Latest Post
Leadership Is Not About Staying Busy
To get into and succeed in senior leadership roles, you can't just solve the problems in front of you -- you have to anticipate and solve problems even before they arise. But you can't do that if you are: 1. Perpetually busy replying to emails and...
Recent Posts
Choose things that are right for you
You don't have to hustle -- if you don't want to. There is no law of nature that says -- "Everyone in the world has to hustle all the time." No...
Treat People Fairly
In my B-school course on 'Negotiations', we were split into groups of two and given a $10 bill each. The person who got the $10, had to split it...
Progress Over Perfection
The writer who produces the perfect first draft, produces nothing. The entrepreneur who 'makes sure' that his first startup is a unicorn, never...
Optionality Hinders Action
I write nearly every day. And I have done it for years. Because in my mind, writing is not optional. It is something I do on good days and bad, on...
More Articles
Hardship Fuels Change
Had it been left to me, I suspect I would probably still be sitting on my 1st-year electrical engineering courses without completing them. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit. But without the external pressure of exams and getting a degree, few of us would...
Use things without giving them power over you
I went to IIT for the brand and the academics, but what I loved the most about the place was its simplicity. On campus, there was no show-off, no flashiness. Students attached zero (in fact, negative) value to how you dressed or how you looked....
Rational skepticism
No matter how intelligent you are, one thing can screw up your rationality -- ideology. Because ideology presupposes the right answers. And these right answers will pervade every aspect of your life, be it your political, economic, or social...
Life does not offer risk-free upside
When the UPSC Civil Services results came out last year, somebody apparently commented that if Sundar Pichai had cleared the exam, he would today be the collector of Greater Noida. So is Civil Services the right choice? Or is it Google, Microsoft,...