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Productivity = focus + prioritization
Today, I had dozens of pending tasks. So here is what I did. I just picked one task that really mattered. I dropped everything else, started my timer, and did 10 focus sprints of 25 minutes. By around 5:30 pm, the task was done. No sweat, no...
Recent Posts
Change Yourself First
We all want to change the world, which is really hard. But we don't want to change ourselves, which should be pretty easy. Why? Because changing the...
Time on Earth is limited
When I was learning meditation, I was utterly confused by all the contradictory information out there on blogs, YouTube, etc. So I tried reading the...
Cut Ruthlessly
One of the joys of working in government is the plethora of committees and meetings 🙂 But now even the private sector seems to be catching up on...
Life is full of opportunities
At McKinsey, when I was once in a really tight spot, a young woman at one of the Firm's specialist groups came to my rescue. Under an impossible...
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Can losing a job be an opportunity?
Can losing a job be an opportunity? I don't want to sugarcoat or give a feel-good answer. But let me share a few experiences. When I was running my last startup, the first Covid lockdown forced us to shut shop. Within a week, we had no business, no...
Beyond Exam Charades
During the compulsory military training in Taiwan, recruits are seemingly trained with a singular objective – to pass the exams. When practicing the bayonet drill, you practice a chant for each movement, which is what they will test for in the...
Simplest hack to grow in life
When I was leaving my last job to do a startup, my family asked me to reconsider because ‘doing business is not in our genes.’ Do genes predispose us toward some professions? At first blush, this hypothesis seems fairly tenable. In the US, I saw...
Do the right thing
To put it politely – the startup world is messed up. Big time. And we need to fix it. In my last startup, when we were fundraising, we met a particularly aggressive (‘sharky’) investor. During our discussions, they constantly told us to follow the...