We are living in an era of productivity porn. We are turning into an Android, measuring every action of ours: walking, eating, drinking. How are we different from a lab rat? I see people sermonizing about how important is productivity, what to eat and what not to eat. We humans being a social animal and …
Author Archives: Atul
founders
Off late talking to lot many founder friends. One major question which pops us what could go wrong: money, idea, market? Again and again, the answer was: founders giving up too easily. Running a startup is like venturing into uncharted territory, the outcome is not defined. A lot many founders get into it for the …
maximize
We are living in a world where everything is about maximizing. Be it productivity, wealth or happiness. We are so lost in this race that we end up sailing in many boats at the same time. In the early days, we self gloat our productivity. As we progress, managing many fronts get difficult. We end …
Contagious
Picked this book title Contagious, talks about viral marketing and word to mouth. If you have read Robert Cialdini: Influence and Daniel Kahneman: Thinking fast and slow, you can skip this book. Summary of the book in 2 pages.
struggle
We all go through a rough patch in our life. The time when we feel the world has transpired against us, nothing we do bear success. We have witnessed this with our favorite team or the batsman. Some say it is our luck to blame while others that time is not in our favor. I …
positioning
January I visited Blossoms, an old book store in Bangalore. I picked this 2nd handbook title: positioning, I enjoyed reading it. Simple take away from the book: It is customer perception that defines the success of your product. What you perceive about your product has to match with your customers. The book cites dozen-odd examples …
measure
Should we measure our life in terms of relationship, contribution to the world? We get evaluated at work or in seeking education. What about our life? What are the metrics one has to measure the meaningfulness of their life? Is it the number of friends we make, how we treat our siblings, parents? Is it …
leader
Leaders are also a human-like me and you. They are no gods and they are prone to committing mistakes as well. Accepting a mistake and fixing it gets them more loved by their peers. In the end, an organization is a collection of many humans with unique persona and ways of seeing the world.
Tune
It is difficult to stay focused in this noisy world. Everyone has got advice for others. In building a product what matters most is your customers, who have got pain. Focusing on such a tribe is the only way to succeed. Everything else is noise. I remember my Hindi teacher repeating proverb: Elephant walk on …
negative
What makes us see things in the negative? Is it our life long conditioning or lizard brain? We give up easily and losing is the default assumption. How will we win without a positive mindset? What would have happened to Cars, if Ford had followed on buddy owners? What would have been to the society …