Thoughts
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Notes on Attention
Attention is the one resource that cannot be manufactured. Notes on what it means to spend it well.
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Citizenship in a Democracy
Mumbai’s voter turnout was under 30% at 1 pm on election day. Heat, long weekends and indifferent employers are easy excuses — but citizenship means more than standing in a queue.
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On Building Things
Why the act of making something — anything — is one of the most clarifying experiences available to a human being.
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The Energy Audit
A framework for figuring out which activities give you energy and which drain it, and what to do with that information.
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Pandemic Notes
Things learned and unlearned during the extended interruption of normal life. Some of them are keepers.
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The Case for Slow Work
Against the culture of speed for its own sake — and for the kind of work that can only be done slowly.
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On Expertise
What expertise actually is, how it is acquired, and why the people who have it most often underestimate it.
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RJ Malishka, the BMC and the Underlying Breach of Our Freedom
Red FM’s RJ Malishka created a video jingle satirising Mumbai’s monsoon infrastructure. The BMC filed a ₹500 crore defamation lawsuit. An individual’s freedom of expression is being trampled here.
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Lessons from Ten Years of Blogging
A decade of writing in public — what it has changed, what has stayed hard, and whether it was worth it.
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The Case of the Missing Engagement Glue
On what makes people stay engaged at work — and the specific things organisations do that destroy it without noticing.
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Moana the Movie and Climate Change
A Disney film, a seven-year-old’s conclusions, and what that says about the accessibility of complex ideas.
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2016 — A Year in Review
A year of difficult choices and useful lessons, reviewed honestly.
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I Am Sapped
On the weeks that drain you completely — what causes them, what recovers you, and the thin comfort of knowing they end.
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Faith
On faith as a practical operating principle — the willingness to act before you have proof — versus faith as a substitute for thinking.
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5 Years Hence
On why five-year plans are almost always wrong and why making them anyway is still worthwhile.
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Nostalgia
On what nostalgia actually is, what we are really missing when we feel it, and what it is and is not useful for.
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Customer Orientation
Every company claims to be customer-oriented. The gap between the claim and the reality is one of the most reliable predictors of failure.
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Savalee — The Acorn and the Oak
On the Marathi concept of savalee — the shade of a great tree — and the patience required to grow into what you already are.
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Bandwidth
On bandwidth as metaphor — personal, cognitive, emotional — and what quality of service looks like for a human being.
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IIM Jobs
On placement season numbers, what they do and do not mean, and the concentration of talent in a narrow band of sectors.
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Valu — The Wild Bull
On the Marathi word for a wild, uncontrollable bull — and what it means when applied to people who will not be tamed.
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Meetings
On meetings as one of the primary ways organisations convert time into noise — and the structural reasons it keeps happening.
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Democracy
On Churchill’s observation and what it actually means — with particular attention to India’s remarkable democratic experiment.
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God as a Brand
Applying brand strategy thinking to religion as an analytical exercise — and what millennia of successful loyalty-building can teach marketers.
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Life as We Know It
On stepping back and noticing the accidental architecture of your life — and what to do with that recognition when it arrives.
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Lights Out
The first post on this blog — on why writing clarifies thinking, and what this blog is supposed to be.