Read, read, read and read
I cant emphasize how important it is to read. Read whatever you can get your hands on, if you have the money then buy every book you can on the areas which you want to improve, be it business, marketing, programming etc.
If you cant afford books, then read all that you can get your hands on. Just make sure that the quality of content you read is good.
-Saurav Sharma
Does not cracking the IITJEE make me smaller than those who actually did it?
There are a lot of occasions in life where you can feel absolutely worthless.
Life is a giant cycle of ups and downs. The lows teach you humility. The highs teach you thankfulness.
Can my future be brighter than those IITians?
My mother isn’t very educated. She has been a house wife throughout. She managed the limited household budget very well. She nurtured and took care of her children to the best of her abilities. She monitored them during their teenage. As a result, she produced 3 (three) IITians. I think she is more successful today than all 3 of us IITians put together.
Be THAT parent if you want to beat IITians. You will literally become the “mother/father of IITians” :-)
For now, love, respect and obey your parents who have been there for you all along. Their prayers and blessings can take you far far higher than what you and I can imagine.
-Imtiaz Mohammad
Optimise your energy
Is there something which is draining your energy.
Are you engaging in some activities which are a huge drain on your physical and mental energy.
Activities like these include, engaging in hate conversations on social-media, consuming irrelevant content for hours, mindlessly browsing social media etc.
You can always analyse your day and list out the activities you did today that drained your energy but were not a good investment.
You can stop doing these and find a drastic increment in your energy levels.
On the other hand, you can also work on enhancing your energy as well.
Activities like running, working out , meeting up with friends in real life are the activities which energise you.
You may also make some tweaks to your diet for being more energetic such as including vitamin-c and a consuming a lot of water.
-Saurav Sharma
Cab Driver Makes More Money Than IT Graduates then why to study ?
I had the same question about more than a decade ago when I wondered what separates the class toppers from an average student like me.
Luckily I had the chance to be around a topper and observe him and his actions.
What I learned from a class topper.
While I was in school I was an average student. I studied enough to score well but never topped the class.
However when I was in std 8th, I had a chance to sit besides a class topper.
Here is what I observed and learned from him.
These were my key takeaways form him which I follow to this day:
Don’t be a slave to your smartphone, instead make it your slave
Most people in todays world have become a slave to their smartphones.
Notification bell rings, they pick up their phone saying that “Ill watch this one video and then I’ll get to work”. Even before they know it, they have spent an entire hour watching other recommended videos.
Remember, it’s now machines vs humans. Social media algorithms have gotten so good that they know what exactly you like. In fact they know more about you than yourself and hence they know how to keep you hooked.
Instead of being a slave your your phone, make it your slave.
Don’t let it suck value out of you, instead you suck the value out of it.
Use apps like reminders to remind you of the important stuff you need to do, use the phone to talk and network with people.
Download apps like Kindle, Audible read and listen to a ton of books.
Use apps to remind you to drink water and take a walk every hour so that you stay healthy.
There are hundreds of ways you can use your smartphone to optimize your life and to your own advantage, but only when you actually stop being a slave to it.
You have paid a hefty price for your device, extract every drop of value out of it.
-Saurav Sharma
I was in a colony function the other day, when an uncle came to me and asked me a similar question, though with a different profession in mind. “You have an amazing profile, why don’t you prepare for UPSC and become an IAS officer?”
A few days back, another person had asked me, “You have an amazing academic background, why don’t you opt for a research career and try for a top-notch Ph.D from Harvard?”
Quite a few people have also asked me why I don’t try to become an entrepreneur.
The thing is - everybody has different goals in life, and what might work for one person might not work for another.
For the time being, I am very happy in management consulting because it keeps me on my toes. There is something new to learn every single day, an extremely smart peer group, and fast-changing industry dynamics.
The day I get bored of management consulting, I might try something else. But for now, I am happy with my career. We don’t have to always go by the norms of society. I would rather focus my energy towards exploring different facets of life these days.
-Rohan Jain
You can only improve things which you measure
Let’s say you want to improve your ability to focus.
After a couple months, you wont be able to tell if you have made substantial improvement unless you have some metrics to measure.
You can only say you improved your focused work hours by x% when you have the data to back it up.
To have that data, you must track measure and track something which proves your performance.
For example, on day 1 you can say I worked for 1.5 Hours in a focused manner. You can keep tracking it every day, and can measure your progress.
-Saurav Sharma
Consistency: Understand than improvement is not a one day game. Improvement is a gradual and a very slow process. You can only start working on improving certain aspects of your life today, does not mean that you will see the result in the next day or even next month. Why most people are skeptical about self improvement is because they lack patience and expect fast results. To improve upon anything, its’ important that you do it on a daily basis. You don’t need to do a lot but you need to do it daily. To remember this, keep this phrase in your mind “Doing a little everyday > doing a lot a single day”.
-Saurav Sharma
To have bigger goals, you must be around good people: Most of your achievements do not depend on your hard work but depend upon the people around you. If you are around mediocre people all day long, chances are that you will end up being like them. This is why families which belong to a certain class in a society always remain in the same financial circumstances for generations to come. The way in which this works is that when you be around people, you are influenced by their thoughts and actions. For example, if you are around drunkards you will thinking that drinking a lot is common and you will end up being a drunkard. When you be around chain-smokers you will find smoking to be acceptable and you will end up being a smoker as well. If you be around people who think making X amount of money, buying a car which costs Y is acceptable then you would impose that standard on yourself as well. Imagine if you be around your friends who are terribly fat, they eat potato chips, drink soda and lay down all the time. Chances are that if you hang around with them, you will end up being like them as well. On the contrary, if all of your friends are fitness addicts with a six pack, even if you are a fat guy the next time you go out with them you will feel ashamed of your body and would at least think about joining a gym. Hence always be around people who are better than you, it’s better to be along rather than being in the wrong group of people. If you have no people around you who can be ideals then read autobiographies of great people, reading them has the same influence as being around them.
-Saurav Sharma
Act on the criticism : Don’t just say “I am a lazy person, I procrastinate a lot”. Instead do something about it. Self-criticism is the first step, acting upon it is the second but more important than the first one. Once you address your flaws, act upon it. If you have certain habits which are holding you back then find ways to eradicate those. Criticising yourself alone wont do anything unless you find a fix for your problem. You wont improve yourself in a day, even in a month. The process of improvement is gradual and continuous and lifelong.
-Saurav Sharma
Self-criticism is extremely essential :If you are someone who truly wants to improve then you need to be your only biggest critique. Being a self critique is extremely hard and not a lot of people can be one. You cannot improve unless you know whats holding you back from achieving your true potential. Analyse what habits are holding you back. Im sure you must have a habit that you know is holding you back and you know that you should do something about it but when you think about it, you feel guilty and try to ignore it on purpose. criticism can be harsh, it can make you depressed for a while but is extremely essential for self-improvement. Its like that bitter pill you need to take when you get sick, it tastes terrible but it will make you better.
