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Focus Is Binary
Focus is binary. When a sharpshooter goes from 100% focus to 50% focus, his score does not decline by 50% but it goes to zero. He misses every target. 50% focus is as good as no focus. And yet, when it comes to our work, we believe that we can make...
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Focus and intensity guarantee success
In 3 months, you can get ahead of almost everyone. Here is how: 1. Every day, for an hour, disconnect your phone from the internet. 2. Pick a...
Home is Home
When I quit my job with McKinsey in New York, I moved back to India. And there were many reasons for the move – personal and family. But there was...
A Learning Hack
Here is a learning hack I have successfully tried, especially during my MBA exams. I would often wake up very early (e.g., 3 am), study for two...
Career and Contentment
At my last job with a PE fund, one of my bosses (Victor Menezes) joined Citibank as a fresher, later became its global CEO, and retired as the...
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Glamour vs Substance
In 2009, when I had just joined a private equity fund, we were invited to the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai for a fancy presentation by a healthcare technology company (I am deliberately not naming it). The company tried to charm the investor community...
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. So which responsibility was harder? Naturally, running the City Police, right? Nope. Even though I...
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 quite high. In contrast, physical goods in the US cost the same as in India, and sometimes, even less....
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. Why? Because Bangalore just sounds a lot cooler and more ‘startup-like.’ This obsession with...