Maybe it is a character flaw. But most of the time I don’t react in the conventional/ expected way to the ups and downs of life in the tech industry. It isn’t equanimity or “grace under fire” or indifference. In the moment – I do feel the onslaught of emotions. I find it useful to…
Category: Life Lessons
A Year of Quizzing – 2024 Retrospective
I used to quiz fairly regularly both in school and college and also loved setting and hosting quizzes (the high point was co-hosting the inaugural IIT Madras Open Quiz in 2004). But then I lost touch with it for over two decades. A chance meeting at a kid’s birthday party with a parent who I…
Language and Science
Or Why Metaphors are Dangerous Language is imprecise. Language is especially imprecise and imperfect when it comes to describing scientific concepts. And the irony of using the tools of language to write about its own shortcomings is not lost on me. Think about the oft repeated phrase – “survival of the fittest” and how it…
Gratitude
I love good teachers and classrooms. Something about the act of learning – sitting in a room, completely distraction-free and being a complete sponge – listening intently to a teacher at the peak of their craft, sparring with your fellow students and building new neural connections – lights me up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas…
Side Quests
I often find myself thinking about the Greek hero Odysseus (and NO – this is not one of those Elon Musk things where he claims he thinks about the Roman empire daily or how men supposedly think about the Roman empire multiple times a day. In the last year, I’ve only thought about the Roman…
Doubt and a Miracle
Sometimes all it takes to part the clouds of self-doubt and let the rays of confidence shine through is for Novak Djokovic to lose at the Australian Open. Djokovic does not have bad days, especially at the Australian Open. Since the beginning of the 2019 tournament, he had not lost a single match in the…
Design Sprints – Short-Circuiting the Development Cycle
Kapi Pe Charcha #004 – Venture Highway “Do I need to set up a team, raise money and build a fully functional product to validate my ideas?” Building a product is costly. One can spend months setting up a team, raising money and creating a product that has a high chance of failure. One needs…
Career Choices in the Wisdom Economy
One of the most significant problems that the next generation will have to deal with is one created by extremely long life spans: People who live longer will have to work longer Staying in the same career over 60-70 years won’t be possible Many types of jobs will get wiped out Decisions made at a…
We Are Not Doing OK
Over Sunday brunch I finally admitted to a friend that I was not doing OK. And then he admitted back to me that neither was he. The most common question that friends and acquaintances have asked each other over the last 9 months has been – how are you doing? How is everything going? And…
38 Lessons over 38 Years
No sudden wisdom has dawned on me. No life-altering epiphanies. Birthdays come and birthdays go. This will be just another day and the start of another year. But looking back is important. Weighing my current beliefs and recording them seemed important (especially given how this year has shaped up for the world). At 76, I…