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Excitement is rare and overhyped
Very few professions that look glamorous or exciting, are actually that. During my MBA, I thought McKinsey would be very glamorous. Big clients, global travel and fancy hotels, advising CEOs, yada yada. So here is a reality check. At 11 pm one...
Recent Posts
Every job deserves respect
Today, I lead a 10-member team at HabitStrong. Many years ago, I headed a team of 3,500 people when I was the Trivandrum City Police commissioner....
The Value of Time
In the US, when I had to hire people to help with moving my house, I paid them $25 per hr for the manual work – the money value of time there was...
Focus on substance, not appearances
Many people find it quite jarring that I run HabitStrong out of Trivandrum. More than once, I have been advised to move my startup to Bangalore....
Temptation Bundling
A colleague of mine has been working out for an hour a day on her gym’s elliptical machine – and yet, she hates it. How does she do it then? While...
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The Job security
A big chunk of India’s youth is addicted to government jobs – and that has become our curse. It needs to stop. If you go to Patna, you will reportedly find tens of thousands of youngsters preparing for government job exams. And it is probably the...
Pain of Regrets
One of the small regrets I have in life is that I never did a commando training course. When I finished my IPS training I was very fit and I thought about doing a commando course. And it was very easy for me to do that – I could literally have...
Don’t quit but Be flexible.
Two of my friends were doing a startup together – both exceptionally smart and good human beings. But unfortunately, their startup did not do well. One of them continued toiling, while the other one quit. Would you say that the guy who quit lacked...
Life is not about non-stop excitement
During my MBA at Wharton, people told me that consulting is really exciting – you get to solve the hardest business problems! So I joined McKinsey for my summer internship. And I was looking forward to all the excitement of problem-solving. But on...