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I still remember that day in July 2002.

I was to leave for the US in a month.
It had been an expensive affair – paying for the exams, visa, books.
We were completely out of money.

And I needed overcoats.
Michigan is a really cold place.

No one we knew had spare overcoats.
Heck, no one even wore them in India :)

Dad figured a place in Old Delhi that sells used overcoats.
We took the bus.
Reached Chandni Chowk market.
Found the place.
The old man was selling them for Rs.400 a piece.

We were overjoyed!
We had budgeted Rs.1000

Bought 2 overcoats.
Spent Rs.50 on kulfi faluda to celebrate :)

I still remember that day!
It taught me an important lesson of life.
The most wonderful memories in life do not cost money.

Here is an underrated productivity hack:

Put all tasks on your calendar

Build the habit of using a calendar.
And then put EVERYTHING on the calendar.

Not just meetings and work tasks.
Birthdays
Workouts
Reminders
Daily routine
Family events
Bills to be paid
Even free time

Free your mind from tasks.
It will add structure to what might look like a random day!

PS: Here are some non-calendar things I add to my calendar:

1. Shopping
2. Vacations
3. Afternoon naps
4. Writing twitter threads
5. Uzma’s class that I attend with her

Productivity is power. Calendar is the fuel to that power.

In 2002, I was to leave for the US in a month.
It had been an expensive affair – paying for the exams, visa, books.
We were completely out of money.

And I needed overcoats.
Michigan is a really cold place.

No one we knew had spare overcoats. 
Heck, no one even wore them in India :)

Dad figured a place in Old Delhi that sells used overcoats.
Took the bus.
The old man was selling them for Rs.400/pc.

We were overjoyed!
We had budgeted Rs.1000

Bought 2 overcoats.
Spent Rs.50 on Kulfi Faluda to celebrate :)

The most beautiful things in life are with our loved ones, in whatever way, whatever form.

Most of us hate school and college.
For understandable reasons.
We apparently do not learn anything that will be helpful in practical life.

However, school and college teach us an important concept of life: of HOW to learn.

That understanding of how to learn, teaches you to be a student forever, even when you are out of your college, without any teacher.

Which means, if you have to be learning forever, the best thing you can take away from school and college is to learn how to be a student. 

For life.

1. Keep a distraction note book
2. Use Pomodoro timer. 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of break
3. Set distraction time
4. Look for the emotional issue of distraction
5. Don’t be so harsh on yourself.
6. Know that delayed gratification gives better results than instant gratification
7. Force 10 minutes of work. And you will be surprised at how distraction goes away.
8. Go for a walk. Look outdoors. Because we are so busy looking at our screens, it is inevitable to be distracted all of the time.
9. Do not use phone all of the time, each time you are bored. Allow yourself to be bored.
10. Reiterate your self talk. Instead of telling yourself “I get distracted easily,” tell yourself, “I am absolutely focused on the task I do. I am a focused person.”

Seeking therapy
Learning to let go
Learning to be happy alone
Not judging people on the basis of their bad habits
Learning to sit in silence, doing nothing
Being aware of their thoughts
Learning, without the need of showing anyone

What else would you add?

You say:
“I want to do whatever I want to do.”
“I want to live life the way I want to.”
But then you desire what others get out of their life, by living life differently.

Life life the way you want to.
Learning all that you can, from others.

“There are times I feel I don’t want to live.”

“My mother’s dying. And I cannot do anything to help her.”

“Every morning I get up, I feel I would never be as good as my elder brother, whom my parents completely adore.”

I, as a CEO, have always been an ardent listener of feedback.
Thus, I started a wonderful thing at nearbuy, called the “Lunch with warikoo”.
Anyone in the company could fill up a form, and every day, I would have lunch with them for 30 minutes.

What I had expected was plain, simple feedback.
What I did get was something I wasn’t ready for.

Within 5 minutes, I felt I was not the CEO anymore. I was rather someone they thought would listen to them, without judging or mocking them for their choices.

And they opened up to me in ways I (or perhaps them as well) had never expected.

Here is what I learnt from so many conversations like this:

1. When people told me their stories about where they’ve come from, and what they have been through to just get to that point that I took for granted, it left me humbled. And that I cannot take the privilege I have been blessed to sit on, for granted anymore. 

2. Leadership cannot scale up.
It should take the best out of you every single day to lead someone. It should be the hardest thing that you do every single day.

3. All of us live in the shadows of what we think people think of us.
And that lunch broke that shadow, when it said it’s not important. It is not important what the world thinks of you because you are you. You exist. And you’re still here. And that is more important than anything else. 

After having conducted 252 such lunches over a period of 3 years, the one thing I concluded was that all that is important is for people to be heard. To be seen.

Which takes care of work better than you ever thought.

Life is too short to hate your work.
Life is too short to not pursue your dreams.
Life is too short to hold a grudge.
Life is too short to think of what others think of you.
Life is too short to be serious all of the time.

Life is too short anyway.
Why would you want to do things that do not energise you, my friend? Why?

If you are someone starting out in your career, here is one piece of advice I would give to you:

1. Figure out how much money you need for your needs, basic desires and disciplined investment. 
2. Once this money threshold is crossed, rate every job on the amount of learning you will experience.
3. Pick the job with the highest potential to learn. Pick a job where you learn the most irrespective of the money. 

Learning compounds faster than money.