Rajan’s Linkedin posts

The Hidden Cost of Recurring Meetings

My last project at McKinsey was a very high-profile one -- the client was a vertical CXO at a large global bank. The goal was to flesh out their overall corporate strategy. So naturally, many bigwigs were involved and because of our collective anxiety, a daily call...

The Power of Focus and Prioritization

Every day, you have 8 to 10 hours to play with. If you spend all your time on emails, ad-hoc meetings, and distracted work, you create value X. If you cut down some distractions, say no to a few random meetings, and do some focused work, the value creation may easily...

How I Cut My Stress in Half

Five years ago, I cut down my stress by 50% in one move: I banned WhatsApp for official work. Before that, we were using WhatsApp at our startup, and over the years, I had created dozens of WhatsApp groups. Soon, I was mindlessly checking and responding to messages...

Subscribe to the HabitStrong newsletter

Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.

How to rise up the leadership ladder

If you want to rapidly rise up the leadership ladder, these are the things to do: Don’t wait for people to tell you what to do. Identify problems or areas where can you contribute and then offer specific help. Take responsibility, even if small ones – and deliver....

read more

Overcoming perfectionism

Procrastination is NOT laziness. And unless we understand this, we can't fix our procrastination problem. We procrastinate when we don't know how to handle the negative emotions generated by a task (e.g., anxiety). We then avoid working on a task even when we know...

read more

Job-Hopping vs. Staying Long-Term

At an investment fund I worked with, one of my bosses (Victor Menezes) did something remarkable — after graduating from MIT’s MBA program, he never changed jobs. He worked at the same firm (Citi) all his life, becoming the global CEO of Citibank, and retiring as a...

read more

Choose a job that aligns with your life

When I decided to leave consulting and join private equity, my biggest consideration was not money — instead, I wanted my life back. I wanted to rediscover my health and peace of mind. I wanted to see the sunset and sunrise, at least on some days. I wanted to feel...

read more

The Importance of Non-Urgent Stuff

Stop hoarding PDFs, podcasts, videos, e-books, and online courses. We already have enough. The problem is something else. Can you guess what? Our reflex answer -- 'I don't have time.' Not true. Here is what is going on. When we have to pick a task, we only pick the...

read more

Step-by-step guide to experience flow

Flow, the 'secret to happiness,' is closer than you think 🙂 Here is a step-by-step guide for experiencing flow (almost) every day. Quick recap: What is flow? It is such a deep immersion in a task that you lose track of everything, including the passage of time. Like...

read more

The Value of Knowledge Across Domains

I was once talking to a UX designer in Bangalore, who was supposed to be quite good at her craft. And she explained to me some nuances of UX design quite well. But when our discussion shifted to other social issues, she seemed quite lost. At one point, she decried why...

read more

The Power of Analytical Thinking

As a consultant with McKinsey, one of my projects was to advise a Fortune 500 healthcare company on whether to launch a new service line. And here was the funny part -- the company had already done the study they hired us for! They had put two people on the project,...

read more

How to break phone addictions

Your smartphone is useful but dangerously addictive. And every day, we are sucked into it for hours on end not because we love it, but because we think we have no choice. We often assume that we only have two options: Give up our phones, OR Use the phone without any...

read more

Humans value what they lose

A few years ago, I was visiting the Chittorgarh fort, which is extremely imposing, to say the least. But if you look at the quarters in which the king used to stay, you realize that a modern 3 BHK has a better finish and amenities. This is not to imply that the kings...

read more

Don’t quit. Just restart

I suspect this post will save you from unnecessary failure. When you aim to build a good habit or achieve a long-term goal, what is the first advice you get? Consistency, consistency, consistency... Yes, that is true. But here is the thing nobody tells you -- you need...

read more

The Corruption of Startups

Apparently, standing on the World Startup Convention stage in Noida, are not the investors from Sequoia or Accel, but cops from the Uttar Pradesh Police. This convention was billed as a mega startup event, with a not-so-implicit promise that startups will have a great...

read more

Weird Times Ahead: The AI Takeover

It is soon going to get very weird. And we are not realizing it. A small gang of people, probably based in Silicon Valley, will increasingly have so much concentrated wealth and influence that in comparison, today's world may look like a socialist utopia. To be clear,...

read more

Subscribe to the HabitStrong newsletter

Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.