Mindset - Abhishek Chakraborty

The Problem With Too Much Comfort

The recurring advice for writing any good story: keep the interesting parts, remove everything else. If you watch a good biopic, you wouldn’t want to know about their boring afternoon visit to the doctor unless it contributed to the screenplay of the movie.

The Perks of Being Resourceful

Mark Watney is hands down one of my favourite characters from a movie or a book. Apart from his one-liners and uplifting sense of humour (even in the direst of situations), what makes Mark Watney standout from the rest of us is his limitless resourcefulness.

Success Comes With a Price Tag

Like everything, even success comes with a price tag. The key is figuring out what that price is and being willing to pay it. The problem however is that the price of a lot of things is not obvious (or remain hidden) till the very end.

The Perks of Being Vulnerable

Contrary to its literal meaning, vulnerability is not a weakness. As we shall learn, vulnerability is actually about confronting our deepest fears so that we can be honest with ourselves and, by extension, others.

Be an Imperfectionist

Perfectionism is either an excuse to explain why you can’t get something done, or it’s a way (for bad managers) to justify why employees should work harder. It’s stupid and callous, and—as we’ll soon discover—not a good strategy, especially if you want to get things done.

Post-traumatic Growth

I believe everyone — without exception — will eventually face an irreversible tragedy they did not expect — and they didn’t prepare for it specifically because they did not expect it. While there’s no way to avoid it, we can, at the very least, mentally prepare for what is about to come.

Purposeful Listening: The Art of Listening More than What’s Said

All of us want to be heard, but nobody wants to listen. Really listen. That’s why spouses fight, friendships fall apart, and employees leave companies. But if you wish to be a good partner, a good friend, a good manager, learning how to listen with purpose is indispensable.

Make Your Failures Insignificant

Most of us aren’t willing to fail. We may understand intellectually that we’ll fail once in a while if we are trying something new, but most of us aren’t ready to take that punch to the gut. The paradox of success is that everybody wants to be successful, but nobody wants to fail to get there.