How to break out of a stable equilibrium

If you practice anything for, say 10,000 hrs, you will become world-class. Right? Wrong. You probably already know people who have been playing badminton for years, maybe decades. And are they ready for the Olympics? Of course, not. In fact, you will see the same...

Life is complicated

The performance reviews are done. And you get an email announcing a big fat bonus. Yay! Then you hear the news – your colleague got 30% more! Now you hate the very idea of a bonus. Nay, you hate the whole world. Ah, life is so complicated! 🙂 –...

Meditation is being fully present

While you ruminate about your past mistakes and worry about the troubles likely to befall you, the tea in front of you is getting cold. Drink that tea. And when you drink it, just drink tea — don’t do anything else. Savor it fully. Ultimately, that is what...

Happiness fuels productivity

Once when I was returning home after a long trip, to surprise my daughter, I bought her a Nintendo game console (it used to be quite popular then). Also, I bought a bunch of other stuff. So when I reached home and showed her the Nintendo game, she was ecstatic. But as...

The only real failure is arrogance

In my last startup, after a marketing campaign, we were speculating about how many users we would acquire. Our guess waned between 2,000 and 4,000 users. Do you know how many we actually got? One. Yes — one, not 1,000. And this was not a random marketing...