Issue 17 September 12th 2025 Why some careers collapse in layoffs and others take off. ↓ I’ve realized that over the last two weeks, my newsletter eerily depicted a gloomy picture of the corporate world and our relationship with it. But the fact remains. Many employees confuse their identity with their job title and struggle when that title is stripped away. The solution often starts with a shift in mindset. Because the reality is simple: there are two broad kinds of people in the corporate...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Issue 16 September 6th 2025 Climbing the Corporate ladder feels like progress, but at what cost? ↓ I recently came across the news of a Bengaluru man spotted near a traffic signal holding a handwritten note in English and Kannada that read: “I don’t have job, no house, please help me. I have 14 years working experience in banking.” This act in general is not new to me. In a world of LinkedIn “Easy Apply”, where candidates just press apply even without going through the entire job advert, the...
14 days ago • 3 min read
Issue 15 August 28th 2025 How over-identifying with your skillset makes you fragile in the age of AI. ↓ One of the biggest traps of modern work is mistaking a job title for an identity. Ask someone ‘Who are you?’ and most will answer with their job title. We do this because we want to make it easier for the other person to recognize the skills we bring, what we do, who we represent, and what could be common points of interests to discuss further. The job title is a mask that makes you...
22 days ago • 4 min read
Issue 14 August 23rd 2025 The hidden power of Defensive Pessimism ↓ I hate air travel and more scared than I would like to admit. It’s a bit ironic since I love to travel to far away places and explore different cultures and food. But my recent watchlist on Youtube is all Air-crash Investigations. My wife on the other hand hates me watching them. She would often ask, “Why do you watch this stuff? Wouldn’t it make you even scared?”. While the question seemed logical, weirdly enough watching...
28 days ago • 3 min read
Issue 13 August 16th 2025 Why the “right way” might not be the only way ↓ For the past 6–7 years, on most days it feels like the work I do is rigid. I go to work at 9 a.m., do things that need to be done without asking the question “Why?”, get back from work at 6 p.m., scroll till my eyes get tired, and go back to sleep. All just to do the same things the next day. Yes, COVID redefined the time and space elements. Office and home merged. I cooked my lunch and ate between 12–2 p.m. but worked...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Issue 12 August 9th 2025 Why uncertainty can be the starting point for something better. ↓ Whenever I tell people that I plan to move back to India, the response from them follows a similar pattern. At first they are surprised about me leaving Europe. “Why do you want to leave the UK?”, “Why move away from a well-paid job?”, “Don’t you like it out there?”. Then they wonder why I want to move to India rather than moving to another foreign country. “Why not the US, Dubai, Singapore?”, “Will you...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Issue 11 August 2nd 2025 Creative work matures off the clock ↓ I have recently found a pattern of reigniting interest in projects that I paused a few months back. I was developing a course on “Positioning and Value Proposition for Professionals” a few months ago. I have mentored a dozen professionals now who are looking for a career transition, and in most cases, the reason for getting rejected in their applications is that they fail to reposition their current experience to the industry they...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Issue 10 July 26th 2025 The Actions & Choices we make are not random ↓ My wife and I love playing board games and we try to play atleast once every other day. We have stopped buying new games to our collection for some time now. But we bucked that trend last week on our visit to our favorite board game store in Oxford. We bought a new game called Harmonies. It has multiple board game mechanics but one part is also managing resources to build specific patterns to earn points. Now, the...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Issue 9 July 19th 2025 You just need to make something that no one else did - Because it came from you ↓ Music is the one form of art that I loved learning. I used to play the keyboard, and I could very easily play the tune after hearing it once. While I’m impartial with my appreciation of good music and artists, A.R. Rahman is an artist I respect. His jingles—specifically the one for Titan Watches—are one of the most natural tunes to play. It always felt like that music was just in the air,...
2 months ago • 4 min read