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Life does not offer risk-free upside
When the UPSC Civil Services results came out last year, somebody apparently commented that if Sundar Pichai had cleared the exam, he would today be the collector of Greater Noida. So is Civil Services the right choice? Or is it Google, Microsoft,...
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Small, intermediate wins can keep you going
Over the last year, after my parents moved in with us, I have been hounding my mother to go for a daily walk. She has put on a fair bit of weight,...
We learn to value things when we lose them
When I was a kid, we were living in a remote military station in Assam, surrounded by hills and jungle-like vegetation. In those days, power cuts...
The Power of Vipassana
2,500 years ago, without fMRI machines, research labs, or any understanding of neuroscience, one man single-handedly figured out how to end all...
Knowledge is the ultimate leveler
The value of your college degree is like radioactive material with a half-life of about 3-4 years. So we cannot sit on our laurels and degrees. In...
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Give your people the attention they deserve
Long ago, I was attending a conference on drug addiction, where they honored an Australian guy who had dedicated his life to helping people caught up in drug addiction. When he was asked to address the audience, he started out by listing all the...
There are no ‘others’, there is only ‘us’
Living in a country like the US, you come across people of every nationality. And one very interesting thing you find is that they all look different, and yet, they are all the same. Americans, Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, Mexicans – they all talk...
Perversion of incentives
A year ago, a startup announced a revenue of Rs 10 crore. And profit? Actually, it lost more than 150 crores! If you are wondering, “In which universe does this all make sense?”, welcome to the magical world of VC funding, my friend! Today, this...
Building mental models
All learning boils down primarily to one thing -- building mental models. During my electrical engineering undergraduate program, we were (involuntarily) subjected to a lot of dense math. At the beginning of the semester, had I seen all those...