Rajan’s Linkedin posts
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Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.
25-Minute Focus: Feasible or Myth?
My friend Vinod Thomas recently told me that while I keep talking about doing 25-minute focus sprints (pomodoros), even focusing intensely for 5 minutes is hard. And Vinod is one of the smartest people I know. So is 25 min of focus feasible or is it just a myth? The...
Quit the Noise, Embrace Zen
Your sanity is under threat from the zillion WhatsApp groups that everyone seems to be a part of. These WhatsApp groups are for all and sundry -- folks from school, college, work, close relatives, distant relatives, extraterrestrials... and so on. Honestly, why? Do...
Rethinking the Billionaire Race
A while ago, I was talking to a friend who once led a top-tier Indian university. One day, a psychologically distressed student came to him and somberly said, "I am 25. At my age, Mark Zuckerberg was already a billionaire. And what have I achieved? I am nowhere in the...
Here’s how you break bad habits
Yesterday, I asked my colleagues -- "Which app do you find most distracting or addicted to?" And I heard a surprising answer: Swiggy. One team member candidly admitted that around 12:30 pm, when the Swiggy offers start pouring in, she can't help scrolling through them...
Goal-Driven Focus
If you want to have unwavering focus but have struggled to achieve it, this Buddhist story has an answer. Once a king gave one of his subjects a challenge. He said, "You have to walk around the palace carrying a bucket full of hot oil on your head, with one condition...
Bird by Bird
When you are overwhelmed, what do you do? Read this quote from Anne Lamott's book 'Bird by Bird.' "Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the...
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 -- what do we do? We...
Hack for alertness and clarity: good sleep
Many years ago, after late-night work and minimal sleep for a few days, I was struggling to stay alert. But there was a ton of work to be done. So a colleague suggested taking espresso shots. I don't normally consume coffee or tea. But on his advice, I took two...
Why You Should Build Habits
Even after running for a decade, my 10km morning run today felt just as hard. But then, should habitual actions not become effortless? Why bother building a habit if the task is going to still feel hard? Because even though I find running hard, my desire to run is...
VVIP Visits: Hindering Disaster Relief
Unpopular opinion: VVIPs visiting sites of accidents and natural disasters is counterproductive. It looks good on cameras but it actually hurts relief and rescue. VVIP visits distract officials, who, instead of doing relief and rescue, have to: Take care of VVIP...
Action Converts Potential Into Reality
You have potential. So do I. But even a rock sitting on a hilltop has potential energy. Yet, there is nothing it can do until it starts rolling down the hill. Movement unleashes the rock's potential energy. Our potential is very much like that. Whether we realize it...
The Truth About Jobs and Entrepreneurship
"9-to-5 jobs are slavery. You work on someone else's dream -- and have no freedom, no flexibility. It is a shitty life. "I was also like that once. But look at me now! I quit my job and work a few hours a day. And I earn a 7-figure income, live on a beach, and no...
The Power of Simple Stories
In the summer of 2006, I was doing my summer internship with McKinsey in New York. My manager was an MD from a top medical school. One day, he and I were waiting for a cab to visit our client's office. Soon, a cab arrived. But before us, a woman standing next to us...
Choose things that are right for you
You don't have to hustle -- if you don't want to. There is no law of nature that says -- "Everyone in the world has to hustle all the time." No doubt, hustle has value. But there are a lot of things in the world that have value -- are you seeking all of them? We...
Treat People Fairly
In my B-school course on 'Negotiations', we were split into groups of two and given a $10 bill each. The person who got the $10, had to split it with his partner in whichever way he wanted. If the partner agreed to the proposal, they got to keep the $10. Else, the...
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Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.