Constraints: How to Bend Space And Time to Solve Problems Creatively

The biggest hurdle any creative has to overcome is starting out. To overcome this, we need constraints. But arbitrary constraints—that are set for the sake of setting constraints—are useless. We have to learn how to choose the appropriate constraint based on the creative goals we are pursuing.

Work Rules

A set of guidelines to build a work culture that promotes calm and peace over stress and anxiety.

Know Your Competition

Whenever there’s a finite resource, there’s competition. It’s not important to lose your sleep over that, but it would be foolish to ignore it. Knowing where you are standing is important, because that helps you find leverage, and build a specific strategy.

Anchor Mechanics: A Framework to Ruthlessly Prioritise Creativity Over Fixed Plans

While pursuing creative endeavours, it’s impossible to follow any fixed plan—be it while writing an essay, or building a startup. Creatives endeavours are bound to be chaotic. There’s a lot of figuring out to be done on the way.

Why Work Doesn’t Look Like Work

If you are a knowledge worker, your biggest job is thinking. But if all day all night you are busy being busy, ‘thinking’ takes a backseat, and you end up doing a lot of things without getting anything done. You don’t waste the hours, but you waste the years.

The 85% Rule: Why You Should Not Do Your Best

“Do your best and forget about the rest” is good advice. It prevents you from the anxiety of results, but that’s half of the problem. The other half of the problem is the continuous pressure while performing at full-throttle. Truth is, you don’t produce your best work when you give your 100%.

Compound Thinking: How to Make Time Work For You

When we plan to improve ourselves or grow a business, we pursue dramatic changes like, run 10 km everyday, or grow 10x a month. It’s not sustainable. There’s a better approach.

Demand-Side Sales: Everybody Wants to Buy, But Nobody Wants to be Sold to

The art of selling has got a bad rap. For some reason, it feels icky. Like an unnatural push to get people to buy what you’re offering. Mostly because we’ve got the whole narrative of selling backwards.

Giving Advice is Not Giving Solutions

On an average, I get asked at least 10 times a day for some kind of advice related to business, management, relationship, productivity, negotiation, mental health, life, etc. To make sure I don’t do a sloppy job, I’ve devised a framework to give advice that I’ve polished over the years.

Alternative Histories: How to Judge The Quality of a Decision

In the real world, it’s very hard to know if a [decision is correct] even if the outcome is positive. Due to randomness, the positive outcome might just be a fluke. If you flip a coin to make an investment decision, not matter how much money you make, it’s still a bad decision.

The Novelty-Familiarity Gap: Be Original, Just Not Too Much.

Arijit Singh is an extremely popular Bollywood singer. Have you wondered why all his hit songs sound similar? Also, why are all talkshow and sitcom formats so similar? Why are franchises more popular than standalone films?

Conformity: Why Everything Popular is Wrong

No matter how rational you are, consensus is hard to resist. Even if you choose to stick to your guns in the beginning, you are bound to capitulate at the end. It’s hard to look like a bozo for a long time, especially when you are the only bozo in the room.

Graceful Context-Switching: The Art & Science of Multitasking Efficiently

As much as everybody—starting from productivity gurus, bloggers, YouTubers, authors, advisors, conference speakers, and ballroom attendees—would like to tell us how unproductive it is, multitasking is here to stay.

Don’t be Number One. Be The Only One.

People don’t back you because you are right. They back you because you’ve got a backbone. It doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong. What matter is that you have skin in the game. You stand up for what you believe in. You are not number one. What matters is you are a “Category of One”.

Margin of Safety: An Antidote to Risk, Uncertainty, and Ignorance

No matter how smart or confident you (think you) are, it would be foolish to assume that everything is in your control, and nothing would go wrong. There are unknown unknowns lurking around. You need a Margin of Safety in your bets. Always!

You Don’t Need More If You Have Enough

We are brainwashed by society and culture to assume that more money equals more success, and hence more happiness. How true is that? Is it okay to be content with just enough? How much is just enough? Is the threshold same for everybody?

Effective Mentorship: Why The Best Leaders Don’t Create Followers

What is effective mentorship? How can we use rapport, optimism, character development, and loyalty to propel growth in others?

Antilibrary: Why What You Don’t Know is More Valuable Than What You Know

An antilibrary—the unread books in our collection—represents what we don’t know. It’s a reminder of our ignorance. It’s a delineation of the fact that even if we pursue knowledge for the next 100 years, we won’t be able to know everything there is to know. In fact, not even a tiny fraction of it.

If You Are Not Writing, You Are Not Thinking

No matter which field you belong, few exercises help clarify your thoughts better than writing. Writing is the ultimate test of whether your thoughts make sense, or are merely unstructured feelings. Writing is the best way to question your notions and opinions in order to make them stronger.

Desirable Difficulties: Why Effective Learning is Full of Mental Struggle And Frustration

The way schools teach is very archaic. It might have worked fifty years ago these days the jobs that have the most impact require us to be able to solve unexpected problems. School education has got a lot of catching up to do in that respect.

The Stress Response Cycle: The Surprising Science Behind Feeling Better

The internet is littered with a lot of content to manage stress, and nobody knows what they are talking about. The basic premise is this: learn to chill. But if it was so easy to chill and relax, there wouldn’t have been to many motivational videos in the first place.

Fermi Problems: How You Think About A Problem Is More Important Than The Solution

If a question is asked in a school exam, you know that the answer exists. But in a wicked world, often there’s no clear indication that you are approaching the correct solution. Therefore how you think about solving problems becomes more important than the solutions themselves.

Life Is A Death Sentence: You Can Either Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

Life is a death sentence. We all die eventually. It can be sooner or later, but die we will. With that information, you can either get busy living, or get busy dying.

Inside View: Why This Time It’s NOT Going to be Different

We focus on a problem by using information that is close at hand. We make predictions based on our unique set of inputs. The more closely we know a problem, the more confident we are. This is wrong!

The Perks of Being A Renaissance Man

People who try out different things and dabble with new domains are labelled as "jack of all trades, master of none." It cannot be further from the truth.