Category

LinkedIn Posts

Shark Tank vs. Real Investing

Often, I see people getting worked up about Shark Tank. Remember -- it is a reality show. And a reality show is primarily a show, not reality. What you see on Shark Tank is not the way investment deals are really done. In the world of investing, you spend hours...

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Meaning of life

If you have been looking for life's meaning, you probably haven’t found it. And it is not because you are not looking hard enough but because by itself, life has no meaning. If you take a purely materialistic/scientific view, life is just a series of biochemical...

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Your brand is your story

You are already a brand. Your brand is the way you write and talk. It is how you tell your stories. It is your thought clarity and the values your words reflect. Your brand is the things that excite you and move you -- things you love or loathe. It is the things that...

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How to break out of a stable equilibrium

If you practice anything for, say 10,000 hrs, you will become world-class. Right? Wrong. You probably already know people who have been playing badminton for years, maybe decades. And are they ready for the Olympics? Of course, not. In fact, you will see the same...

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Life is complicated

The performance reviews are done. And you get an email announcing a big fat bonus. Yay! Then you hear the news – your colleague got 30% more! Now you hate the very idea of a bonus. Nay, you hate the whole world. Ah, life is so complicated! 🙂 - Rajan

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Meditation is being fully present

While you ruminate about your past mistakes and worry about the troubles likely to befall you, the tea in front of you is getting cold. Drink that tea. And when you drink it, just drink tea -- don't do anything else. Savor it fully. Ultimately, that is what meditation...

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Happiness fuels productivity

Once when I was returning home after a long trip, to surprise my daughter, I bought her a Nintendo game console (it used to be quite popular then). Also, I bought a bunch of other stuff. So when I reached home and showed her the Nintendo game, she was ecstatic. But as...

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The only real failure is arrogance

In my last startup, after a marketing campaign, we were speculating about how many users we would acquire. Our guess waned between 2,000 and 4,000 users. Do you know how many we actually got? One. Yes -- one, not 1,000. And this was not a random marketing campaign --...

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Never jump the gun

When Byju's acquired White Hat Jr for $300 million, folks on LinkedIn went crazy. "Good Lord -- how could someone create so much value in just 18 months?" Today, the company is losing more than Rs 1,000 crores a year. And I won't even get into the other controversies...

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Break free from superstitions

Do you know that even the world's top footballers have their superstitions? Superstitions are psychological defense mechanisms that give a sense of safety (albeit a misplaced one). Let us say a footballer plays a wonderful match, where he scores goal after goal. But...

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We all have currencies we obsess over

Before I first landed on the IIT campus, I thought it would have a really glitzy atmosphere. After all, most professors had PhDs from US universities and would have seen a good life. But instead, I saw them all moving on bicycles, wearing shabby clothes and chappals....

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Buffers: The key to productivity

This might surprise you. Do you know the one productivity hack that lowers our productivity and overwhelms us? Packing your calendar back-to-back with tasks and to-dos. I know it sounds quite ironic but let me explain using an analogy. Imagine that you want to...

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