“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal, mathematician and physicist. When I started writing on Linkedin, the limit for a post was 1300 characters (it has now been increased to 3000 characters). It forced me to be brief, get to the […]

Shutdown your messaging apps (or even your phone) for a few hours every evening. You don’t have to wait for a global shutdown to happen. Go read a book, spend time with family, or just sit idle and be bored. Give your mind to work its magic in the ‘diffused mode’ of learning (read more […]

👉  Every notification on your messaging app, every email in your inbox, is someone else asking you to work on their priority. The best way to move your agenda / priority forward is to schedule every minute of your day at the beginning of each day. Before you open your mailbox or messaging app. 1) […]

You want to have deep conviction about your craft (the stuff that you know a lot about), but that can make you stubborn and pedantic. On the other hand, you also don’t want to be swayed by everyone’s opinion all the time; that will make you a doormat. How to balance between confidence and flexibility? […]

After languishing in the low ranks (or not even qualifying for the Olympics) for many years, the British rowing team took everyone by surprise in the 2000 Sydney Olympics by winning gold! How did they do it? The rowers would make every decision, big or small, by asking “Will it make the boat go faster?” […]

Failure is an occurrence at a point in time. It doesn’t define you beyond that moment. The only lingering after-effect should be learning. Not self doubt, not regret, but “What did I learn from this experience and how will I do better next time?”

👉  “So much wasted time, confusing movement for accomplishment.” A helpful framework from one of Bhavin Turakhia’s videos is DIM (stands for Discovery, Implementation, Measurement) and the idea is that you should spend 40% of time in Discovery (understanding the problem deeply, thinking and designing the solutions), _only 20% or less on Implementation_, and the […]

You are the average of the five people you hang out with the most.” But now that you are spending most of our attention staring at screens watching videos or reading stuff, you are the average of the five pieces of media or five channels of information you consume or the five apps you open […]

Procrastination is your brain telling you that the task in front of you is going to be painful / tough, and more importantly, ambiguous. The way forward is not clear, figuring it out is going to be a source of cognitive strain, so your brain is shifting your focus to other things that you know […]

Every game is in your head. Every one else and every thing else is abstracted and coloured by your perception of what is real and what is not. So get used to playing single-player games. Meditation, yoga, deep self awareness, self acceptance, being comfortable with yourself in a room with your own thoughts – these […]

The expanse always looks scary. It always feels amorphous, and ambiguity leads to procrastination. “But how can I start before I put the entire plan together and map out the full path?” By using constraints and deadlines. We all want more budget, more time, more people. But what can we do with little or nothing? […]

Somebody’s greatest dream is your reality. Remind yourself that every single day. A little gratitude goes a long way. It will give you just a little bit more inner peace, and will make you focus on others.

The best mental hack to help you prioritize conflicting demands for your attention on a daily basis: Ask yourself the ‘Focus Question’. Here’s the Focus Question: “What’s the ONE thing I can do, that will make everything else easier or even unnecessary?” The FQ drives clarity and helps you pick the activity / project / […]

Seekers and explorers have always pushed the frontiers of the human spirit. Wayfarers, who long for the unknown seas (or nowadays, for other planets) feed the imagination of generations that come after them. We celebrate them as heroes (Magellan, Marco Polo, Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk etc). But there’s another type of exploration that should be […]

I was brought up in a typical middle class family – low-risk upbringing and mentality, always needing all the answers before jumping into anything new. Many a times, it was wise to have all the information and then making the decision. But in situations where ambiguity was the norm and the solution was unclear, this […]

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” ― W. Somerset Maugham An amateur has excuses. A professional has a work ethic. An amateur’s muse vanishes at the slightest hint of distraction. He’s a slave to the muse. The professional’s muse is a well trained coach who turns […]

The most important realisation the Steve Jobs had: “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, […]

👉 What makes us tick? What drives us? Carrot & stick? Or something else? [AKA Incentive theory vs Motivation theory] In the 1970s, the prevailing wisdom about what makes us tick was ‘Incentive theory’, i.e. carrot and stick. Aligning incentives (pay, bonus etc) to the company’s objective was the silver bullet. But we all know […]

🔥 “If this were easy, what would it look like?” When you are faced with a huge, seemingly unsurmountable challenge ahead of us (a task, a project, anything), you can keep getting lost in the complexity, or ask yourself the question above. It is a simple mental hack with positive impact of epic proportions. It […]

👉 ‘Sincere’ vs ‘serious’. (Remind yourself it is going to be fun!) – Sincere is giving your 100%. Can be done without being stressful. – Sincere is being genuine and building trust. Can be done while creating an enjoyable and uplifting relationship. – Sincere is saying and doing what is right. Can be done with humour […]

“Always say what you mean and mean what you say. Because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter they won’t mind.” – The great philosopher, Dr. Seuss.

You can have anything you want. But you can’t have everything you want. If you want one thing, and want it long enough, you can have it. No matter how unattainable or how big it sounds. What’s your ‘one thing’ going to be?

‘Memento mori’. Remember that you must die.  You might be thinking, what a morbid way to start a Sunday morning. Death is a topic that is often avoided; our mortality is a taboo, because our minds are not designed to contemplate our own fragility and the ephemeral nature of our existence, on a regular basis. […]

🎙 A new podcast episode is out, and this time our guest is Rajan Singh, founder & CEO Habitstrong (IIT, Wharton, ex-IPS, ex-McKinsey)! Want to learn about meditation, the importance of early morning rituals, and how to do deep work? Learn from the expert. Rajan is a self-discipline wizard and the bootcamps he runs at his […]

👉 The best mantra to beat procrastination is not “Just do it”. It is “Just start”. If you want to run every day and find yourself giving excuses, tell your brain, “I will put on my shoes and run just up to the corner of my street”. If you want to write and find yourself […]

The importance of a ‘drumbeat’. Or the story of how clocks came to rule the world. Imagine you were in medieval Europe, walking down a village; if you asked the local farmer “What time is it?”, you would be met with confused looks and exasperation – because no one knew, no one cared, and no […]

I spent more than a decade in Singapore, the most formative years of my career. It is a place I called home, it has a special place in my heart, and it is also a case study in nation building. A small island with sparse resources, built into a modern day utopia by the sheer […]

“Self-hatred? What is that?” An excerpt from a recent newsletter from Sam Harris:In 1990, the Mind & Life Institute hosted a conference in Dharamsala During one Q&A session, the Dalai Lama was asked about his thoughts on self-hatred. He was confused, and looked to his translator for help. After many back and forths where he […]

Do you know the difference between velocity and speed? Both parameters measure movement over time, but there’s an important difference. Velocity is a vector quantity, i.e. it has a magnitude and a direction. Speed is a scalar quantity, i.e. it has only magnitude.  This is a good metaphor for business and life. Velocity is far […]

Correlation vs. Causation. (Or just because you have feathers doesn’t mean you can fly). A lovely anecdote from Prof Clay Christensen’s ‘How will you measure your life’:Imagine you are in the 19th century. It is very possible to look at all flying things around you (i.e. just birds) and come to the conclusion that flying […]

Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else. – Buddha. Anger is what you feel when you assume that the other person is trying to deliberately hurt you or malign you. But if you remember that ‘people are not against you, they are for themselves’, […]