When I joined the Indian Police Service, my seniors told me about a Rambo-like officer, who would be out patrolling at night, catching criminals. They told me, ‘He should be your role model.’ After all, that is the kind of officer one gets to see in movies. But years...
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Zig-Zag to Success
Once, while heading to lunch with a Wharton classmate who was a sailing expert, I asked her, 'If a boat needs to sail DIRECTLY against the wind, how would it do that?' She explained the trick: You can't sail directly against the wind. But you can sail up to 45 degrees...
How to create real value
During my stint with the Indian Police Service, I once got an assignment with barely an hour of work daily. It was a welcome breather after a long back-breaking assignment. Naturally, I would leave the office at 6 pm. My boss, on the other hand, would sit in the...
Excellence through hard work and intelligent practice
In IIT hostels, the worst insult was to call someone a ‘maggu’, i.e., a studious, hard-working plodder. But how was that an insult when we all studied like maniacs to clear the IITJEE exam? The subtext was that if you studied really hard, you lacked ‘natural...
The value of deep work and focused effort
A few years ago, a friend volunteered to help me for a few days with my startup. He showed up at my office and after a long discussion, offered to create a detailed execution plan for me. He then left, promising to reconnect in a bit. For the next few hrs, I was...
The risks of learned helplessness: pessimism and depression
During my middle school in a small town in Assam, we had a very strict English teacher (Goswami Sir). Kids who couldn't answer his grammar questions got caned -- never a word of encouragement. I am pretty sure that in their mind, our teachers rank-ordered us as --...
Defending your time and attention
When my wife was the District Collector, Trivandrum, she was heading 200 odd committees. If the average committee met twice a year, you end up with 400 meetings -- i.e., approx two meetings per working day. Yikes! And this does not even count all the other meetings...
Improving systems from the inside out
During my stint with the Indian Police Service, a top police official once said this to me with immense pride: 'I only travel to countries where I am not frisked at the airport. I go to Dubai because I am not frisked, but I won't go to the US or Europe.' Apparently,...
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...
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