Many professional thieves exhibit a curious behavior pattern -- they follow the exact same methodology and rituals (modus operandi) every time they commit a theft. In fact, policemen even call them Modus Operandi (MO) criminals. But this phenomenon is not limited to...

Why do we do social comparison even though we know it is toxic? Why do we seek external validation knowing that it ruins our happiness? Turns out, this is an outcome of evolution. Humans evolved in small tribes and groups, and in the wild, if someone was not liked by...

There are three kinds of jobs: The 'flatline' jobs: Here you do the same thing for the same inflation-adjusted salary, all your life. E.g., a mailman sorting parcels. The 'linear growth' jobs: Here, you grow at a steady pace. E.g., start as a junior accountant, become...

At the beginning of the Ukraine war, Russians were abandoning their tanks at an alarming rate due to breakdowns and technical glitches. On CNN, one American general was asked why. He said that whenever an American tank convoy rests, the crew immediately starts doing...

Stress spreads like a contagion. Just one person needs to have it -- especially the boss -- and soon, everybody around will feel it. Once the boss is snappy and angry, team members get scared and are on the defensive. Everybody's fight-or-flight system kicks in, which...

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 do with half-focus....

You feel you don't have a story to tell because your life is not exciting? Let me then tell you about Neman Ashraf, a police constable in Pakistan. A few years ago, I came across Neman's posts on Quora, where he used to write stories about his life, his family, and...

For the last 15 odd years, every day I go to the gym, I see the exact same cast of people working out -- feels like seeing the same play in the same theater 🙂 Given their clockwork-like consistency, you would imagine that sticking to a workout habit is really easy,...

The best periods of my life were the ones in which I had one overriding life goal -- be it cracking a big exam or building a new product for HabitStrong (my startup). A singular goal that you really, badly, desperately want to accomplish, gives you three superpowers:...

Nobody gets up one day and says, "Let me become a drug addict." Nobody decides one day, "Let me start eating junk food, and become obese and unhealthy." Nor does anyone decide to become a chronic procrastinator, Netflix binge-watcher, or a smartphone addict. And yet,...

In my last startup, ConceptOwl, a friend once told me about another learning startup that was growing like crazy by selling through schools. He asked, "Why don't you also do that?" When I heard that, my heart sank. We had tried the same approach and failed miserably....

If you throw away your business card, whatever you have left, is truly yours, because nobody can take it away. We all derive identity and pride from our jobs, and it is perfectly logical. But it is worth remembering that our worth as a professional is derived from two...

If you have had a toxic boss, their mere presence will make you anxious even after you have left that job. Why is that? It turns out that this anxiety is triggered by an unconscious process, which you can't control intellectually. When you go through trauma, your...

Almost every startup (including unicorns) staring at 'death-by-cash-burn' did not start off this way. Most startups were based on solid ideas and were addressing real need gaps. Even the startups that went down in flames (e.g., GoMechanic) were addressing real pain...

Multitasking doesn't work. But if you are hell-bent on it, there is ONLY one scenario in which it (sort of) works. You can multitask two actions simultaneously if one of them has become an ingrained habit. E.g., if you are a good driver, you can listen to a podcast...