Rajan’s Linkedin posts

Resume can’t substitute for competence

In my consulting days, one of my managers had built a unique personal brand -- he loved all-nighters and had an aversion to sleep. He was known as an 'intense' person but I soon found that his intensity boiled down to only one thing -- staying late at night. And he...

Why AI alone won’t build your career

Unpopular opinion: Knowing how to use AI, by itself, will NOT build you a great career. Here is why. Technology makes you more efficient -- no question about it. But when EVERYONE is using the same technology, everybody's efficiency goes up equally. Result: The...

The essence of simple writing

When I was in 6th grade, I read an abridged version of Mahatma Gandhi's "My Experiments with Truth" for a competition organized by our school. And despite my severely limited vocabulary back then, the book's simple language totally absorbed me. There were no big...

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

Are 24 hours enough?

Last Friday, I figured that 24 hrs was not enough for me – there was way too much to do. So I ran this experiment: 1. I picked a priority task (something I absolutely had to get done). 2. I told myself, ‘Let everything else wait – let me just do this one task for...

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What is holding our country back?

At the private equity fund where I last worked, in about half the investments where we lost money, the culprit was fraud by the promoters (i.e., company owners). In some cases, the promoters blatantly stole more than a hundred crores, but shockingly, not one guy went...

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Life is not a zero-sum game

Envy is an amazing thing. I never envy the British Queen, who has inherited this massive fortune and privilege without having worked for it for even a day. Yet, if our classmates get ahead and do really well in life, we feel a tinge of envy. And the fact remains that...

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What freedom feels like

When I left my last job to do a startup, a new reality hit me – no more Car Club pickups, business class flights, expensive hotels, or unlimited travel budget. On the next flight, when I walked into the economy section, it felt a bit weird. But pretty soon, I got used...

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What makes us special is our convictions

In early 2009, I attended a townhall at McKinsey. This was just a few months after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the US was still in the midst of a horrible recession. The partners running the meeting assured us that all was well – in fact, McKinsey did not lay off...

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The ethics behind profit

Once, while driving in Trivandrum City, I saw a shop with a big banner: 'Margin-free shop’. Presumably, they don't keep any profit margin. On seeing that, you almost get the feeling that 'profit' is a dirty word. In fact, my daughter even asked, "What’s wrong with a...

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RDX or Detonator?

If you set fire to a lump of RDX, it does not explode - it just burns harmlessly. To unleash its killer explosive power, all you have to do is - hook it to a detonator (a thin pencil-like explosive device). Similarly, to achieve our life goals, we often already have...

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2 AM Warriors

In IIT hostels, most of us were 2 am warriors. We would be routinely awake till 2 or 3 am, and the canteen would be crowded after midnight. That may sound heroic, but hear out the rest of the story before you decide. Since the night was infinitely long (in our mind),...

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