Meetings are one of the best places to study people. Who listens and who waits to speak.Who takes responsibility and who deflects it.Who seeks clarity and who hides behind complexity. After years of meetings across universities, corporations, government agencies, and startups, patterns become obvious. People rarely change styles. They repeat them. Understanding this helps you choose collaborators wisely and avoid unnecessary friction.

Speed can be expensive. Launching too early.Pushing before readiness.Forcing alignment. Timing is invisible until it is missed. The doodle character hesitates here. Not fearful. Just aware. Momentum without timing creates friction.

Big promises are easy to make. Small signals are harder to fake. Who shows up repeatedly.Who follows through quietly.Who remains steady when things slow down. The doodle character notices footprints rather than banners. Signals age well.Promises don’t always.

At some point, you stop trying to predict everything. Not because you stopped caring.But because you understood the limits of control. Uncertainty stops feeling like a threat.It becomes a condition of the work. The doodle character walks calmly here. Shoulders relaxed. Acceptance brings calm.Calm improves decisions.

I did not expect this feeling to arrive so quietly. No dramatic moment.No emotional breakdown.Just a soft question that kept returning while I stared at my screen. Should I stop writing eBooks about IoT, startups, and entrepreneurship? I have written several eBooks over the years. Some came from years of experience building platforms. Some from scars earned while running a startup.

Early in my career, I saw constraints as obstacles. Not enough budget.Not enough people.Not enough time. I thought freedom would make better decisions easier. The opposite turned out to be true. Constraints force clarity. They strip away fantasy. They demand prioritization. When resources are limited, you cannot afford vague thinking. Some of my best decisions were made under pressure, not comfort. Constraints taught me what truly matters and what merely looks good in presentations.

Short-term thinkers chase milestones. Launch dates.User numbers.Announcements.Visibility. Long-term builders notice different things. They notice small inefficiencies repeating themselves.They notice how energy shifts during meetings.They notice who stays engaged when progress slows. They care less about applause and more about durability. I have learned that the most important signals rarely appear on dashboards. They appear in behavior. In how teams react under pressure. In how customers behave when no one is prompting them. Time reveals what speed hides.

The journey of Favoriot, from its earliest days to where it stands today, mirrors The Lord of the Rings Trilogy in a way that feels less like fantasy and more like lived experience. Not because of epic battles or dramatic villains, but because both stories are really about endurance, pivots, and choosing to continue when the original plan no longer fits the road ahead.

Today (1 January 2026), I’m thrilled to share something that’s been quietly taking shape over the past year. My latest eBook titled "Favoriot - The Journey of an IoT Startup" is now officially released and available for free download. You can get your copy right here: Writing this book was not a sprint. It was more like those slow early mornings when you sit with a cup of coffee before the world wakes up and try to make sense of what you’ve learned, what you’ve unlearned, and what still puzzles you.

Advice is often clean. Reality is not. Advice does not account for context.Or timing.Or people.Or fatigue. I have learned to listen for patterns, not prescriptions. What worked for someone else may collapse under a different set of constraints. And that does not mean anyone is wrong. The doodle character keeps walking through uneven ground. Same pace. Same posture. Good judgment is not borrowed.It is built.

There is a weight that comes with being the final decision-maker. Not the glamorous kind people imagine.The quiet kind. Decisions that affect people’s time.Their income.Their confidence. You learn that delay is sometimes a decision. So is saying no. So is choosing not to chase something shiny. The doodle character stands still here. Hands by the side. No drama. Just responsibility. This weight never disappears.You simply learn how to carry it better.

This year felt like a ride that neither my coffee nor my journal could have prepared me for. When I looked at the blog stats for 2025, I couldn’t help but smile and go “Wait… we actually did that?” The numbers tell a story of momentum, curiosity, and growing engagement from readers all over the world. Let’s take a step back together and walk through what happened with the blog this year, what content resonated most with you, and where we’re heading next.

Early on, every opportunity felt loud. Emails marked urgent.Meetings framed as once-in-a-lifetime.Partnerships dressed up with big names and bigger promises. Back then, speed felt like wisdom. If something moved fast, it must be important. Experience slowly rewired that instinct. Today, when an opportunity appears, I don’t react immediately. I read it. I reread it. I sit with the discomfort if something feels off.

I still remember a time when every opportunity felt loud. Emails with subject lines screaming “URGENT”. Invitations packed with promises. Partnerships that sounded big just because the logos looked familiar. If something moved fast, talked fast, and felt urgent, I assumed it must be important. Back then, my instinct was simple. Say yes first. Figure it out later. These days, my reaction is quieter.

I picked up The Favoriot Way: A Life Built on Curiosity and Courage by Mazlan Abbas at a time when I felt stuck between ambition and uncertainty. The title alone sounded like something a seasoned founder might write after years of success. What I didn’t expect was how personal, honest, and relatable this book would feel from the very first page.

There was a time when I thought saying “yes” was the mark of progress. Yes to meetings.Yes to collaborations.Yes to pilot projects.Yes to opportunities that sounded exciting on paper. I told myself this is how momentum works. You say yes, doors open, things move. Then one quiet evening, after another long day, I stared at my notebook. It was full.

There was a time when I thought visibility was the game. More views.More likes.More stages.More mentions. I watched founders celebrate follower counts like revenue. I saw announcements dressed up as progress. I saw loud success everywhere. And quietly, I asked myself a question I did not say out loud. “Is this what winning looks like?” That question stayed with me longer than I expected.

I have asked myself this question more times than I care to admit. Why am I so busy, yet some days it feels like nothing truly moved forward? There were periods in my life when my calendar was full, my inbox overflowing, my phone buzzing nonstop. Meetings stacked on meetings. Slides prepared. Emails replied. Deadlines chased. I went home tired. Sometimes proud.

Most people think startups teach you speed. Move fast. Execute faster. Ship now. Fix later. I used to believe that too. Then I actually ran one. And somewhere between missed targets, delayed deals, unanswered emails, broken assumptions, and quiet months where nothing seemed to move, I realised something unexpected. Running a startup did not teach me speed first. It taught me patience.

Some years shout. They announce themselves with launches, awards, headlines, travel photos, packed calendars, and endless updates. They feel loud even before they are over. Then some years barely whisper. No fireworks. No dramatic milestones to post about. No big celebration dinners. Just long days, repetitive work, silent thinking, and a calendar that looks strangely empty from the outside. For a long time, I feared those quiet years.

I am writing this ten days before 2025 comes to an end. When I look back at the year, it does not feel loud. It does not feel dramatic. It feels focused. Demanding. Grounded. A year where most of my time, energy, and thinking revolved around one thing only: Favoriot. If I am being honest, 2025 was not a year of balance.

One sentence. “Is this all?” That question did not come from failure.It came from success that felt… incomplete. On paper, things looked fine.Titles. Meetings. Progress updates.Calendars full. Slides polished. But something kept pulling at me. A desire to build.Not just oversee. A desire to leave something behind.Not just pass things along. A desire to create.

I didn’t plan to become a tech founder. I planned to be useful. That choice changed everything. I started in academia.Teaching.Researching.Explaining complex ideas until they made sense. It taught me one thing early.If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it deeply. Then I moved into corporate.Telco.Big systems.Big budgets.Bigger politics. That world taught me scale.

We don’t need more apps. We need ownership. Every day, Malaysia uses digital platforms built somewhere else.We rent the tools.We follow the rules.We pay the toll. And we call that progress. But here’s the uncomfortable truth. A nation that doesn’t build its own digital ecosystems will always stand on borrowed ground. When the platform is not ours,

Failing Forward… Startup Mistakes I’d Make Again Here’s a truth most founders won’t say out loud. Some mistakes are not regrets.They are training. I’ve made decisions that looked wrong on paper.Moves that confused people.Choices that invited questions, doubts, raised eyebrows. And yet…I’d make many of them again. Because those moments shaped how I think today. I learned what spreadsheets never show.