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Pick one habit and start
Sometimes, life feels like an out-of-control mess. We want to fix it, but we don't know where to start. If it feels like all bad habits have descended on us at once -- procrastination, smartphone addiction, lethargy, low energy, lack of confidence...
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Embrace Mistakes, But Only Once
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." -- Mark Twain. We should learn from others' mistakes. So in...
Parkinson’s law
I had to give a TEDx talk at IIM Ranchi but did not start working on the script until I had three days left. And I was not procrastinating. I was...
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...
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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 that. Like entropy, the number of committees (and their meetings) only goes up. Here is why. In...
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 deadline, I had to geo-map hundreds of branches of a bank (our client). But this lady got it done. So...
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...