Mentor, entrepreneur, investor, and author

Category: Productivity


  • Ring the bells that still can ring

    Leonard Cohen crooned, rather perfectly:Ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack, a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in These are the kinds of lines that set you free. Free from the compulsion of producing something perfect. Free from the obligation of creating something that can not be…

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  • National Startup Day

    The honorable Prime Minister has declared the 16th of January as National Startup Day. This is a fascinating development and a piece of excellent news for the Indian startup ecosystem. As a humble contribution from my side, I plan to give the kindle copy of my book, “Reclaim Your Inner Entrepreneur,” free today and tomorrow.…

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  • Are you the drunk searching under the streetlight?

    Are you the drunk searching under the streetlight? The streetlight effect is a type of observational bias. It comes from the often-quoted story about the drunk and the streetlight and appears first in Mulla Nasruddin tales.  It goes like this: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what…

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  • Can Flow be a worthwhile goal?

    People all over the world report being frustrated with their job. In a report about the office workers in the UK, 97% of people reported frustration with work. When you ask people why they continue to work in the job that causes them to be frustrated, the most common reason is money and security. In…

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  • The Vast Sea of Ignorance

    When one feels overwhelmed and demotivated by looking at someone else’s knowledge or skills, it is a great strategy to put things in a perspective. This strategy is based on reality of individual limitations and capabilities. The sphere of knowledge in the world is vast. One may say infinite, but that may not be true.…

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  • When was the last time you did something for the first time?

    Staying in the comfort zone is … well, comfortable. You do something that you have done many times before, and you do it better. You are comfortable, you have the confidence, and you do it well. Why would anyone try anything new? You try something new because you have to. When your current strategy, current…

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  • Arguments about transient issues do not deserve your time

    One of the major drains on one’s productivity is the time spent in arguing about transient issues. You will find people who are passionately on either side of an argument and would go on for hours, when the resolution of the issue is already there somewhere or is going to manifest itself in some time.…

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  • Ask Atul : What has been your biggest career mistake?

    The biggest career mistake I have made is to assume that there is something called career mistake. Let me explain. When we use the word “career mistake”, we are referring to an incident in our lives when we took a certain decision that turned out to be “wrong” later. It may be that we rejected a…

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  • Small things

    It is the tiny habits that become one’s nature. It is very important to be disciplined in every day things.

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  • Nudge

    Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argued in their influential book, “Nudge”, that if we redesign our daily environment in such a way that it makes it easier to do things that we want to do and more difficult to do things that we want, it is more likely that our behavior would change in the…

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