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The Irony of Life: Why Chasing a Better Future Steals Today’s Joy
A few years ago, I was at IISc Bangalore to give a talk. And I was raving about the beautiful, idyllic campus to my host, a retired civil servant who was teaching an undergraduate class. When my host told me that he had previously worked as the...
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Life is an opportunity
When I was leaving my job at McKinsey after a relatively short stint of 18 months, a classmate remarked that I was being hasty – in the initial few...
Attach your ego to the right thing
During my stint in the police, I was once overseeing a jampacked swearing-in ceremony for some new ministers at the Kerala Raj Bhavan (Governor’s...
Prioritization
Most of us suck at managing our time. And here is the biggest mistake we make — we try really hard to finish our to-do list. When that does not...
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...
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Micromanaging
In a project at McKinsey, I was loving it totally until I started hating it. At that time, I had joined the Firm just a few months ago. And when the project started, there was so much to do that my manager gave everybody full autonomy. I did my own...
You don’t need a billion
After reading about some unicorn founders recently indulging in financial fraud, I was wondering, what prompts such highly accomplished people to do that? One reason is that we have glorified unlimited greed. Today, it is not enough to have 10...
How to sustain habits?
In 2009, when I quit McKinsey, I was at my unhealthiest. For the previous 10 years, through various jobs and my MBA, I had worked long back-breaking hours and had stopped exercising. On top of that, I was chronically sleep-deprived. I was so unfit...
Carve your own path
One of my best friends had joined the 5-year MSc Physics program at IIT Kanpur. He loved physics but his parents were very unhappy with his decision. They considered a science degree sub-par even though the physics program at IITK was highly...