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Late Night Work
During my stint with McKinsey, whenever we did late nights (more like early mornings), it was rarely because the work per se was that heavy. It was almost always because we did not create clarity sufficiently early in the day about what was to be...
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Hardening our mind to take decision
Whenever I go running in the morning, I face two choices - run on the road OR in a stadium. With Trivandrum’s undulating terrain, road running can...
Focus on one thing at a time
If you have to shoot two birds in the sky, what should you do? If you try to shoot both at the same time, you will shoot in the middle and miss...
Are you learning daily?
A McKinsey colleague once told me a funny yet sad story of this old lady working at a client company. He had to meet her a few times with some data...
A lesson in focus from the army
Here is a powerful lesson in focus and getting things done, from an age-old army tactic - 'bayonet-charge'. During a bayonet charge, army units are...
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Read this before jumping into entrepreneurship
Before you quit your job and become an entrepreneur to earn untold riches, please read this story. In the early 2000s, when I was serving as the Trivandrum Police Commissioner, my office staff one day asked me, 'Sir, can we send our office jeep to...
Hit hard – don’t dilute your words with fillers
Do you know why instead of hitting hard, our words come out limp? Because we sabotage ourselves. We dilute our speech with fillers like "Umm, Uuuu, Right, Basically, Actually, You Know." I have myself used enough fillers for one lifetime. When we...
Happiness is in the now
The guy working in a small company wants a job at Amazon. The one in Amazon doesn’t want to work at all. We all want to jump out of our current life; we want it to be somehow different. That is what creates stress. Because, while we can change our...
Mental health – remove stigma
Years ago, when I was a civil servant, a young IPS officer was briefly posted under me for training. A sensitive guy, he was struggling with some mental health issues. Unfortunately, his anxiety got aggravated, resulting in a near breakdown. A few...