Rajan’s Linkedin posts

Don’t Freeze, Keep Moving

Long ago, a friend who took the NDA/military career route was telling me about the bayonet charge routine in the army. In a bayonet charge, you run towards and attack an enemy bunker typically defended by a machine gun firing 10 bullets per second. What are the odds...

Why Consultants Always Have ‘Three Things’

Whenever consultants want to say something, they always have 'three things.' And we mock them for that 🙂 But if you want to communicate well, there is some real science here -- the science of working memory. It turns out that our working memory can hold about 7...

Simple Diet, Strong Health

A former McKinsey colleague of mine from Australia once said that his father would claim insulin from the Australian Health System and give it to their dog. But how did the dog become diabetic? Aren't animals supposed to be naturally healthy? Actually, we are all...

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Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.

Margin-free shop

Once, while driving in Trivandrum City, I saw a shop with a big banner: 'Margin-free shop’. Presumably, they don't keep any profit margin. On seeing that, you almost get the feeling that 'profit' is a dirty word. In fact, my daughter even asked, "What’s wrong with a...

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Straightforward path

Yesterday, I picked up a small rock lying on the road, and it is now sitting on my table. How much will you pay for it? Probably nothing. But what if you believed that someone else would pay 20 rupees for that rock? Now, you might happily shell out 10 rupees. So that...

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Opportunity for gaining experience

From the many 180 degree turns I have made in my career, the one big lesson I have learned is this: Life is to be experienced, not optimized. Life has no objective function to be maximized – it is not a calculus problem. It doesn’t have a destination that we need to...

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Comparisons

You can’t lose a game you never played. Then why do we compare ourselves with others, whose lives we never lived? When we get caught up in the comparison game, we forget – everybody has different starting points, different life constraints, and different objectives. A...

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High-happiness startup

I am NOT building a high-growth startup. Instead, I am building a “high-happiness” startup – more happiness for our team, as well as for our customers. Not having to chase ‘growth at any cost’ sets you free. We get away without doing any push marketing. We never had...

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Living in the present moment

Some days I feel optimistic and charged up. Other days, not so much. Does it matter? Not really. You do what has to be done. Some days, you do it with enthusiasm and flourish. Other days, it feels like drudgery, but you still do it. We can’t wait for the right mood...

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Introverts

Once, when I was working at McKinsey, someone said to me, “You are an introvert, right?” It was an innocuous comment but I almost felt like he was making an accusation – I could feel my defensive barriers going up. I said, “You are also an introvert, aren’t you?” He...

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Dopamine

Rarely has anything good has come out of my life without an intense, 6-12 month slog. So it may seem like I lived a miserable life, gritting my teeth to push through the slog. Yet, the reality was quite different. I was always super-motivated and rarely had to dip...

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Sugar-Coating

During my MBA, whenever I asked my classmates about their past jobs and internships, most would invariably start with, “Oh, it was amazing!” Then as you probed further, they would often sheepishly confess that it actually wasn’t THAT great. And in some cases, those...

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Unreasonable people

During my first stint in the IPS as an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), one day, an IGP (Inspector General) called me, directing me to release a bus I had seized for violating some rules. In the uniformed forces, saying ‘no’ to your boss is very hard – almost...

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Sleep deprivation

I recently saw a prestigious consulting firm’s post on LinkedIn about ‘sleep deprivation’ becoming a huge crisis, and how the ‘sleep-tech’ industry is coming to our rescue. Really? On reading it, I felt like irony died a (sleep-deprived) death. I have never been as...

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Self-Authenticity

During my stint in the police service, when senior officers called me, they would sometimes ask, “Where are you?” The implication was that if you are in office, you are working – so you are a good boy. But if you were at home, you are slacking off. Nobody said it out...

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Unique Privilege

My biggest privilege has been that I did not grow up in a wealthy, privileged family. Growing up, we had enough money for necessities, but not enough for random indulgences. For many people in my situation, the hunger for success and the drive came naturally – parents...

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Enjoy the ride

The only thing I have seemingly excelled at in life is throwing away whatever I have done, only to restart my career, repeatedly, from scratch. I first learned electrical engineering – admittedly, not very well. The IIT professors tried hard but for lack of...

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Peace of mind

In 2014, when I moved to Trivandrum (from Mumbai), my financial situation was not looking great. For years, I had been drawing down my meager savings to fund my startup. Further, living in Mumbai was expensive despite moving to a smaller apartment after quitting my...

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Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.