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There’s No Free Lunch in Life
I have had three pretty different careers, but every single time I realised one thing -- there is no free lunch. In my first job with the civil services, everything was secure and predictable. The government gave me all the resources, legal...
Recent Posts
Focus Is Binary
Focus is binary. When a sharpshooter goes from 100% focus to 50% focus, his score does not decline by 50% but it goes to zero. He misses every...
The Beauty in the Ordinary
You feel you don't have a story to tell because your life is not exciting? Let me then tell you about Neman Ashraf, a police constable in Pakistan....
Don’t Quit While on the Uphill
For the last 15 odd years, every day I go to the gym, I see the exact same cast of people working out -- feels like seeing the same play in the same...
Find a Singular Goal
The best periods of my life were the ones in which I had one overriding life goal -- be it cracking a big exam or building a new product for...
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One Small Action at a Time
Nobody gets up one day and says, "Let me become a drug addict." Nobody decides one day, "Let me start eating junk food, and become obese and unhealthy." Nor does anyone decide to become a chronic procrastinator, Netflix binge-watcher, or a...
The Myth of Perfection
In my last startup, ConceptOwl, a friend once told me about another learning startup that was growing like crazy by selling through schools. He asked, "Why don't you also do that?" When I heard that, my heart sank. We had tried the same approach...
Beyond the Business Card
If you throw away your business card, whatever you have left, is truly yours, because nobody can take it away. We all derive identity and pride from our jobs, and it is perfectly logical. But it is worth remembering that our worth as a professional...
Rewiring Fear
If you have had a toxic boss, their mere presence will make you anxious even after you have left that job. Why is that? It turns out that this anxiety is triggered by an unconscious process, which you can't control intellectually. When you go...