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.

Never jump the gun

When Byju's acquired White Hat Jr for $300 million, folks on LinkedIn went crazy. "Good Lord -- how could someone create so much value in just 18 months?" Today, the company is losing more than Rs 1,000 crores a year. And I won't even get into the other controversies...

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Break free from superstitions

Do you know that even the world's top footballers have their superstitions? Superstitions are psychological defense mechanisms that give a sense of safety (albeit a misplaced one). Let us say a footballer plays a wonderful match, where he scores goal after goal. But...

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We all have currencies we obsess over

Before I first landed on the IIT campus, I thought it would have a really glitzy atmosphere. After all, most professors had PhDs from US universities and would have seen a good life. But instead, I saw them all moving on bicycles, wearing shabby clothes and chappals....

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Buffers: The key to productivity

This might surprise you. Do you know the one productivity hack that lowers our productivity and overwhelms us? Packing your calendar back-to-back with tasks and to-dos. I know it sounds quite ironic but let me explain using an analogy. Imagine that you want to...

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Why we need to meditate

Why should we meditate? If it was truly beneficial, would evolution have not predisposed us to do that? After all, our ancestors in Savannah surely never meditated and they did just fine. Then why should we? The problem with this logic is that evolution optimizes for...

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Relish the journey

The Bhagwad Gita’s principal message can be very confusing. It exhorts, "Do your duty, but do not concern yourself with the results." So we are asked to not desire the end outcome. But how can we pursue goals without that? In fact, the Buddha also echoed a similar...

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Why we suffer pain twice

I was listening to meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg's audiobook 'Breath by breath', in which he relates this story. He was attending a 3-month Zen meditation retreat in Asia. After 45 days, the Zen master running the retreat made a surprise announcement --...

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The only life is now

I once went to University of Pennsylvania's medical school, one of the world’s best, with severe chronic back pain. Years ago, I had injured my back. It was a payback for all the long hours of working while ignoring my fitness. The MRI clearly showed the damage to...

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Calm productivity

Productivity is not (and should not be) about extracting the most out of your life. We are not toothpaste tubes to be squeezed till the last drop. Joyful, calm productivity is about three things: A deliberate life: Working on things that matter -- the things you chose...

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Experiences add value to life

CNN's founder, Ted Turner, owns millions of acres of land and forests. Naturally, the idea of owning all that property seems quite exciting. But hypothetically, what if you owned the Himalayas? What would you do with the ownership? Go for treks? You can do that even...

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Embrace the journey

Columbus missed India by a few thousand miles and landed in the Caribbean. But we don't call him a 'failed explorer.' Then why do we call people failed entrepreneurs? Or failed in their careers? Even if you did not get to your original destination, did you still get...

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Success Doesn’t Guarantee Fulfillment

"I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work—do that seven days a week." These are Elon Musk's words. He has been suffering from severe back pain, sleep issues, and so on. Musk says -- the pain he has gone through in the last few months, he would not...

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Will AI Make Us Intellectually Obese?

Maybe I am paranoid but will AI make us dumber? Let me share an analogy. As a kid, I don’t remember seeing too many obese people. When I used to visit my village during summer vacations, almost nobody appeared overweight. And yet, there was no gym in the village. Nor...

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