Intellectual Curiosity, Critical Thinking and Perspective Taking

Just finished reading by Hank Barnes on Gartner’s blog where he talks about his pet peeves with the B2B world and I quote My biggest pet peeve is that the B2B world has DEVOLVED to  a world where three things don’t seem to be valued anymore – Hank Barnes (On the Gartner blog) The three things that he mentions are “Intellectual Curiosity, Critical Thinking and Perspective taking”. While he talks from the perspective of Businesses dealing with other Businesses, I reckon, these are true for each and everyone of us and in every sphere of life – both personal and professional. While […]

How do we know when to quit?

A young student recently asked me the following question: How do I know it is time to quit something and when to persist with it? Here is how I answered the question: There is no one answer that fits everyone. There are many ways to figure this out. For me, the best way is to go back to the reason why I started something. If the reason I started something is still relevant and important, I know that I would like to continue to engage on this topic. Then the next question to ask is if the activity is taking you towards […]

Reading or Watching with your own Filter on

I read this interesting post by Robert Twigger in which he talks about how he is trying to watch the NEWS with his own filter – a filter for creativity. He also shares a bit about the results. You can read his post here. This is interesting in many different ways. What he has done is make that which is hidden, obvious. Each one of us looks at the information that comes to us with a filter on. I say this on many occasions and also in my book Thrive, that the human brain is a large pattern recognition engine. […]

Life Lessons from The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch

This was the title of the last lecture delivered by Randy Pausch at the Carnegie Mellon University lecture hall. He was terminally ill and only had a few days to live. If you have not watched this video, I would strongly encourage you to spend the hour and 15 mins that it takes to watch the video and while you do so, please do have a notebook close to you and take notes. In his humorous talk, he shares some great wisdom on life and how to live a life worth living. You can watch the video here. When there […]

How To Be Different and Stand Out

Premise: One of the side effect of the explosion of social media is that every one is trying to be seen (views), heard (downloads) and appreciated (likes/shares). In this constant struggle to be seen/heard/appreciated, everyone is trying to be different and unique and authentic. And that is the true challenge. According to National Human Genome Research institute, “All human beings are 99.9 percent identical in their genetic makeup.” Which means that we are all that different from each other genetically. The 0.1 percent that does differentiate us genetically is influenced by our environment, exposure and experience we have had in […]