I once had this habit of responding to any question a nanosecond after the person stopped speaking (or sometimes, even before that). Maybe, I was afraid of a pause between the question and my answer. Yet, there is nothing more pleasing to our ears than a few moments...

Think of someone you really, really envy. It could be anyone -- a billionaire, a film star, a Nobel laureate, or even a Buddhist monk. Have you thought of a person? Now, would you swap your life for theirs? If yes, here is the deal: You get all they have, including...

I know an ex-civil servant, who joined three political parties with diametrically opposite ideologies, to end up in one of the highest positions in government. So why do people do that? Do their political convictions change so fast? Are they so desperate ‘to serve the...

I have seen people adopt two distinct approaches when they want to start meditating: Approach 1: Sit down and meditate. Approach 2: Research lots and lots of meditation techniques (and do nothing). In fact, this holds for everything in life. If you want to do...

You don't have to quit all social media, though some people I admire (e.g., Cal Newport) are big proponents of that. In the last few years, almost all my new friends, running buddies, and connections have come from LinkedIn. Without that, I would have missed out on...

When is it too late to start something? Today, I came across this guy called Lew Hollander, who At 82, finished the Hawaii Ironman and held that world record for a while. He has run more than 100 ultramarathons and extreme events. Today, at 94, Lew runs up a hill...

You must have heard a lot of wisdom along the lines of, "Here is what you should do in your 20s." Often, one hears things like: Learn aggressively, try things you are scared of, make mistakes Build relationships and network Explore ideas that seem interesting Have fun...

A Wharton professor, who taught us valuation, once told this story of Merton Miller, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the Miller-Modigliani theorem. At that time, our professor was a student at the University of Chicago, where Miller was also...

A long time back, I was part of an online group of (supposedly) entrepreneurs and investors. About half the chatter in that group was about crypto but there was zero logic in the discussion. Some day people would exult when Bitcoin went up. On other days, they would...

I once was interviewing a professional investor who invests in power plants and infrastructure. But when I asked him "What is 1 kilowatt-hour?" he had no idea. Many people swim in the shallows. They make do by talking about high-level stuff, without really...

We hear two extreme philosophies of life. One says, "Spend less, own less, and be minimalistic. The other says, "Live it up, enjoy the luxuries, and have fun." So what should you do? While there can't be a prescriptive answer, let me lay out a framework to think about...

In this deafening clamor of notifications, pings, and rings, do you know the one thing nobody cares about? You. And your attention, your well-being. Nobody cares about your attention because you can always work late nights and get work done. Then why bother? We have...

On his desk in the Oval Office, US President Harry Truman famously had a wooden sign which said, "The buck stops here." No shifting responsibility, no passing around blame -- when the push came to shove, Truman promised finality. And true to his promise, Truman took...

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....

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...