Changing perspectives

A few years ago, I was on a flight from Jaipur to Bangalore. As soon as the flight took off, the plane ran into the kind of turbulence I had never encountered before — it was getting violently tossed up and down. Sometimes, it felt like the plane was in free...

Overcome FOMO

In the early 2000s, I got into the habit of regularly watching TV. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong per se with that, but at some point, I started feeling anxious that I would miss out on some new episode or some upcoming movie. In those days, I had not heard...

Is your time worth $1?

A few years ago, WhatsApp wanted to charge an annual subscription fee of $1 but later gave up on the plan. Why? Had they charged $1 a year, many would have stopped using the app. But let us do the following exercise: 1. Estimate the time we daily spend on WhatsApp. 2....

Is there a happiness ATM?

What makes us happy? This question is both trivially simple and impossibly hard. For centuries, philosophers have speculated about this but thankfully, we don’t have to anymore – research has thrown up some really specific answers in the past 50 years. But first, let...