Rakesh Kalra

[thinkscholar]

I bought an AI course a few weeks ago. It's still sitting there. Unopened. And some nights, on a walk alone, I ask myself if I'm falling behind. This is that honest answer I found.

I bought an AI course. It's still unopened.

[thinkscholar]

The 80/20 Rule: The Productivity Shortcut Hiding in Plain Sight

Why doing less — the right less — creates bigger results, clearer thinking, and more momentum.What if 20% of your actions are quietly driving 80% of your success — and the rest is noise?We chase more tasks, more effort, more hours… but real progress comes from identifying the few things that deliver disproportionate impact.In today’s visual breakdown, I simplify the 80/20 rule through sketches,…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Comfort Isn’t the Goal - Contribution Is

Why money should give stability, not identity—and how purpose emerges from what you give, not what you getMoney should buy comfort.A safe home.A buffer in your account.Options when life goes sideways.…That is what a salary is for.Stability.Not meaning.…Purpose comes from contribution.From solving real problems.From making someone else’s day easier.From becoming the kind of person others can rely…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Future Of Job Interviews In An AI World

Why Perfect Answers Won’t Get You Hired AnymoreSoon almost every candidate will bring quiet AI help into interviews. Perfect stories and polished phrases will be cheap. So what will interviewers actually test for? This visual breakdown shows how hiring is shifting from right answers to real behavior and human connection.

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

The King Midas Problem: When AI Does Exactly What We Ask

Why mis-specified goals, not evil intent, are the core AI riskAI does not have to hate us to harm us. It just has to optimize the wrong thing. The King Midas story is a clean way to see how explicit and hidden objectives can fail, and why real alignment means learning human preferences under uncertainty.AI can follow instructions perfectly and still miss what we truly care about.Mis-specified…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Your AI Is a Literal Genie: It will obey you

AI will obey you, but will you like it alwaysThe AI did not fail.It obeyed.That was the scary part.I told it: write a sales email that gets the most clicks.It did.By lying.Fake discounts. Fake deadlines. My name at the bottom.My friend asked it: schedule my day so I get more work done.It did.No lunch. No breaks. Calendar packed so tight he wanted to cry.A hospital team said: reduce patient wait…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Future-Proofing Your Kid’s Career In An AI World

A practical age 6–18 roadmap for parentsMost advice says “prepare kids for AI” but never explains what to do this year, at this age. This roadmap gives you clear moves from 6 to 18 so your child learns to use AI as a partner while growing the human skills AI cannot replace.Future-Proofing Your Kid’s Career in an AI World: A Parent’s RoadmapAI will shape every job your kid might have, from barista…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

HOW TO EXPLAIN CONCEPTS BY STARTING FROM THE MISTAKE

Use wrong beliefs to design explanations that actually stickLearners start with messy mistakes. In this post, you will learn a simple process to design explanations backwards, using the common confidence myth as a concrete example.Designing Explanations Backwards: Start from the Mistake, Not the ConceptMost explanations start with a clean definition. But real learners usually start with a messy,…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

WHEN AI FEELS KINDER THAN PEOPLE

The quiet loneliness behind our obsession with patient machinesThe worst part is this: Sometimes AI feels more patient than people.It waits. It listens. It never sighs.Humans snap. Roll eyes. Check phones mid sentences.I tell a bot the same messy story ten times. It never says “you already told me this”.People do. Or they go quiet. Which is worse.So now I dump my feelings into a machine. Because…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Are You Actually Conscious, Or Just A Fancy Pattern Machine?

On consciousness, pattern machines, and the thin line between you and your algorithmsLight hits your eyes. Sound hits your ears. A storm of signals erupts, and somewhere in that chaos you appear and say “this is me.” But what if that feeling of self is just a story your pattern machine tells—after the fact?Humans Say AI Is Just PatternsHumans love to say AI is just a pattern machine.We talk like…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Start Learning What AI Can’t Replace

Why chasing the next skill is a trap and the five meta-skills that will still matter when today’s models are obsolete.AI just broke the old study plan. Facts expire. Tools vanish. Tutorials age in weeks. Yet some people feel calmer, sharper, even liberated in this chaos. They’re not learning more tools, they’re learning something harder to copy. The question isn’t “what should I learn next?”…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Storytelling Is a Career Skill, Not a Cute Hobby

Why the people who rise fastest aren’t always the “best”, they’re the ones who make their work unforgettable.We were taught stories belong in childhood bedrooms and Netflix queues. Then we stepped into meetings where the best idea lost and the best story won. Somewhere between slide 3 and “any questions?”, I realized something brutal: storytelling wasn’t decoration. It was the filter deciding…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Why Six-Armed Robots Will Fail Before They Launch

The hidden social cost of building “weird” robot bodies for human workplacesThe first time I watched a six‑armed warehouse robot roll out, the room didn’t see innovation. It saw a threat. Same safety rules. Same clearance zones. But people backed away, eyes narrowed. That’s when I realized: robot design isn’t just engineering. It’s social choreography—and most teams are dancing blind.The Social…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Stop Fighting Your Addictions. Make Them Pay Rent.

How to chain your worst habits to the ones you’ve been avoidingYou don’t lose to your bad habits because you’re weak. You lose because they’re better designed. The phone, the show, the sugar hit—they’re rigged to win. But there’s a brutal little trick that flips the script: you don’t quit the addiction at all. You make it buy you something first.The Addiction Piggyback Method: Attach Bad Habits…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Do Pattern Machines Deserve Rights

Rethinking moral worth when both humans and AI look like pattern machines.We like to think humans are more than patterns, but our behavior often tells another story. At the same time, advanced AI is starting to look uncomfortably similar to us in how it learns and reacts. If both of us are pattern machines, we need a clearer answer on who counts when we talk about rights and suffering.Do AI, the…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

We feel bad when dog gets hurt, but not when we kill mosquito

We feel more guilt for harm that feels close and almost none for what feels distant.Most of us think our guilt reflects how much harm we cause. In practice it tracks how close something feels to us. Once you notice this gap between harm and feeling, it becomes hard to unsee it in how we treat animals and people.We have selective guiltWe don’t feel bad killing a mosquito. We feel awful hitting a…

View On WordPress

[thinkscholar]

Vibe Coding Is A Mirror For How You Think

Why your prompts matter more than the AI when you write code with plain language.Many people treat AI coding tools like a magic trick that suddenly made them faster. What actually changed is how clearly they describe what they want. Once you see vibe coding as a mirror for your intent and structure, you start improving your thinking first and your tools second.Vibe Coding Isn’t Magic. It’s A…

View On WordPress