The Power of Social Contagion

A few years ago, I was attending a dreadfully boring conference, where we were listlessly sitting around a table. During a break, out of sheer boredom, I picked up a bottle of water to drink. As soon as I did that, 2-3 other people on the table also picked up the...

Fix your day

Two years ago, one evening, a team member called me and said, “Today, we are going to work the whole night.” He was leading a team of 5-6 people and intended to work overnight to fix a problem. Here was the problem: Our startup had created thousands of science/math...

Aim before you shoot

Once a renowned fund manager told me that for two years, he made no investments at all. The US markets were overpriced and good deals were hard to come by. For those two years, every day, he would dress up in the morning and go to office. He would sit and read...

The Magic of the Present Moment

As a kid, every summer, we would visit my native village in UP. In the burning June month, without electricity or amenities, it was a veritable hell. But come evening, things would cool down. At night, lying on an elevated cot-like bamboo structure (‘machan’), we...