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Perfectionism is not excellence
Perfectionism is not excellence -- it is a mental trap. When we are anxious and unsure of our work, we keep editing our emails and keep fine-tuning the presentation far beyond the point of adding value. The root cause of perfectionism is anxiety....
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This game stops when we stop
Most small goals in life are like a football match -- you can win, but you can also lose. If you are looking to crack a job interview or clear a...
Sometimes luck comes well-disguised
While I was running near the Rajbhavan in Trivandrum, the streetlights went off at 6 am. It was still dark but I kept running, daydreaming in my...
Learning is the antidote to aging
A few years ago, I had to visit a hospital because of a persistent chest infection. It so happened that the senior doctor was unavailable and hence...
The best is already here
When I was a kid, our family train travel was rarely in the AC compartment. Therefore, we kids were always sitting near the windows staring at the...
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Take your time, focus hard, and get it done
In movies, you see heroes spraying light weapons in automatic mode, killing dozens of 'bad guys.' In real life, you never do that. Here is why. An AK-47 will finish a full magazine of 30 bullets in 3 seconds, and they will almost all miss the...
Face your fears
I spent my 4 years at IIT mostly lazing around, wasting my time. But I had other classmates who slogged hard. In the final year, most hard-working guys had great career options lined up, including scholarships from some top US universities. I told...
Let us allow people to enjoy their work
In my very first engagement as a McKinsey consultant, we were trying to schedule a meeting with a senior leader at a pharma client. She literally threw up her hands, saying, "I am back to back with meetings the whole day." I was sorely tempted to...
Start small, iterate, and one day your progress will shock you.
Here is a two-step process for hitting even the hardest possible goals: 1. Get started 2. Iterate until success Here is the two-step process for NEVER getting started: 1. Figure out everything 2. Then start Getting started seems daunting because we...