Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of The Time Energy Toolkit by Apekshit Khare

I was lying on my side when I finished it.

Not the dignified, upright posture of a “serious reader.” Just me, the phone slipping slightly in my hand, one knee drawn up, the fan making that familiar uneven sound it makes when it’s been on too long. Evening had already crossed into night. My first thought wasn’t insight. It was quieter.

So this is why my days feel unfinished.

I didn’t think of time. I thought of energy. Specifically, where mine had been leaking without my consent.

For the first few pages, the book felt like someone walking beside me at a pace I wasn’t sure I liked. I’m used to books that either sprint ahead or pull me by the collar. This one matched my stride too closely. That unsettled me. When a book doesn’t perform, you start noticing yourself instead. I felt a mild irritation—why isn’t this pushing harder, dazzling more, demanding action?

That irritation was the first crack.

Because slowly, without ceremony, the book began asking questions my body answered before my mind did. I noticed when my breathing changed. I noticed when a paragraph made me stop scrolling, stop reading, and stare at the ceiling. Not because it was profound—but because it was accurate.

There was a moment, somewhere mid-way, when I realized I wasn’t reading forward anymore.

I was reading inward.

The book didn’t announce itself as wise. It behaved more like a pressure—gentle, consistent, impossible to ignore. Like a chair that reminds you your posture has been wrong for years. It kept returning me to small recognitions: how often I confuse busyness with aliveness, how easily I postpone what matters by calling it “later,” how tiredness has become my default setting rather than a signal.

What stayed with me was not a method, but a mood.

A certain calm insistence that my days are not neutral containers. They remember how I treat them. And I remember too—just not immediately.

There were exercises, pauses, invitations to experiment. I didn’t do them all. That’s part of the truth. Some days, I simply read past them, unwilling to engage so deliberately. And that’s where the book didn’t fully meet me. At times, its steadiness assumed a readiness I didn’t always have. On days when exhaustion feels emotional rather than logistical, structure can feel like a foreign language. I stayed with that discomfort. It felt honest to admit it.

Still, something subtle shifted.

I began noticing when my energy brightened—not dramatically, but briefly. A sentence written without strain. A conversation that didn’t drain me. The relief of stopping before depletion. The book didn’t claim those moments. It didn’t rush to name them. It simply made me capable of seeing them.

There’s a restraint in this writing that I respected. It doesn’t chase urgency. It doesn’t frame life as a problem to be solved. It treats attention like something fragile. Something earned slowly.

After finishing the book, I didn’t make a plan.

I did something else instead.

The next morning, when the day began pulling at me in familiar ways, I noticed the pull. I noticed the moment before I gave in. That pause—small, almost invisible—felt new. Or perhaps it had always been there, waiting for me to arrive.

The book didn’t change my schedule.

It changed my listening.

Even now, when I feel myself defaulting to old rhythms, there’s a quiet awareness in the background. Not corrective. Not judgmental. Just present. As if something is still sitting where I left the book, watching how I choose to spend what little brightness I have today.

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