This is going to be an exciting year ahead. So before that, consider this my step zero of something. I want to call this the convergence point. This is where I just want to start converging towards something.
All the while, the previous five or six years have been like an emergence—the emergence of different characteristics in myself. Ups and downs in terms of well-being, consistency, learning, and building skills. It's been very freestyle. I would say it's emergence, actually. I was able to explore, understand, and really experiment with my own personality—what I like, what kind of creative ability I have, what sort of person I am, how I'm able to build good relationships with friends and family.
And I felt that this is a perfect point to converge into something. To define, to build, to strengthen, and to take a very good leap.
A Little Background
So yeah, that's why I'm writing this down. Myself, Prabakaran Chandran. Currently I'm doing my Master's in Data Science. Ironically, I'm doing my Master's after having worked for six and a half years in the industry, especially as a data scientist and machine learning engineer.
On the other side, as a human being, I have interest in learning about human beings. At the same time, I want to paint. I scribble a lot. In the same day, I binge-watch crime thriller movies, then cook my meal—different sorts of things I cook—then go on like two and a half hours of video call with my mom, reflect a lot together. We question ourselves, simulate certain scenarios throughout our conversations. Then I make some friends and think a lot about the past and future, trying to ground myself in the present. It's a lot of retrospection.
Anyhow, so this is December 31st, with a very fresh mind and perspective. I just want to write this from my heart without any sugar-coated things. I just want to vent, express, reflect.
The Five-Year Vision
Consider this a stepping stone for my next five years.
The next five years: I want to have a kid probably, with a caring and pragmatic life partner. I want to have fulfilled all my parents' dreams, built a very good house for them. I want to have built a very good company—company as in a life partner, a life companion, as well as a company as in a problem-solving venture. And the other companion is a kid who should be a very good companion to my sister's son, Leo. My kid and my sister's kid should see this world without much of the struggles that I have faced, that I've struggled hard to overcome.
I just want to make this world very easy for them to start living. For me, conscious living might have taken 20 or 25 years. For them, I want to make it happen as early as possible. I don't want to spoon-feed or make everything possible for them, but I want to give them the confidence.
Running My Own Show
Meanwhile, what convergence do I want to make?
One thing I keep having in my mind: I want to run the show. Sometimes I feel it's difficult to work under very saturated leadership—not leadership as human beings, but leadership as a principle. Because that is not allowing me to be a free agent as a system. Sometimes it restricts a lot, not giving democracy to express ideas. Sometimes they are highly driven by common or collective emotion and narration.
For example, the idea or concept I bring to the table might be very good in terms of books, theory, or unbiased practice. But the problem is there are people who are biased, systems that are biased, disturbances from the outside creating such reluctance. So these are all things I shouldn't worry too much about. Whatever I build or whatever efforts I make should be agnostic.
For example, when I express my thoughts and ideas on LinkedIn or Twitter, most of the time it's not reaching people or not very relatable because something is missing. Maybe I'm talking at a very high level or in a very distant form from others. So I started realizing maybe I should play with this bias in the narration instead of trying to go away from it.
The other thing is, over the years—from the Mu Sigma days itself—I have observed that I have the confidence and the capacity to build a company, a product, or a business.
And another thing: the preparedness need not be on everything, on some checklist of things. Even if I go by a checklist, I can say I've managed teams, built products, tested things, done user experience work, analyzed problems end-to-end, understood supply chains. I need not wait too much for everything to get validated. That's something that keeps pestering me or stopping me from doing something big. Because I always want things to be perfect—at least by the system I built in my mind—which may not be perfect but is very rigid, even if half-baked. So that's why I'm not able to build something people can really appreciate.
That's why I started feeling: even if it is bullshit, even if it is ridiculous, let's start building. Let's make the world use it and observe from that.
Utility Over Theory
Another thing: theories and whatever we learn need not be in the storefront. Because people cannot really relate to that. Our systems may not relate to that. The ecosystem we have—hiring, products, consumers, businesses—everything is not going to have the same signal-receiving capability or understanding capacity to recognize sound theory.
No, they are not going to be able to. So they just see utility and value.
That's something I want to focus on. Anything, right? Even if we create or write or build or sing, it should have utility and value that people are able to see as water or food that quenches their desire, their thirst, their hunger.
So these are the things I could keep as an aligned, corrected perception about the consumer or materialistic world.
My Fears
The second thing is my fear.
Luckily, for the last six years, my fear is not at all about getting a job, getting a hike, getting a performance bonus, getting some approval or admission. That has never been my fear. The only fear is my health and my family's health.
I'm tackling my chronic condition—pancreatitis. Luckily it's in a dormant condition, so nothing to worry much about in terms of theory, biology, and how things have progressed with others who have the same chronic pancreatitis. I have clarity about it, but still, that's the only fear I might have. I don't have fear of collapse of my wealth or my morale.
Because all the 27 years, my morale has never collapsed. I never cheated anyone. I never cheated any system. I never played with people's emotions. I might have been incompatible with people's emotions, but it's not playing or destroying something.
For example, in college, the first two years, I was not at all compatible with my roommates. I had my own norms. I never wanted to share my things. I always wanted my own space. I fought a lot with my current close friend—we were like Tom and Jerry—but now we are close friends. I could say he's my friend for life. This is how things have evolved, but all the while, the baseline was always built on good values.
The curiosity about the field—people, systems, intelligence, behavior—has kept on increasing and becoming more mature. I'm prioritizing things. For example, now I just want to prioritize only AI and problem-solving.
All the other things—complexity science that sparked my curiosity since it was introduced during a town hall, control systems and system sciences from my bachelor's degree, people's psychology and behavior from my first project on agent-based modeling—these all sparked my interest and curiosity. But they were equally distributed, an amalgamation of focus.
But now, everything has 20%, but 80-85% of the focus is going to be on constructive destruction of solutions. How we can redefine solutions—for example, mindfulness or health, or how you can think about cost-effectiveness or revenue growth management of a supply chain company or a CPG company. It's going to be a redefinition of problem-solving through AI.
My Character
The personality or character I built over time is harmless and good. I may not sound very adamant or have the kind of attitude that most successful people in tech might have. But I don't see myself developing that, and that's fine. Personality is something I don't want to adapt or borrow from someone because they look smart and charming. I don't see that suiting myself.
With respect to friends, from their point of view, I may be very curious and sometimes very idiotic. You can easily feel that from my Instagram stories. If you want to connect with me on Instagram, just bear with my stories because they're like my journal. I post those stories for myself first of all—I just want to keep seeing myself. I'm so obsessed with me.
That word "obsession" is something I learned from one of my colleagues in the first few months of Mu Sigma internship. She called me and said, "You're so obsessed about yourself—I could see from your Instagram or WhatsApp stories." That's the first time I learned that word. I'm from Tamil medium for 12 years, and my English vocabulary is not that great. I'm more expressive but not so rich in vocabulary. That I can accept, but maybe let's improve that.
Before "obsession," I had this word "enthusiasm." In first year at St. Joseph's, people used to call me Enthu, Enthu, or Enthusiast, because enthusiasm is something that defined me. In one English class introduction, I said, "I'm Prabakaran, I am crazy." This "crazy" might have some negative meanings too, but I see that obsessiveness, curiosity, crazy, enthusiasm—they all have some shared meaning. That is what I'm still having, with a pinch of maturity of sorts.
This is what's going to guide me for the next five years. Like how Indira Gandhi used to come up with five-year plans for India, I'm just trying to see how my five years should be.
Consistency is the Master Key
With respect to 2026, I should say one thing for sure—even for you: consistency is the key, is the master key. It's a trump card.
You see LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. If we define success as money, fame, power, satisfaction, satisfying desires and dreams of life—anything, it's very subjective—even if you take any definition, consistency is the thing that played.
The medium can be anything: journaling every day, cooking new things, learning a program or DSA, singing, cooking, baking, skating, strength training. Anything. If you define success as anything, to reach success you need a medium and you need consistency. That's it.
How you do that every day, every week, every alternative day—that's what we need to do. One thing consistently. Spectating or waiting for social validation is not going to work out.
As far as I could see in 2025, or if we reflect on the last couple of years: people with all tribes, all personalities, all principles have achieved it. You can see Mamdani wins, Trump wins, Narendra Modi wins. I'm not advocating for what is right or wrong principle, but they have principles. They meticulously, deliberately delivered their actions. They worked hard. They were consistent.
Or take any startup that has gone for some very good series funding—they had consistency. It's not that they were perfect. Perfectionism doesn't matter that much for success, to be honest. Not all persons are perfect, not all systems are perfect, not all principles are perfect, not all practices are perfect. But still, they deserve success because they are consistent, iterative, reciprocative, reflective.
When we say consistent, we are not going to make the same mistake every day, but we are going to do the same thing with iteration, with alteration. Today I'm recording this. Tomorrow I'll record the same thing but with improved things. That's what I could see.
You might feel like, "Okay, this is not all necessary or needed things." Fine. At least I could trigger that.
Because I'm saying—you can see a random middle-aged male from a very far, far down south village in Tamil Nadu. He was consistent in his short video content. He becomes popular, he gets opportunities, he earns more than what he was earning, and he's able to satisfy his family's needs. That's success to him, to his requirement in life. Previously he was in debt, but now he was able to save more money, build a house, support his daughter or son to achieve more, support his family.
Same goes anywhere. A party that was nothing—not even an opposition party 10 years back—but consistently, meticulously, deliberately worked hard every day, grabbed every opportunity, never worried about success or failure. Now they're waiting for the second term. They have high probability of winning the second term in a state.
Take a random TikTok personality who started in the 2020s and now has millions in content creation. A random kid from an undergraduate, a remote college in India—now he builds a company.
At the same time, take me—who didn't even know what data science was on December 31st, 2018. Who didn't even know what machine learning was at all. But now, December 31st, 2025, seven years down the line, he's in a pivotal moment that could build a company, has satisfied his dreams, has solved some of the fundamental and long-term problems of the family, and now dreams big.
Maybe this might be a very boring six years thing, but I have a lot of things to tell. I just wanted to keep it short for this.
So that's the thing: consistency is something I want to bet on. Focus is what I want to bet on. That's what I call convergence. Because now I have this consciousness about what I need to focus on.
Keeping My Other Sides Alive
The other thing is I don't want to kill my other personalities—cooking, drawing, some of the creative traces I have. I just want to keep building them, make them streamlined whenever I get time.
And I want to read a lot. Write a lot.
If I could ambitiously set something like, "Okay, I'll build a billion-dollar company in the next five years"—let's manifest. Who knows? At least, a company that makes a million in a month. Consider 15 million annual recurring revenue, five years down the line. At least.
Transforming My Village
I used to tell my mom: if I earn much, I want to do something for my village. I want to completely transform my village. At least that I want to do.
See, I come from a village where we had nothing, nobody to guide us properly. The village doesn't have a personality at all. It's just a very usual village—people go to work, do something.
But if you see privileged people who say "I'm coming from a village," they had that charm and personality from the pre-independence era itself. They had some good routine. They had meetups, they read, they helped each other.
I want to bring such flavor to my village. I want to build some kind of mindfulness center. I want to help the students pursue their creative side, their sports, gyms. I want the middle-aged men to not just pass their time in tea shops but develop reading habits, participate in cycling, get access to good hospitals, develop awareness. Good music, South Indian Carnatic kacheris. I want them to develop new interests in music, food, well-being, fashion.
I want to contribute to the lifestyle—a change in lifestyle. We deserve it, right? We come from absolutely nothing there. We deserve the change.
And I hope that I'll be able to make such changes in the next five years. My eyes are starting to tear up, but still, I could see it. I could visualize it.
Living Well
Either in the US or in Europe, I just want to live healthily, live with the same curiosity, the same kind of positive view about this world. Because I'm such an optimist.
Sometimes my friends fear about jobs or admissions or some issues. I always say: things will go right. Because it's always like that. Life is like a stream, a river. It starts very fresh. Sometimes it gets contaminated or faces destructions, disturbances. Then over time, when it flows through, things settle up—it becomes very clear.
That's how I truly believe my life has to go on.
On Connections and Friendships
I just want to share my best wishes for the upcoming new year. And I wish to connect with a lot more people—not just professionally, but more on care, friendship, very good connections. We can talk about a lot of things.
The thing I've realized is: I have a friend who runs a company called Nunnari Labs. We connected through LinkedIn five years back. Now we are very good friends. We talk about building, learning, helping others, how we can build communities, life struggles, business problems. For me, friendships and connections happen very naturally, very subtly. Not deliberate. They take their own time.
Now also, I found a friend, Surya. He's in NYC and did his Master's at Carnegie Mellon. I really felt happy after I met him because I found a person who I can say is my friend. And we are becoming friends.
On Bad Judgments
All I need is good vibes from people. Because sometimes one thing that disturbs me, gets me into a disturbing loop, is bad judgments about me.
There's actually someone in my batch, MS Data Science batch. He didn't even mention it to me—he just mentioned it to somebody else. "He's so annoying, so disturbed" after seeing my posts on LinkedIn as well as some messages I shared in WhatsApp about learning or call for collaborations. And it was so, so bad. I felt bad.
But fine. Because I have this understanding: people are always biased, and their judgments are always flawed. We cannot control that.
But yeah, I'm being honest here. Two things disturb me: bad judgments and people who try to gaslight me. There are very good persons who give advice, but instead of giving me clarity or improvement, sometimes the advice makes me feel very ashamed.
After a lot of reflection, I've identified these two things. And as per my perception, they've always been wrong. The prejudice that made me feel bad, the advice that felt like gaslighting or had some ulterior intent—they are fundamentally wrong. So I don't call them bad judgment or bad advice anymore.
Taking Care of Myself
Having said that, I also need to walk a lot. Be active. I tend to continue sitting at my desk for 12-13 hours, then continue on my bed reading something or binge-watching crime thrillers. I'm so obsessed with crime thrillers actually. I binge-watch for three or four hours sometimes on weekends.
I need to reduce that. I need to walk a lot, think a lot. But this is bad timing—New York winter is something very bad for walking. Maybe I need to get adjusted. Maybe I should go in the morning.
Closing Thoughts
I guess I've given some fair idea. This is what I could reflect. I've covered almost all these things. It's like 40 minutes of ranting.
If you could relate to something from this, I'm happy. If you have any comments, if you have a piece of advice that could help me, or if you want to share some thoughts—anything—I would really be happy.
I want a lot of friends. I want good connections. I don't want to be alone in New York, feel alone. Because the next five years are going to be great things.
Let's help each other. Let's care for each other. Let's be real friends, connections, something great.
More to come. I'll be writing every day on tech, on industry, on business, on AI. That's why this particular one.
And yeah, I promise this is going to be consistent. I have done a lot of scattered things. But as I agreed, as I confessed—
Convergence starts now.
Once again, I wish you a very happy, progressive, fulfilling year ahead.