Infinite Possibilities of a Curious & Creative Life

Learn to live with reality; otherwise one day, reality will come and live with you.

It is impossible to live without failing at something; unless you live so cautiously that you might not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default.

I act because I must. (Not because I can)

Change is dependent on one or more generation of deaths. Learn to be patient.

Life is disappointing. Deal with it.

Liberation is not only for the one who is freed, but also for the one who frees.

Control what you can. Let go of the rest.

The solution to every problem is rooted in economics and human behavior.

Whenever a system is modeled, the one factor often forgotten is the “Perception of Burden”.

At the end of the day, each and every problem boils down to supply and demand.

Every organization tends to function on three principles; low variability, predictability, and operational flat line.

Organizational inertia means: "if isn't broken, don't fix it; don't look at it, either". Try to always question this, even if it is only to yourself.

Explain things by answering the question “what they are” rather than “what they are not”.

Be ruthless in editing; trust the intelligence of your audience/reader.

Achieving real simplicity is hard, and there are some very complex things behind every simple user interface.

Similarly, simplicity is the hardest thing in the world but achieving it is the hallmark of a genius. After the Battle of Gettysburg (the turning point of the U.S. civil war), a nationally-renowned orator spoke at the battlefield for 2 hours. Nobody remembers him. Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, which is the most famous speech in U.S. history. It has 256 words.

However, remember that simplicity can be the result of extreme wisdom or the product of absolute ignorance.

“Technology always develops from the primitive via the complicated to the simple.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In all spheres of life there will be a never ending string of “new hotness”. Be not alarmed, be not charmed.

If you are learning and it’s interesting, then your career will take care of itself. Otherwise, change your job.

Lateral change is not only good, it’s powerful.

Make friends with the people who are at odds with you, but don’t bury differences.

Understanding the “styles” of people is one of the keys to success.

Make your boss look good and help him succeed. That’s YOUR job in any organization, any role.

People like to be punished intellectually, but rewarded emotionally. Never EVER do it the other way round!!

People like to be led from the heart. In order to do that, give them space, but watch over them. However, remember very few have perfected this art.

Stop listening, start listening “Don’t just listen to what’s being said, pick-up what’s unsaid.

Present facts to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Let those who aren’t sure, stew.

The only people who use the word “users” are IT departments and drug peddlers. They’re people!

An idea is powerful only when it can stand in absolute isolation

Crossing the Rubicon is more tiring than anything that happens on either bank.

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work, and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

Prescription not description!

Knowing when not to govern is also governance.

The people who fantasize too much about the future, often miss the present.

There is no such thing as merger and acquisitions; it’s just murder and acquiescence.

The Peter Principle: Mistaking past performance for future success.

Job = Function-Of (pattern recognition, perspective). Education, experience are mere aids.

Management is about reaching short-term objectives, leadership is about achieving a vision.

Consequently, managers “seek” consensus, leaders build it (because they know).

The three things that count in your job: maturity of perspective, innovation, and speed of execution.

Everyone has self-doubts; the point is, “is your self-belief bigger than your self-doubts?” Your rational mind can make business cases anytime for anything, but are the ideas in your irrational mind bigger than them.

Sometimes you should focus on things that sell, not excel.

Don’t blindly believe in training. “Dogs” get trained. “People” develop skill-sets.

Remember, in any capitalist environment, free thought is a capital crime.

In corporate life, being yourself will have to wait until you get home or at least to a bar.

Control your shine.

In corporate life, two thirds of the time spent coming to a conclusion is used to either teach a colleague about the conclusion or to justify the conclusion already made.

Stupidity is not equal to Dumbness. But, dumbness is like a black hole. Very intense, very powerful. If you don’t know how to kill it, get out of its immediate proximity. Otherwise, it will be like “fighting a pig in cesspool” story.

Lastly, wherever mediocrity is charged to define meritocracy; avoid that situation like the bubonic plague. It will kill everyone, kings and paupers.

Nobody loves the process, but what everyone likes is that they know what the process is and who to go to.

Rapid; Repeatable; Relia

Keep-up with today while pushing the boundary of tomorrow.

Your job is to provide with great options. My job is to sell those and get the investment for it.

Never ever “trash” your employees in front of others. You will make short-term gains but long-term enemies.

Don’t compromise yourself; you are all you’ve got.

Ignorance is bold; wisdom hesitates.

You have a choice to be the asshole at work, or the asshole at home.

The most important thing is the sharpness of the mind and awareness. The rest is just add-ons because just like the body puts on clothes, the mind puts on external ideas to look good to others and sometimes to itself.

No matter how much we improve the efficiency and increase the productivity, we still run out of time. The problem is in the man, not the system.

Sosha (i.e. Pretentiousness) is like the prostitution business – (1) you will always have a pimp who will get you screwed because of what you exhibit and (2) no matter how hard you try, there will always be a whore better than you. (3) And in the end, you always end up disgusted with yourself. So the moral is “stay low-profile, live happy”.

When you see a lot and experience a lot of things early in life, you grow old.

For incompetence to survive in any controlled environment, it must regularly displace competence out of it.

Don’t get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They’re endlessly dazzling, and they’re always endlessly disappointing.

A predictable thing might not be consistent, but a consistent thing is always predictable.

Those that are struggling in life believe most strongly in “good begets good”. Therefore, more the success, lesser the altruism.

What eventually matters is how you look at it – the immense despair of life or the immense hope.

Think about it: Life and us keep meeting each other time and again. But in the end death is what wins.

The more affluent one is, the more socially detached one gets, consequently the keener is the sense of personal space. That’s why Indians are not claustrophobic.

Mystics meet at crossroads.

For a worthwhile existence, one must get five things straight: math, physics, language, women, and wine.

Indian defensiveness is false nationalism. It is not a stance that cares about India, it is one that cares about what others think of India, which is not nationalism. That is narcissism.

Philosopher William James stated that the mind’s main function was to be a fortress for protecting one’s ego from reality. When the mind has to accommodate a new fact, James argued, it doesn’t settle on the change to its model of reality that is most likely to reflect reality. It protects the fortress, calculating the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact.

Parents are like oak trees whose shadow we take for granted. But oftentimes, the terror of losing that shade reminds us of the blistering heat of life from which it protects us.

In a family/group/community, when everyone gets their life back…then there is no life left.

If your dreams aren’t fulfilled, it doesn’t mean that life is disappointing. It means that you dreamed the wrong dreams.

When governance contracts, voids created get filled by ideas closest in nature to past/ideal constructs or closest in proximity.

The greatest good of the greatest number is the foundation of morals (and legislation) ~ Jeremy Bentham

It’s a big pageant of nothing, rising out of nothing, dissolving into nothing, and happening for no one. ~ Jim Carrey

“Danda”, just like the Lord Almighty, is everywhere.

Shadow IT is the manifestation of either the incompetence or short-sightedness of the IT function/chief.

Ansoo ke beej boye hai, to khoon ki fasal to katni hogi (When you plant the seeds of tears, you reap a bloodbath)

Earlier it was technology aware humans, now it’s human aware technologies.

You have been programmed to be choose – take sides – by nature or nurture

Parents can never be the source of joy in their kids’ lives, because the past is almost always a source of disappointment, fear, and regret. On the other hand, our children will always remain the reason for rejoicing, because the future holds hope and that precious sliver of possibility that things can be changed. In one way we should be thankful to our offspring. At least they let us die with hope; even if that’s an illusion.

A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.

When you walk into a business environment, you look for the sucker, and if you don't see one then it’s you.

The Greatest business solutions or innovations are oriented to either of two things – solve a problem or reduce cost.

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity.

With the hope that no one would have complaints against me, I kept increasing the burden of complaints I had against myself.

So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit. ~ The Joker

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

Two purposes of life, first to find your gift, and the second to give it away.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. ― Louise Erdrich.

We are interested in things because of their perceived utility.

All facts are equal; their implications are referential.

One cannot compute all the consequences of one’s action. That means that all of one’s actions are based on some kind of intuition and the result of an analysis of a limited set of data.

None of one’s judgments of what constitutes the truth can be final.

Happiness is like Schrödinger’s cat; if you acknowledge it, then it is gone.

The desire to create stems from the desire to know. And the thirst for fame drives out the thirst to create.

Niceness is always in comparison to an external standard or response to stimuli; kindness is always intrinsic.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves; by each, let this be heard; some do it with a bitter look; some with flattering words; the coward does it with a kiss; the brave man with a sword.

Rare is human birth on Earth; especially rare in men is Brahmin birth (Devi Bhagwat Purana).

Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara, Mandodari tatha; panchkanya svaranityam mahapataka nashaka.

Sometimes, just like a cephalopod, one can become an island of mental complexity in a sea of simple natured people.

We require a visible past, a visible continuum, and a visible myth of origin that reassures us about our end.

Political ambition, even in its lowest and most insignificant part, is always at the mercy of the judgment of others.

How do societies collapse? (1) overexploitation of resources; (2) overproduction of energy (such as nuclear weapons); and (3) extreme industrial activities that can destabilize the planet’s climatic systems.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the end, we'll all become stories ― Margaret Atwood

Old people are mankind's early warning systems. They may not be able to do much, but they can inform.

I have lost the desire to be understood. I just want my soul to feel comfortable in this flesh.

Never get on the bad side of small-minded people who have a little authority.

When a society loses its moral compass, it collapses from within - G.K. Chesterton

Our parents leave us too early, our spouse and our children come along too late. Our siblings are the only ones who are truly with us for the entire ride.