Designing a Life

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While design and design thinking are important parts of my life, they are a fraction of how I understand life and its complexities. They are part of a larger picture where multiple factors, life and its experiences, help shape how I think, live, and experience the world. They help me make choices about what I should allow into my life and what I should reject. Each dislike is as important as what I like. These choices, some deliberate, others intuitive, help design me, myself.

Some might call it a persona. I think of it as a personality, or one true persona, that permeates who I am and why I am, without words. These are silent, ambient signals. They emanate from my clothing, my writing style, and the spatial organization of my living space. It might seem simple and obvious. And it is. But only after a lifetime of living and experiencing life have I distilled my true personality.

Given that we are living in the dawn of the AI age, the colloquial way to describe this is to say that ‘I’ve tuned my personal algorithm.’ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry captured this well when he said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

I started to think about the idea of “self-edit” when reflecting on life’s events and how they led me to photography, and how I have evolved as a photographer. I have transitioned from taking photographs that were predictable and technical to someone who is trying to find a way to capture what I’m feeling and then share it with others.

This process of self-editing mirrors my evolution as a photographer. I became a photographer out of sheer chance. I was happy taking snapshots with my iPhone until a photographer friend suggested that I get a camera. It came on the heels of the shutdown of GigaOm. I didn’t want to write, and yet, I needed a new creative outlet.

What began as a chance creative outlet transformed into a walking meditation on choice and refinement. A conversation with visual artist Susan Burnstine sparked a fundamental shift in my approach. I became “increasingly comfortable with the idea that my work is less about revealing and more about the mystery. It is about imagination—mine and yours. It is about an emotional state, not technical perfection.”

Each photograph represents a deliberate choice about inclusion and omission. It mirrors how I have curated my life. I only got there after a heart attack forced me to confront the fact that I had very limited time on this planet. I asked the question, “Are you living your life by a set of rules and regulations set by society?”

Photography, to me, is a metaphor for everything about my life. I have spent most of my life making mistakes to find out who I am, why I am, and what I am. The how of “I am” is the execution of those lessons, and it is an ever-evolving aspect of learning and growing.

My childhood in Delhi taught me the value of finding clarity amid chaos. Growing up there meant navigating a sea of “aural and visual noise” where sounds “whiplashed between cacophony and symphony.” Early sensory overload has shaped my aesthetic sensibilities. I have gone in the opposite direction.

The opposite of chaos is order. For me, this is a simple desire to create order through careful selection, whether in images or in life. It explains why I prefer the shorter, punchy style of writing a blog, even though I was equally comfortable writing for magazines.

My rejection of aural noise is why I prefer ambient music that eschews it. The cacophony of colors that assaulted my eyes in my formative years is what pushed me towards monochromatism. It is reflected in the clothes I choose, how I render my photographs, and the images I capture.

This selective approach extends to every aspect of my existence. The apps I choose to use, the books I keep on my shelves, the way I organize my digital life. Each decision reflects a broader philosophy of intentional living. Even the technology I embrace or reject is part of this careful curation. It is a balance between innovation and necessity. VisionPro is a good illustration of that balance. I much prefer it as a medium of visual entertainment than a big-screen television.

In William Gibson’s words, “I create my own personality. Personality is my medium.” Similarly, you can see who I am through the words I write, the photographs I capture, the people I socialize with, and how I behave. It is reflected in the clothes I wear and how I dress. I eschew fashion for a version of my personally edited self. It’s not because I don’t like fashion; I absolutely love everything new and novel. It is just that I know what I like. It is reflected in the brands I prefer and the places I patronize.

My big glasses say I want to see the world in HD vision because there is so much to see. My fluid clothes that are not defined by the vagaries of modern fashion are less about style and more about where I am in life. And my love of the color blue is because I believe it is the color of the proletariat, and no matter how far I am from my roots, they will always be there anchoring me.

I write all this so you can understand how I see the world. This is a good explainer for you to understand why I love some things and some brands. As Paul Rand put it, “Design is the method of putting form and content together.” This is a framework that allows me to very quickly identify people, products, and brands with whom I share an implied kinship.

We live in an age of endless choices and convenient distractions. It is hard to fight the tyranny of too much. The only way to do it is by learning to know what to reject. This framework is not just about personal preferences, but it is also a survival strategy. It’s about finding clarity in chaos. It is about knowing what is authentic in an era of artificial everything. Who and what are meaningful connections? How do I make sure my increasingly limited time is not wasted on superficial interactions?

My choices are a shield and a bridge. They help me architect and design the life I want. For me, not for others. And it starts by constantly learning about myself.

PS: I know I have not shared photos in a long while. Here are some recent photos from around town in San Francisco.

May 18, 2025. San Francisco