In the summer of 2006, I was doing my summer internship with McKinsey in New York. My manager was an MD from a top medical school. One day, he and I were waiting for a cab to visit our client's office. Soon, a cab arrived. But before us, a woman standing next to us...

You don't have to hustle -- if you don't want to. There is no law of nature that says -- "Everyone in the world has to hustle all the time." No doubt, hustle has value. But there are a lot of things in the world that have value -- are you seeking all of them? We...

In my B-school course on 'Negotiations', we were split into groups of two and given a $10 bill each.  The person who got the $10, had to split it with his partner in whichever way he wanted. If the partner agreed to the proposal, they got to keep the $10.  Else, the...

The writer who produces the perfect first draft, produces nothing. The entrepreneur who 'makes sure' that his first startup is a unicorn, never starts. The person who 'makes sure' that everything he does is perfect, does nothing. There is no magic in writing the first...

I write nearly every day. And I have done it for years. Because in my mind, writing is not optional. It is something I do on good days and bad, on busy days and idle days. Most importantly, I do it whether I feel like it or not. If something is optional, our mind will...

Had it been left to me, I suspect I would probably still be sitting on my 1st-year electrical engineering courses without completing them. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit. But without the external pressure of exams and getting a degree, few of us would voluntarily go...

I went to IIT for the brand and the academics, but what I loved the most about the place was its simplicity. On campus, there was no show-off, no flashiness. Students attached zero (in fact, negative) value to how you dressed or how you looked. Whether your dad was an...

No matter how intelligent you are, one thing can screw up your rationality -- ideology. Because ideology presupposes the right answers. And these right answers will pervade every aspect of your life, be it your political, economic, or social beliefs. Ideology is a...

When the UPSC Civil Services results came out last year, somebody apparently commented that if Sundar Pichai had cleared the exam, he would today be the collector of Greater Noida. So is Civil Services the right choice? Or is it Google, Microsoft, et al.? To think...

"I have too little time" -- almost always, this is a lie. I have found that when I work for 5-6 hrs with intense focus, I have no more cognitive capacity left. And this is not an isolated fact. A study of elite musicians (e.g., violinists) revealed that after 4-5 hrs...

During my MBA, like in many other B-schools, you couldn't just register for any course you wanted at Wharton -- you had to win them in an auction. And naturally, everybody wanted the most sought-after courses from star professors, which cost nearly 10,000 points. By...

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...

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...

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...

A Trivandrum-based cardiologist once shared this story I am unable to forget. Two of his patients would often crib about life when they met him. Later, at different points, both got cancer. And when he met them in the hospital, both were nostalgic about their past...