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Recipe for happiness
If you have wondered why some people seem naturally happier than others, here is what research says: 1. 50% of our happiness is genetic. 2. 40% of it comes from intentional activity -- i.e., how we spend our time. 3. Only 10% comes from life...
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Finding meaning beyond material success
The clock is ticking. Once out of college, you have to be ‘30 under 30.’ God forbid, if you miss it, ‘40 under 40’ is your absolute last chance. If...
Are we stealing our children’s joy?
I recently heard that 17 kids got 100 percentile in IITJEE Mains. I wasn’t sure if we should celebrate or feel sad. Here is why. About half of these...
Prioritizing health and well-being
Day 1 of IPS training. When the whistle went off at around 5 am, we ran down the stairs of the IPS Mess for the morning PT, terrified of being even...
Responsibility is the price of freedom
After my father dropped me off at the IIT Kanpur hostel, for the next 4 years, my parents did not even once ask about my grades. Nor did they bother...
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Stop wasting your life being busy
Early in my tenure at McKinsey, I once committed a terrifying blunder. In those days, every BlackBerry notification would make us stop all work and check our email. Superfast email response was fast becoming a religion. But one day, due to some...
Success is the result of consistent hard work, not just luck
I was racing a 2:30 am deadline to submit my Wharton MBA application in Round 1. Post midnight, in the frantic rush, as I was giving the final touches to my application, the Microsoft Word document crashed. When I tried recovering the changes, I...
Breaking the limits
On the top floor of my building, lived my friend and junior from IPS and IIT - Sunil Asnani. In the evenings, we would often hang out on the rooftop, talking about his plan to quit the IPS and do an MBA from a US business school. The plan sounded...
Overcoming language barriers
For most of my life, I went to English-medium schools where nobody spoke English. However, from grades 1-4, I attended a government school in Bangalore where kids used English even for social conversations. That is the only real exposure I had to...