When I decided to write the Civil Services, I uncomplainingly slogged for 7 months. It was certainly not pleasurable in the normal sense and yet I was super-motivated. We often hear that humans are ONLY motivated to do pleasurable things -- it is plain wrong. Have you...

A few years ago, in my startup, we were building a tech platform that was performing horribly. The screens would take forever to load -- clearly, the algorithms were poorly written. Though we had experienced engineers, we did not have the funding to hire very...

During the time we spent in terrorism-affected North-East (as part of the IPS training), you couldn’t step out without at least three machine-gun mounted vehicles, and everyone was armed with AK-47 rifles -- such was the security threat. After that, when I landed in...

I have lost track of the late nights I have done in my past life but here is the funny thing -- whenever I had a constraint, e.g., I had to go out for a dinner, say at 8 pm, I would somehow find that laser-focus in the afternoon and wrap up everything on time. It is...

During my stint with McKinsey, I was going through a period of intense stress -- my family moved back to India and I was all alone in the US. I could have kept pushing myself to the breaking point. Or I could take a break. So I took a break -- for a week. Just...

Why the hell are we so busy all the time? This disease called “back-to-back meetings” is spreading faster than Covid’s Delta variant. In today’s hyper-connected, competitive world, some busyness is understandable, but a lot of it is artificially created. And the...

A few years ago, a friend inadvertently showed me the secret of extreme productivity. Here is the story. This friend was on a short sabbatical and popped into my office, asking if he could help me with anything. Knowing how bright he was, I asked him if he could flesh...

To get addicted, you don’t need the ‘white powder’. Here is my story. In my early days as an IPS officer, when I was back home after an intense, stressful day, I wanted a break. Since I never partied or socialized, watching TV became my ritual. And before long, I...

During my Civil Services training in Mussoorie, an especially memorable trek was to a place called Rabbit Farm, though we neither saw any rabbits nor any farm. During this trek, people grumbled especially loudly -- the hours of climbing and descending sharp slopes...

I was once attending a drug addiction conference in Melbourne, where the speaker on the stage had lost his beloved son to a drug overdose. He started by talking about the loss of his son, and how he could not get timely medical help when he overdosed. After his son’s...

When I entered the corporate world in the US after my stint in the Indian Civil Services, I heard this weird notion called ‘paying your dues.’ Apparently, the grunt work and suffering at the beginning of your career earn you the ‘right to live well’ when you are...

The fish packet vanished from right in front of my eyes -- how the hell did that happen, I wondered! This happened a few months ago: Sitting in my living room, as I was intently working on my blog, the fish delivery guy rang the doorbell. I absent-mindedly motioned...

In week-2 of the 1st semester at IIT Kanpur, I got my first big life shock - the physics quiz. This quiz was pretty nasty: An ant was supposedly crawling on a rotating disc and we were expected to figure out its motion in polar coordinates, or something like that....

20 years after we first met, I ran into Mr. Michael Siromani, a retired IAS officer, under curious circumstances -- he was collecting roadside weeds in a plastic pouch. After the initial greetings, seeing a quizzical look on my face, he explained, “These are medicinal...

It was an unequal race -- not fair. During my 6th grade, our sports teacher announced an impromptu bike race to celebrate the end of the annual sports day. The near-certain winner was the son of the Commanding Officer of the local air force station, who had an...