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Success is an event and so is a failure
After June 12th, when the UPSC Prelims exam results came out, I received a bunch of emails from people who did not qualify. Many were dejected and called themselves 'a failure.' But what is failure really? Here are two ways to think about failure....
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Calm productivity
Productivity is not (and should not be) about extracting the most out of your life. We are not toothpaste tubes to be squeezed till the last drop....
Experiences add value to life
CNN's founder, Ted Turner, owns millions of acres of land and forests. Naturally, the idea of owning all that property seems quite exciting. But...
Embrace the journey
Columbus missed India by a few thousand miles and landed in the Caribbean. But we don't call him a 'failed explorer.' Then why do we call people...
Success Doesn’t Guarantee Fulfillment
"I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work—do that seven days a week." These are Elon Musk's words. He has been suffering from...
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Will AI Make Us Intellectually Obese?
Maybe I am paranoid but will AI make us dumber? Let me share an analogy. As a kid, I don’t remember seeing too many obese people. When I used to visit my village during summer vacations, almost nobody appeared overweight. And yet, there was no gym...
The Unpredictable Ripple of New Technology
In a book I was reading, Cal Newport shared this interesting story: When IBM first set up an email system for their employees, they had to figure out the server capacity sufficient to handle the email volume. So they looked at all the communication...
Embrace Mistakes, But Only Once
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." -- Mark Twain. We should learn from others' mistakes. So in theory, we should be making very few mistakes, if any. But humans are humans. Sometimes, the only way...
Parkinson’s law
I had to give a TEDx talk at IIM Ranchi but did not start working on the script until I had three days left. And I was not procrastinating. I was testing a new productivity idea -- 'doing things at the last responsible moment.' When we have too...