Rajan’s Linkedin posts

When Constraints Fuel Strength

During my consulting days in New York, three of us were walking to our client's office for a meeting. One of my colleagues was an Indian-American while the other was Jewish. The Indian-American asked, "Why are so many consultants, lawyers, and bankers Jewish?" The...

Real Secret to Success: Keep Restarting

One year back, I received an email from a young lady who was torturing herself for not qualifying the NEET exam. And I receive loads of emails like this. Why do we needlessly torture ourselves for our past failures? Because we don't realize this one secret to...

Mindset: The Ultimate Edge in Life

If every investor (including an amateur) has access to the same information, tools, and technology, why isn't everybody an equally good investor? To paraphrase Joel Greenblatt, a renowned investor, "If you are investing in the market, patience will be the last man...

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

Seize Your Mornings

We love to start new things every New Year because, in our mind, it gives us a fresh start. Yet, isn't every morning an equally good fresh start opportunity? I find that no matter how good or disappointing the previous day was, when I wake up every morning, my mind is...

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There Are No Shortcuts to Real Change

From 1998 - 2000, the internet promised to change the world. Then in Mar 2000, it all crashed -- we thought, the internet was all hype. Turns out, both points of view were wrong. The Internet did change the world, but not the way we had imagined. Just having a website...

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Simple Steps to Shift Your State of Mind

Do psychiatrists also get depressed or anxious? The answer, unsurprisingly, is yes. Just because you know how your brain works doesn't change its working one bit. So when a psychiatrist hears some bad news, his body activates the fight or flight system just like...

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Everybody Needs Downtime

Back in the days when I headed a police organization, we had 1,200 armed policemen in our reserves for handling contingencies. These policemen were supposed to frequently undergo a 2-week intensive training in batches of 100. But for decades, this had not been done....

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Keep Life Simple

A TikToker Canadian mom got hospitalized after drinking too much water as part of a '75-Hard' challenge. Another influencer died of starvation after eating only uncooked vegan meals for 10 years -- you might have seen that news. What is going on folks? Life is not a...

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The Familiarity Trap

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...

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Why We Seek Validation

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...

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The Three Career Curves: Choose Your Climb

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...

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Work Behind the Glamour

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...

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Leadership is Hard

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...

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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 do with half-focus....

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The Beauty in the Ordinary

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...

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Don’t Quit While on the Uphill

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,...

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Find a Singular Goal

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:...

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One Small Action at a Time

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,...

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