Category: Personal Growth

Leadership, Personal Growth

Strategies for Avoiding Distraction and Increasing Your Productivity

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday (you know who you are) and the conversation steered towards how difficult it has become for either one of us to be able to do distraction free, focused effort to think deeply. About anything. We are constantly distracted. We keep switching tasks. We are continually distracted by our environments, our devices and our primal need for novelty. Yes, you read it right. Our brain constantly searches for stimuli that can help it to fight, flight or freeze if necessary or something interesting, funny that can give us a dopamine hit which […]

Ideas, Personal Growth

Increase your Luck | Tina Seelig

Watch Tina Seelig, a Stanford professor, teaching entrepreneurship, talk about how to make our own luck. Its a simple two step process:  Take small risks and go outside our your comfort zone.  Look at everything you experience through a lens of possibility.  Small 11 min video but when implemented can make a big impact on our lives. Watch it here. 

Leadership, Personal Growth

Leadership Effectiveness – Questions to Ask of Ourselves

As leaders, the way we behave when we are alone or amongst a group is always noticed by everyone around and has an impact whether we like it or not and whether it is intentional or not. So, it is better to be intentional about the kind of impact that we want to have rather than leave that to chance. So, in order to learn how to go about being intentional about the impact my emotions have on people around me, I registered and attended a session on Emotional Intelligence and how we can use the concepts and frameworks to […]

Leadership, Personal Growth

32 lessons from this year’s Do Lectures

I stumbled onto this list collated by Matt Spry about what he learnt from this year’s Do Lectures. This is great advice for anyone to lead their lives. Here is the entire list as quoted by him on his post here. 1. Do less, but better 2. Consciously choose everything you do 3. Follow your curiosity, talk to more people, try things, tell your story 4. Set small experiments with low expectations 5. Always look to the edges for inspiration and a glimpse of future 6. Our work and values may not change but our response to changing context should 7. Draw more […]

Personal Growth

Be Intentional in Designing Your Environment

It is an age-old adage in India that a clean desk is the mark of a clean mind. What they meant was that the external environment was a direct result of our state of mind. As with other such things, the reverse is as much true. Our external environment can have an impact on not just our mood but can even impact behavior. Take for example, the experiment being done in Berlin’s Hermannstrasse train station. This station is a known place for criminal and anti-social activities. The experiment is about using atonal music to subdue criminal activities. Psychological studies have shown […]