You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.

It is easy to give advice to someone else. But it is extremely difficult to see the situation clearly when it comes to ourselves. This is because we are ‘inside the bottle’. We need to step out and see the bottle in full. Try playing ‘consultant’ to yourself. You will realise you had the “what […]

A full-bodied yes

✅ A ‘full-bodied yes’. The next time you are faced with a possibly life-altering choice (choice of life partner, career, location etc), where you feel that it is a critical fork in the road or as Bezos calls it a ‘one-way door’, always look for a full-bodied yes. What’s a ‘full-bodied yes’? It is not […]

Resolving conflicts, internally

There is only one type of conflict in this world: All conflict is interpersonal (please read ‘The Courage To Be Disliked’ to understand this more). Imagine a world where you don’t interact with anyone else. Say you live alone on an island. Would there be any conflict? All conflicts at work, or home, or anywhere, […]

Do it today

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln. Procrastination is an affliction that debilitates even the best of us. But Future You is not going to be very happy with Present You if you keep delegating your tasks to him / her. Procrastination is a symptom of lack of […]

This too shall pass

The ‘pursuit’ of happiness is thus named because you keep pursuing it, never attaining it. Happiness (or unhappiness) is transient, it is an emotion caused by an external stimulus. Something makes you happy means some other thing makes you unhappy. Seek stillness of mind, not happiness. Seek calmness as your default state. Seek to be […]

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

Sachin’s straight drive, AR Rahman’s composition, Feynman’s teaching, Tommy Emmanuel’s strumming, Usain Bolt’s sprinting. There’s something in their performance that always seems so simple, so effortless, so naturally poetic. There’s a simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity. That comes after you has struggled and summitted a craft. The zen that you get […]

Don’t watch the news

Ours is an era of information overload. A time when there is such a glut of information from all the infinity pools of our news feeds, that will we always run out of time before we run out of ‘new’. We have gone from a time when information was scarce and knowledge was power, to […]

The Law of Forced Efficiency

“There’s never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the most important thing.” What’s your most important thing for today? What’s the one thing that you will absolutely, positively accomplish today that will significantly move your work and life forward?

The Epiphany toilet. Let your mind wander.

Any idea why most of your original ideas come when you are showering, or on the pot, or going on a long walk alone or going on a long drive? When your body is doing some task on autopilot, it is the perfect time for the brain to drift into its imaginative state. To make […]

Trust the soup

Trust the soup. What to do when you are in a creative endeavour and are doubting yourself? When you hit a wall and you think, “I can’t do this”, or “This will never work”, or “this idea is just not good enough”. Trust the soup. From Steven Pressfield’s ‘Do the work’: 👉 When we say […]

Single tabbing

Single-tabbing. The best way to get things done today. As I have written before, multi-tasking is multi-failing. So how to focus in a world of a hundred open Chrome tabs? 1) First step is to block time for your most important task of the day.2) Once you are in that time block, close all other […]

Be bored. Everyday.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal. Have you had a situation where you worked on a problem for a long time to no avail, and then took a walk or slept on it and the solution magically emerged? That’s the power of your […]

Grit = Focus + Persistence.

‘Focus’ on your long term passion that has been discovered via experiments run over many years. Have the ‘persistence’ to not give up when the going gets tough. Research has shown that the #1 predictor of long term success is Grit. Not talent, not IQ, but grit. And having grit does not mean machoism and […]

Deny autopilot. Change the default.

Deny autopilot. Change the default. 1) Anything that is important, anything that is worth doing, is worth giving your full attention. Deep learning and compounding improvement takes deliberate practice and full mindfulness to what you are doing is the first step. For this to happen you have to stop ‘going with the flow’. Don’t go […]

A day well spent

What does a day well spent look like? 1) Working really hard on a problem that really matters to you, your company and to the world, at the cost of many other lesser important problems that are vying for your attention. 2) Making progress in that problem by moving ideas, execution and the team ahead. […]

Multi-tasking = Multi failing

There’s a quote in Tamil, that loosely translates to “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well”. The corollary to that is “Do only what is worth doing, and do that very well”. No point doing many things at once under the guise of ‘productivity’. You are only fooling yourself, because the mind […]