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Don’t Wait for the Lottery
We think we want money. But what we really want is for our days to be happy and joyful. We want to love the work we do. We want good relationships. We want the freedom to spend our time the way we like. We want good health and peace of mind. In...
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90% of the battle
I don’t need the motivation to run 10km — I need just enough to put on my running shoes. 90% of the battle is getting started. Yet, sometimes, even...
Mothers
Growing up, when I was facing my life’s first major exam (IITJEE), I was virtually biting my nails. I would often ponder, “What if I don’t make it?...
Recognize excellence beyond academic
My de-facto co-founder at HabitStrong, Nisha Salim, is brilliant but often runs into a problem -- she does not have a degree from any tier-1...
Small steps for lasting change
When starting my MBA at Wharton, I kept telling myself, “Don’t ruin it again. This is the last chance.” Earlier, I had ruined my 4 years at IIT --...
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Micromanagement
It was my most amazing project at McKinsey. And yet, just when things were looking great, they went downhill. Here is what happened. This was the kind of project consulting firms talk about in their advertisement brochures -- we were advising the...
Be your best
On the National Police Academy parade ground, our assistant drill instructor, head constable Ram Singh, would bark at us like he was General Patton. And even a millisecond delay in obeying his command would invite his rage, and the drill sequence...
Failure vs a life of regret
Five years into my first job with the Indian Police Service, I was unsure what to do next -- something had changed. In the beginning, everything was just so exciting --- nothing like anything I had done earlier. After spending years doing crazy...
Hard or easy is in our mind
Panwali was going to be our Waterloo, we were warned. This was a part of the 9-day trek during our Civil Services training that included a near-vertical climb of 2 km in the Panwali mountain range. In the words of our Physical Training Instructor,...