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How to NOT quit
You can’t sustain a habit unless you learn how to NOT quit. We rarely quit because we decided to. Instead, this is what happens: 1. After sticking to a habit for a few days or weeks, for whatever reason, the streak breaks. For a few days or weeks,...
Recent Posts
Leadership is not a ticket to comfort and luxury.
For all practical purposes, my first job out of college was to head the Trivandrum City Police as its Commissioner. Prior to that, I had only...
Life is not a zero-sum game
Envy is an amazing thing. I never envy the British Queen, who has inherited this massive fortune and privilege without having worked for it for even...
What freedom feels like
When I left my last job to do a startup, a new reality hit me – no more Car Club pickups, business class flights, expensive hotels, or unlimited...
What makes us special is our convictions
In early 2009, I attended a townhall at McKinsey. This was just a few months after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the US was still in the midst of...
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Don’t let other people’s judgement decide your life
In the 2nd year of my MBA at Wharton, I asked a finance professor for advice on landing a job with a private equity fund. When he learned that I had only worked as a cop, he told me bluntly – “With your background, it will be very difficult.” I was...
The ethics behind profit
Once, while driving in Trivandrum City, I saw a shop with a big banner: 'Margin-free shop’. Presumably, they don't keep any profit margin. On seeing that, you almost get the feeling that 'profit' is a dirty word. In fact, my daughter even asked,...
RDX or Detonator?
If you set fire to a lump of RDX, it does not explode - it just burns harmlessly. To unleash its killer explosive power, all you have to do is - hook it to a detonator (a thin pencil-like explosive device). Similarly, to achieve our life goals, we...
2 AM Warriors
In IIT hostels, most of us were 2 am warriors. We would be routinely awake till 2 or 3 am, and the canteen would be crowded after midnight. That may sound heroic, but hear out the rest of the story before you decide. Since the night was infinitely...