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The life starts again
If you flip a regular coin 10 times, on average, you expect 5 heads and 5 tails. But what if the first 9 coin throws all show up 'heads'? Now you are down to the 10th throw. What would you predict? Our gut will very strongly suggest 'tails.' But...
Recent Posts
Where You Start Does Not Matter
In 1995, during my final year B.Tech placement season, everybody was obsessed with salaries -- companies like Cadence, offering Rs 10,000 per month...
Learn Like an Intern
Quitting the Indian Police Service allowed me to restart my journey, like a fresh intern trying to make sense of the world. I totally loved the...
These are Your Key Assets
When I quit my job to become an entrepreneur, it felt a bit weird, but not for the first time. Years earlier, to do my GMAT and MBA prep, when I...
The role of struggle in achieving success
During my days working in private equity, I once met an entrepreneur who manufactured orthopedic implants (typically used in surgery for fracture...
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Consistency is the key
Starting in 2018, I have been writing nearly every day, for almost 1,000 days (on Linkedin, Quora, HabitStrong blog). Writing per se was not the hard part. The challenge was to keep writing DESPITE the ups and downs, and the thousand different...
Managing Social Expectations
My most terrifying moment at McKinsey was not handling some really tough client, but the invite I got to attend the New Year’s ball, a fancy black-tie event on some island near New York. For most people, these lavish events are the compensation for...
You Fail Only When You Quit
Every once in a while, an old back injury of mine flares up with excruciating pain, wrecking my workout routine for a week or two. And once the routine is broken, the momentum is gone. With every passing day, you feel even more like a failure, and...
Fixing Exam Formats
When I first decided to write the Civil Services exam, I was horrified at: 1. How sub-par the syllabus was. 2. How random the marking was. 3. How unbelievably opaque the system was. For my optional subjects (Maths & Physics), supposedly at B.Sc...