Divyanaras

hello i'm divya and this is a quick intro. a product marketer who quit @Zoho , packed her books, and is moving to SF to go all in on startups. 1/i write a substack called 'in the becoming' that reaches 450+ inboxes and make ig videos about questions that keep me up at night. 2/ i'll tell you which book to read next based on one sentence you say. it's worked every time. 3/ you convince me that running is not the best mental therapy? you get 10 of my books. i mean it. at the core, i'm a product + growth person. 1/ 3.5 years at @Zoho - campaigns, launches, brand, all of it. 2/ i'm a growth fanatic. i'm obsessed with the product as a founder. anything to move a product forward, i've probably tried it. 3/ i'm a US citizen and i'll be in SF next month, looking to work with founders and startups who are cracked and innovating. if you know someone, connect us, i'd love to talk :)

over the past year so much has changed -- i never meant to diversivefy my interests and portfolio like that but it just so happened that way!! - i talk about existential inquisitiveness, science and all the hard questions on my Instagram - build/ learn in public over here in x - write deeptech, philosophical essays on my Substack the reason i do this is because i feel like all of these lead me to find a bigger better meaning in doing things. i dont have a great following anywhere, but that gives me more room to making my distribution stronger and better. followers are defenitely a very nominal number, and it ofcourse doesnt matter but i'm surely not leaving any room open that gives me space to learn!! it would take time but so keeping at it. i love this era which allows us to fall flat in front of everyone, get up stronger and keep going!!

There's no failure if the goal is to experience <3

@pratik_satija Dude we all give each other the power, so proud - keep going :)))

@kylifec This is so fun!!!

highly recommend asking your local pizza shop if you can be a cashier for a day. worst they can say is no. best they can say is yes and then you invite all your friends to come watch and have a pizza party!! #forwarddeployedpizzaiolo 🍕🍕

I could say the running views today were on fire!!! 📍Dublin, ca <33

@janniksin lesfuckinggooooo, a little sad game didnt go past 4 hours :))

We did it again 🏆 Thank you all for the love and support ❤️❤️❤️

accessibility or the lack thereof :)))

some questions that I was asked this week that made me really think: 1/ how many times did you start your life over? 2/What’s your story? 3/What is a compound you’ve noticed in fiction that you could not expect in non-fiction? 4/What boring part of the city are you attracted to and you think you’ll stick to? 5/What would be the best thing that happens to me in this city? These questions are good portals for my next bad questions!!

a hot take: i think we should just stop overoptimising productivity. no flamboyant progress pages, notifications to remind you of 10 tasks, extra priority lisitng. we all know that the real work runs with continuous intent and not productivity maxxing. apart from the fact that these are cognitive overloads, they're sold as if that's how people universally operate. the most productive people i've seen operate through - hand written reminders/ task lists - simple notes/iphone reminders - obsidian (i'm a little biased because i write longform as well - daily writing/sprint writing. correct me if i'm wrong, i'd love to know.

Do we have twitter friends in the east bay here? (Dublin/fremont/ Redwood City)

@MaximeRivest Okay this is tooooo cool

What if we could do math and programming on pen and paper? This kinda blows my mind! So many possibilities!

@bolony Absolutely!!!!

@divyapshere I woke like to go back to the days of being in a classroom learning. If I had that chance again, I would pay attention and actually read the material. Something I didn’t do enough of in high school.

i won't take it lightly what my 10th-grade English textbook gave me. it made me fall in love with language as an expression, made me write national level essays, took me to places like Delhi and Japan. and that's why it sits in the middle of my digital library today <3

If this week had a theme for me I'd call it 'asker in the metamorphosis'

The janitor in cal train gave me an amazing book recom. Only in sf

This is an absurd stereotype, India has inspiring small and big writers- some entrepreneurial, inspirational, some for knowledge transfer and some anecdotal. Tagging some people that come to mind - @IshanTarunesh @kalapolish @tiramisurabhi @anuatluru @ram1ne Ofc there are so many people I know who write, many many Indian authors like @cdivakaruni, Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Geethanjali Shree!!!! India has a very very vibrant culture and has had throughout the years and I won't take it that india doesn't write!!!!

India is f**king cursed with no writing culture. Our vedas & bhagavad gita taught us that writing forces you to stop reacting and actually meet your own mind. Modern Indians couldn’t keep up with the teachings of our dharma, because ‘eww, it’s not cool to write. Let’s voice chat’. We Indians are habitual in moving through life on autopilot chasing jobs, lust, marriages and opinions handed down by the society. We scroll gossip. Argue & distract ourselves the moment discomfort arrives. There is no space for quiet reflection because modernity rewards conformity over clarity. Thoughts stay foggy, emotions stay vague and we wonder why life feels heavy. Wake the f**k up. Writing has the power to change that. It pulls the mess out of your head and makes it visible. Patterns emerge problems shrink and you start seeing the scripts you have been running on without question. In India this is rare and almost rebellious. Truth is we prefer noise and inherited stories to the discomfort of knowing ourselves. That is why so many sharp minds stay ordinary. F**k you for encouraging unexamined lives as the norm here. Start writing anyway. Just thirty minutes a day. Pen paper or phone, doesn’t matter. Just write. It might not organize your thoughts. But it will quietly start talking back to you. That’s clarity speaking. Listen to what you’ve written. You deserve that edge. Words alone never tamed anyone, writing it did.

Something I told 14 yo: People are going to stop reading books. I wish this wasn't so, but I fear it is. The silver lining in this cloud is that if you're one of the few people who still read, you'll have a huge advantage over everyone else.

one of the biggest lessons of coming to a new country to figure out life is to realise how important it is to ask 'good questions'. i was asked an incredible set of questions by different people i met in the last two weeks which acted as portals, 1/ to make me think more 2/ to make me ask a better question to the next person i meet

@rohukrs @ionkarbatra Looks so cool!!!