jokes write themselves if everyone is extraordinary, then no one actually is.

When I sat down to write this piece, I had just read the news about ClickUp firing its employees. The problem is this generation showed up, many of them the most educated in human history, drowning in student debt, watching job listings demand three years of experience for entry-level roles, updating their LinkedIn profiles at midnight, refreshing their inboxes, wondering what they did wrong.

The answer is: nothing. They did nothing wrong.

It is not a lack of intelligence. It is not a lack of ambition. It is the uncertainty of times changing faster than systems, educational, economic, and social, can absorb.

• Inflation has eroded the starting salaries so gradually that most people don’t realise what’s been taken until they try to buy something real.
• The housing-to-income ratio has gone from 3.5x in 1985 to 5.1x today.
• And the climate, the actual, physical climate, is destabilising in ways that make entire regions less livable, driving migration, driving prices, driving instability in directions no one can predict clearly.

Making enough to cover rent and groceries is no longer a floor. For a growing number of young people, it is the ceiling.

The Unease of AI

Let me be careful here. Because this isn’t a story about AI being evil. It isn’t.

AI is genuinely extraordinary. I feel it has actively helped humans reach their potential. It is rewriting what’s possible in medicine, in research, in creative work. It is giving small teams the leverage of large ones. It is solving problems that have resisted human effort for decades.

And. It is being used right now, this year, to justify eliminating jobs while companies report record profits. It is being deployed most aggressively in entry-level roles, the exact roles that used to absorb new graduates. It is restructuring the economy in real-time.

The irony (oh the irony) Gen Z has the highest AI literacy of any generation (22%) compared to 6% for the previous generation. They are the ones most capable of working with AI. And they are the ones most systematically being shut out of the market.

And mind you again, I am NOT writing this to blame on AI. I am writing this to blame the function. We, the youth, were not prepared for this; there wasn’t any curriculum, no notice, no warning on how to live in a world where being ordinary is laughed at.

What I Want You to Know

We were children with plans. Big, simple, golden plans. Cars and houses and tickets to places we’d seen in pictures. We looked at our parents and thought: I’ll do that. I’ll do that, and I’ll do it better.

We didn’t know we were inheriting a world mid-collapse and mid-bloom at the same time. A world that is falling apart in the ways that made ordinary life possible, blooming in the ways that made it strange and fast and uncertain.

I am angry. Every day I see news about the war, about the prices rising, about another economic collapse, about another layoff, about the water depleating, about the world heating up, about the money being restricted to the already rich, about the world running out of oil and running out of resources, about the glaciers melting, about the run becoming hotter, about the seasons shifting, about animals suffering, about art and culture being a mere hobby and not something our ancenstors once relied upon, about every fucking thing going wrong when it is our time to be an adult.

But here’s what I’ve learned, watching my own generation navigate this and navigate it myself too: the grief is real, and it deserves to be named. You are allowed to mourn the version of adulthood you thought you were heading toward. You are allowed to be angry at a system that promised you entry and then quietly shut you out

You are also, and I mean this without any motivational poster smoothness, still here. Still building. Still finding ways through gaps that shouldn’t exist but do.

The plan changed. You didn’t.

If this found you at the exact right moment of feeling unseen by the economy, share it with someone who needs it.

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The World When It’s Our Turn To Be An Adult was originally published in The Lean Way on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck

The sky was deep blue that day. The wind was blowing like it was waiting to carry a message far away. It was indeed a beautiful day. A beautiful day for my dad to leave.

This is not the kind of thing I usually write; this one comes from my heart more than ever. So if you’ll have, I want to leave behind a piece that will be between my father, me and you.

He taught me a lot, not in the way professors do, not with chalk dust on their sleeves and theories pinned like dead butterflies under glass. He made it legible the way a river makes a valley: slowly, without announcement, shaping everything it touches until one day you look around and realise the entire landscape was his doing.

We called him JK. Two letters. Brief and warm, the way a pulse is. Say it, and you have already begun to smile.

JK read the way lungs take in air. Not as habit but as necessity, as though the distance between him and a book was the same distance between thirst and water. Even in his last days in the ICU, he demanded to have a book near him. I have him a book and the next day when I went to meet him there as already a dog ear on the 118th page.

I asked “Dad, did you read all that in a day”
“Ofc course, can you expect any less” he answered.

We travelled with him. My sister, my mom and I.

And travelling with JK was like walking through a museum where every exhibit spoke only to you. Once, in Goa, we passed a ship run aground on the shore. Ordinary. Rusted. Stuck in sand like a tooth in a jaw.

We would have walked past it. We would have let it be what it appeared to be: wreckage, ruin, a thing no longer serving its purpose.

But JK stopped. He told us a tsunami had carried it there, a wave so enormous it lifted a ship out of the ocean and set it down on the earth like a god placing a stone. And now it could never be moved. Just like that, the ship was no longer a ship. It was a story. It was evidence of the sea’s memory. It was proof that the world is full of buried histories and that most people walk past them every day without pausing. My father was not like most people. He paused. He always paused.

Oscar Wilde once wrote that to live is the rarest thing in the world, that most people exist. JK lived. He lived in the details, in the footnotes, in the margins where others left only blank space.

And he was funny. I want you to understand this not as a quality but as a force. He was funny the way weather is funny when it changes without warning, when you walk outside expecting grey and instead find the sky absurd with colour.

One minute. That was all he ever needed. Sixty seconds to turn fury into something that tasted like forgiveness.

There was something in his laugh, in that sound, that reminded the body of its own capacity for joy.

JK rarely took a day off from work. He never sat me down to teach me this. He never delivered a lecture on discipline. He simply lived in front of me, and I watched. The way soil learns rain. The way a child learns gravity. Not through explanation but through falling and finding the ground still there.

But what he built most faithfully was shelter. He stood in front of his family the way old trees stand in front of houses during storms. He simply placed his body between us and whatever was coming. His back was broad and certain, a wall we never had to look past because we trusted what was behind it: the world, kept at bay.

A father’s back, I have learned, is the first architecture a child ever knows. The first roof. The first door. The first proof that safety is not a place but a person.

Here is where the telling becomes a wound.

He carried an illness for twelve years. Let that number sit. Twelve years. That is a childhood. For twelve years, his body waged a quiet war against itself, and for twelve years, he chose, every morning, to get up and fight it. Not with defiance or spectacle. With presence. With the stubborn, sacred act of remaining.

He was not a man of faith. He did not fold his hands in temples or bargain with gods in the dark hours. What he had was harder than faith. He had a will. He had the kind of endurance that does not come from believing in something above but from loving something beside you so fiercely that leaving it becomes unthinkable.

If there is a holiness in this world that exists outside of scripture, it lives in the body of a father who stays longer than his pain permits because his children still need the sound of his breathing in the next room.

But here is the cruelty that love does not warn you about: the longer he stayed, the more the staying cost him. The spirit whispers remain, and the body answers I cannot, and the people who love him are suspended between gratitude and agony, holding each day like a glass they are terrified to drop. Every morning he woke up was a miracle. Every morning he woke up was a measure of what it cost.

On February 6th, 2026, the cost became everything.

And yet.

In his last days, in the ICU, in that room where the light is always the same pale colour and the machines speak a language only doctors pretend to understand, I went to him. He didn’t speak to me, he didn’t move, he simply tried his best to reach out with his hand.

I held his fingers; there was no strength in them. He looked at me. And he smiled. It was a careful smile of a man conserving his strength. He smiled the way he always smiled: fully, eye to eye, as if the act of seeing someone he loved was enough to make the whole reason of being alive worth it. He left this world the way he moved through it. With a room full of love. With warmth as his final language.

I think about the things I did not say to him. Constantly. Uselessly. With a thirst that no amount of water can quench.

I wish I had said I forgive you.

I wish I had said I love you more. I said it. But not in the way it needed to be said, not with the urgency it deserved. You think there will be more time. You think tomorrow is a country you can always emigrate to. And then the border closes, and you are standing on the wrong side of it with a mouth full of all the words you were saving for later.

Grief is watching the empty side of the bed. It is his phone and his specs that lie in a locked locker buried under dust. It is his files that he took to the office every day. Grief is booking movie tickets for my family, and instead of selecting 4 seats, I will now select 3. Grief is the Netflix and YouTube accounts with the name ‘JK’. It is going out, eating something absolutely delicious, thinking Dad would have enjoyed this. Grief is feeling guilty.

Grief is the receipt. Love was the purchase. And I would not return a single item.

Dad. JK. My father. My footnote-giver. My fact-teller. My ship-explainer. My storm wall.

I do not know where you are. I do not know if where means anything on the other side of breath. But I hope the view is better from up there. I hope you can see us, your family, still standing inside the outline your body left. Still sheltered. Still learning things you taught us without ever sitting us down.

I hope you are smiling.

I know you are.

For JK. Who made the ordinary speak and the ordinary listened. February 6th, 2026.

Dear Father was originally published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What makes a good story, good?

This question was always spiralling my brain.

Why do I come out of some movies feeling like I wasted 2 hours of my life and why do some others make me feel emotions that are so complex?

Why do some headlines just grab you by your colour, making you want to read and why do some writings make you feel like you never want to stop reading the words written on the white pages?

The answer has never been simpler.

Writing is not about putting a couple of words together on the screen.

It is a form of art — a difficult form I would say. When it comes to movies you can grab people’s attention with visuals, soundtracks, loud music, cinematography, and a lot more. It is somewhat the same with paintings — you can use various colours to showcase the emotions you want to display.

But when it comes to writing there is nothing between the reader and the ink — the only thing they can do to take in the essence of the story truly is to visualise what you want them to feel — and that is tough.

So what exactly is storytelling?

It is something that has been around for ages. The kings and leaders used to have storytellers who would bring a whole new world to life right in front of them.

Aristotle said that each story has 3 parts — a beginning, a middle and an end.

Issa Rae (creator of Insecure) suggested “Create the content you want to see.”

Emma Coats (former Pixar storyboard artist), advised that the basic structure of a fairytale goes like: “Once upon a time… Every day… One day… Because of that… Because of that… Until finally…”

Kurt Vonnegut suggested plotting stories on a simple graph, showing character fortune over time. Something like the Cinderella Curve where the story rises, drops, and then rises dramatically.

I can go on with the list of advice but there is one thing very common in all of them — There is an initial problem, the problem gets solved and then the solution with aftermath.

But which advice did I follow the most? Introducing

Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

If you didn’t know, he is the creative genius behind shows like ‘Community’ and ‘Rick and Morty’

Harmon has distilled the essence of storytelling into a framework that’s both profound and surprisingly simple.

Why Stories Matter More Than Ever

In a world drowning in content, stories remain. They’re how we make sense of chaos, find meaning in mundane moments, and connect with others. Whether you’re a content creator, novelist, or business presenter, storytelling isn’t just a nice-to-have skill — it’s your secret weapon for cutting through the noise.

As a writer, I wanted to dive deeper into the skill so I started putting this model to the test — before that, here is how the model works.

Breaking Dan Harmon’s Model

Harmon’s Story Circle isn’t just another writing formula — it’s a reflection of the human experience itself. Based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey but streamlined for modern storytelling, the circle consists of eight steps that mirror the natural flow of change and growth.

The Eight Steps of the Story Circle

1. Comfort zone (You) — The character is in their normal world, with flaws, with drawbacks, with a past that has led to who they are.

2. Desire to want something (Need) — They want something, even if they don’t fully understand what. It can be a change, a goal or a journey.

3. Unfamiliar situation on unfamiliar grounds (Go)— They enter an unusual situation. It can be a new world for them, it can be a new skill. But essentially, the character starts to make a move towards their needs.

4. Adaptating in the world (Search) — They settle into the new challenges and rules. They start to take in the surroundings and grow with the flow.

5. Finding the answer (Find) — They get what they wanted (or at least they thought they wanted that until they had it)

6. Price of change (Take)— They pay a heavy price for their discovery. This is about self-reflection on the journey, on life, and on the human emotions that drove them to this change.

7. Back to where they were (Return) — They return to their familiar situation. It does not mean that their journey didn’t mean anything. It means that after all the wars fought and hours put in, they circle back to who they used to be.

8. Reformtiong (Change)— By this time your character has changed as a result of the journey.

What makes this model work?

I don’t know about you but just by reading this rough framework, I had a story in mind.

Even if I didn’t know about the character's goals, their struggles, or even their name, just by reading this framework I had a sense of hope and liberation. I felt like I was reading a motivating story about human failures, human emotions, and human life.

The Psychology Behind It

Just by reading the framework, we instinctively understand that meaningful change requires leaving our comfort zone, facing challenges, and returning transformed. It’s the pattern of meaningful experiences in our lives.

How I use this framework?

The beauty of Harmon’s Story Circle lies in its adaptability. You can use it for writing blogs, crafting campaigns for marketing, structuring presentations and so much more.

I love how you can take bits and pieces of the framework and it would still work.

When you’re writing about a personal experience you do not have to make something superficial to fit into a certain block. A lot of blogs that I write are about learnings and daily challenges, but that does not mean I will make something up just to keep the pace up.

Instead, when I get to write I start with a story map. Usually, it includes answering these questions

• Who am I writing this for?
• Where does my character currently stand? What problems are they facing?
• What goal do they want to achieve and why?
• What will they gain by achieving this goal?
• What does their journey look like?
• In the end, what did they get?
• If they achieved their goals — are they satisfied with it; if not then what has the journey taught them?

See how the framework helped me formulate a pattern for a lot of my writing.

What you shouldn’t do?

Do not rush with your words. That is the worst thing you can do to your storyline — to make it feel like it was written for the sake of writing something.

You can create visuals with your words and make people feel — use it to your power. Do not rush with descriptions.

Instead of saying “He was an introvert who had trouble speaking to people” you can say “He hid behind kitchen counters at parties and shied away from people’s eyes when in a group. When spoken to, he would say what was required and rush the last words of his sentences.”

Start treating your characters like real people.

Remember, the Story Circle is a guide, not a cage. Use it to structure your thinking, but don’t let it restrict your creativity.

Your story awaits

Remember, every great story starts with someone in their comfort zone who dares to want something more. Maybe that someone is you, reading this article, ready to transform your storytelling. The circle is waiting — what story will you tell?

Your audience is waiting for a story that only you can tell, and now you have the tools to tell it well.

The Writing Model That Got Me 100K Readers was originally published in The Lean Way on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Notion template for all your needs

Let me paint you a picture of my favourite platform— Notion!

Ever had that moment where you’re juggling fifteen different apps, three to-do lists, and somehow still losing track of everything? Well, that was me before I stumbled upon Notion. And trust me, if you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re about to have one of those “where has this been all my life?” moments.

Think of Notion as that super-organized friend who somehow keeps everything together — you know, the one who never forgets a birthday and always has the perfect restaurant recommendation. For startups running on coffee and dreams, it’s like having a virtual office manager without the heavy price tag. Content creators, I see you too! Imagine having your content calendar, sponsorship deals, and that brilliant 3 AM idea all living happily under one digital roof.

Notion isn’t just for the serious stuff. Want to keep track of every Marvel movie you’ve watched (and ranked by how much Chris Evans appears)? Done. Planning the perfect date night because you forgot your anniversary is coming up? Notion’s got your back. House hunting and need to remember which apartment had that gorgeous kitchen but terrible bathroom? Yep, there’s a template for that too!

Being a Notion creator, here are my 10 favourite templates that can save you hours. The more complex stuff — those integrations and formulas — they’re already built in, ready for you to just use

5 Productivity Templates:

1. Easlo’s Second Brain

Second Brain is a proved methodology that has helped people get the best out of their systems. It focuses on becoming more productive and becoming an improved version of yourself. Second Brain is a Notion system that helps you capture your notes, tasks, projects, and resources in one central hub. It comes with a minimal aesthetic, access to a Notion second brain community and multiple databases.

2. Kaizen System:

Kaizen is a Japanese term that translates to “change for the better”.

The Kaizen productivity system focuses on making small, incremental improvements that help you achieve more, one step at a time. Say goodbye to scattered notes and disorganized resources. With our Kaizen Template, you can conveniently store and access articles, books, and videos that inspire and guide your journey.

3. Zen To Done (ZTD) Dashboard

ZTD is a productivity framework by Leo Babauta that has helped people become their better selves. It is an add-on to the GTD techniques and improves everything that lacks GTD may miss on. It is a proven method using which you can build a system for yourself the Zen way. The best part is that is does not require too much tracking or time taking. It is a simple yet effective method that can make you more disciplined.

ZTD technique includes
1. Focusing on 1–2 habits rather than bundling up multiple and missing out on them.
2. It asks you to identify major tasks and divide them into smaller MITs (Most Important Tasks) that should be done daily.
3. In this process you collect your thoughts and focus on a few but important tasks as a whole and do not give divided attention to a list of tasks.
4. In ZTD, you complete your task in a stress-free manner and not only what is of utmost importance.

4. Goal Tracker:

A goal-tracking dashboard in Notion provides a centralised and visual overview of your goals, enhancing productivity and accountability. It allows you to define and track key objectives, set milestones, and monitor progress in real time. With customisable layouts, you can categorise goals, assign deadlines, and attach relevant resources. Additionally, the ability to visualise progress through charts and metrics enables effective decision-making and motivates you to stay focused on achieving your targets.

5. Personal Dashboard:

In a world full of minimal black-and-white templates, choose to be colourful.

It is a homepage template that can accumulate all your pages in one single page. You’ll be able to manage everything such as Habit Tracker, Daily Task Manager, Project Manager, Calendar view, Weekly Goal Planner, Journaling Space, Finance Tracker, Habit Tracker, Movie + Book Keeper, Travel Planner and so much more.

2 Content Creation Templates

1. Content Creation OS:

Content OS is a ready-to-use Notion system to help you plan, write and scale your social media content. The biggest problem a content creator faces is planning and writing content. This OS solves all of those. Here you can manage your schedules, keep a space for idea dumps, have a space for content creation and even organise them for analysis. This content OS gives the creator the power to become more serious and organised with the process.

2. Para Drashboad:

Discover the best Notion template to capture, organise, and prioritise your to-dos, designed for users seeking an effective productivity system, to-do app, task manager, or project manager. PARA is a productivity method suggested by David Allen that has taken the world by a wave. A Notion dashboard inspired by Tiago Forte’s PARA Method organizes your life into four databases: Areas, Projects, Tasks, and Resources.

3 Small Business / Freelance Templates

1. Ultimate Product Management OS:

This dashboard not only eases your work but also improves your efficiency. A product management dashboard in Notion is a valuable tool for product managers. It provides a centralised hub to track and manage key product-related information such as roadmaps, feature backlogs, user feedback, and team collaboration.

With customisable templates and integration capabilities, product managers can gain real-time visibility into project progress, make data-driven decisions, and effectively communicate with stakeholders. The intuitive interface and collaborative features of Notion make it a powerful solution for organising and streamlining product management workflows.

2. Small Business Kit:

A small business requires multiple templates. Employee management, client trackers, finance tracker, project manager, key metrics dashboard and what not. How are you going to gather all these templates in once go? Notionway is a creator that has created a Small Business Kit for all those in need. You do not need to search for templates else where but find it all in one place with one investment.

3. Freelance OS:

The freelance dashboard in Notion is immensely useful for freelancers. It provides a centralised hub to manage projects, clients, and finances. With customisable templates, freelancers can track tasks, deadlines, and progress. Additionally, it offers a platform to store important documents and collaborate with clients.

The dashboard helps freelancers stay organised, improve productivity, and gain valuable insights into their business. It streamlines workflow, enhances communication, and ultimately empowers freelancers to thrive in their careers.

Thank you for reading my content. I also create notion templates for developers, students and productivity fanatics. I have started a newsletter where I will share more intricate content with an audience that is serious about building passive income and being productive. There I will share tips on becoming better with Notion, building an online presence and ultimately starting a passive income.

Give your dream a chance.

Join the 3,900+ people already on the list to learn more about becoming productive and starting their journey as a digital nomad. Decoding Solopreneurs

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10 Templates That Save Me 5+ Hours was originally published in The Lean Way on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.