A Gen-Z Perspective
Life, as we had seemed to know it before the mammoth overturning of events during COVID-19, has transformed into a shrouded, elusive version of what it once was. With social and digital media taking over even the outdoor facets of life, a post-Covid era has emerged in 2025. From the perspective of a young adult born smack-dab in the middle of Generation Z, I find myself constantly trapped in the undertow of distractions and self-doubt. In the grand chase of sweeping goals and ambitions we haven't even begun setting, we often omit a key ingredient of long-term, healthy success—the beautiful alchemy of consistent habits. This is where Sreejan Krishna Seelam's "5 KILLER HABITS" comes in to heal and transform you with a subtle revolution that can change your inner landscape from one of just existing to one that is full of meaning.
The book presents a marvellous concoction of the author’s anecdotes, blended in parallel with interviews of elderly citizens, taken by a thousand volunteers and a hundred and sixty interns of the nonprofit WeDidIt, spread across India. Incorporating the voice of elders and their intuitive judgements about the necessity of diverse experiences and the urge to learn and educate oneself ties the entire crux of the book together masterfully.
Sleep: A Catbird Seat To Success
The world has witnessed a steep increase in the veneration of “hustle culture” and sleepless nights, and though burning the midnight oil is idolised as a form of action only geniuses partake in, it is indeed in the bright dawns that one makes the freshest of decisions with the soundest minds. As the sun seeps into the evening sky, moral discrepancies creep into one’s deeds.
A galvanizing anecdote spoke about the author’s close friend, who was blessed with a tryst of fate during the power cuts of sweltering Indian summers. Forcing her to hop out of her boiling sheets first thing in the morning, the girl developed a habit of reading and went on to become a doctor in California!
A minimum of 8 hours of sleep is needed for every adult to go about their professional and interpersonal lives with a fully functioning mind and body. Waking up at 5 in the morning and being in bed by 8 at night may seem like the most gargantuan obstacle for the common night owl. But worry not, for even nocturnal humans have a loophole around the night snooping. From the author’s personal experience, the customary teenage policy of being a voluntary noctumbalist can be broken down with a few days of sleeplessness. Soon the circadian rhythm will knock your body clock into place, and fatigue will make you hit your pillow before your nightly Instagram doom-scroll. Sheer visualization of your goals gives way to powerful, irresistible manifestations, and soon you’ll find yourselves tumbling down your to-do lists.
Volunteering: The Ripple Effect
The absolute dearth of true, selfless volunteers, sometimes gloriously hailed as “heroes,” is scathingly visible. Heroism and the innate desire for public acclamations course through the veins of even the average Joe. But it takes a certain degree of detachment from an internal world of self-satisfaction to make headway towards a larger purpose—to give back to the universe through deeds of gratitude. In fact, this gratitude extends beyond the realms of your mortal existence through the noble cause of organ donation. By simply allowing your body to have a purpose post-mortem, one can touch and transform the lives of countless many. The art of volunteering is learnt best through baby steps, and one's childhood is the ideal place to start. Through the author’s personal school experiences, the provision of moral classes eventually led to developing a sound, secure value system. As adulthood thwacks you in the face, this watchdog-esque system provides you sweet relief from the worldly rat race.
Beyond the superficial arches of the benefits of altruism, those being mainly a sense of interconnectedness and ambiguous optimism, a longer working span has biological evidence backing its claims of lengthening the longevity of life. A stellar survey based on the concentration of centenarians living on the tiny island of Okinawa, Japan, revealed some compelling links between an individual's retirement age and their lifespan. With a purpose to live came the desire for it as well. Volunteering is the best-advised pastime for our senior adults because nothing can match its rejuvenating power!
In the harrowing face of the environmental challenges we encounter, there is an urgent call to shed our coats of contentment and proudly put on those that herald us as “planeteers.” To snap out of the cocoon you live in, you must ask yourself a simple question: Would you rather spend life in a materialistic hamster cage, hurtling towards an unknown future in a world that may or may not exist, or actually align your values to protect your home for the generations to come?
Becoming The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
A proclivity for travel opens the doors to psychological and physical journeys that help push the bounds of human limits. At the end of your comfort zone lies an overarching, unexplored universe of memories and experiences more precious than any worldly treasure. A vivid memoir from the chapter encapsulates Seelam’s bold adventures across the beautiful Jammu and Kashmir, scattered with personal chronicles of building close-knit relations even in the remotest areas of the country. A travel mishap landed the author in a small village. What unfolded further was the unfurling of a life-altering domino effect, leading him from the quaint job of a tea-seller assistant to the midst of conflict-torn Srinagar.
This insatiable and visceral hunger for self-discovery fuels the true heroes of the world—those who cast off their egos and attain liberty from the dreaded “what-ifs” one reminisces as life’s end draws closer. As for the expense aspect of adventures, you'll find yourself having a tough time weighing the pure delight of time well spent against the expenditures underneath the surface. Time and time again, the author would find himself in the lap of the Himalayas, seeking respite and revival from the cutthroat corporate industry. Yet, with each break, his morale fortitude made unbridled strides. Through the interviews with our elderly citizens, we gained insightful counsel about expanding our physical horizons.
Wisdom Betwixt the Lines
An inescapable step towards becoming the best version of yourself and unlocking your ultimate cognitive potential is to inculcate the habit of reading into one’s daily schedule. One too many of us can heavily relate to the regret and guilt we feel due to the global phenomenon of adult-onset reading block. The unadulterated giddiness of a child during library hours in school is captured beautifully in this particular half of the book, but there are forces that have extinguished this literary yearning.
Governments across the world fill academic books with propagandist filth, contaminating the minds of the youth with bias that protects their personal agenda instead of the holistic well-being of the backbones of the country. Book bans are the absolute bane of a despotic, apocalyptic future that looms not so far ahead. It is the consequence of such dire conditions that all must now be irrevocably pushed towards books, now more than ever. Parents who ditch their electronic devices and turn to books set an ideal precedent for their offspring. In addition to increasing the average IQ of the world's population, reading has been demonstrated to significantly reduce violent tendencies, enhance empathy and the ability to deal with interpersonal highs and lows, postpone instant gratification, and foster patience—not to mention masterfully handle sensationalism and propaganda!
Curiosity: A Modern Renaissance
As we near the end of the book, we must learn how to challenge the norms, particularly in the context of religious bigotry. The sheer influence of God-men and alluring cultish organizations has stifled the innovative, curious minds of this country for centuries. The youth have, from time immemorial, emerged frustrated against the cast-iron, more often than not outdated, and, frankly, classist principles their elders proudly uphold. What had been the moral code for a bygone eon is no longer applicable to the current century.
The blind endorsement of antique beliefs across centuries has distorted the original content to an unrecognizable mush of bigotry. It is essential to ignite our engines of curiosity now more than ever to debunk such nonsensical theorems and question whom we read and why we do so. It is time for a much-needed upheaval of rebels, who must charge, with or without arms, to attack the institutes of the orthodox and take a giant leap towards universal brotherhood.