Author: Suresh Dinakaran

 

The caption of this post comes from a line inspired by Cal Newport’s Deep Work—a book that should be prescribed along with paracetamol in every household.

 

Caveat: This post is a distraction. But hey, at least it’s a distraction that tells you to stop being distracted. Meta, right? (You don’t have to agree).

 

Alright, please lean in. Stop scrolling for a nanosecond. I want you to do a quick audit, if you can.

Right now, as you’re reading this, how many tabs are open on your browser? Be honest ( I checked, I had 18 tabs open). Is your phone buzzing within a 12-inch radius of your dominant hand? Is there a podcast about optimizing your potential playing in one ear while you’re trying to focus on this with the other?

We’re all running a bizarre, self-imposed marathon on a treadmill of distraction. And we think the solution is to… take a break from the treadmill by checking Instagram? That’s like a fish taking a break from water by going for a swim.

 

The truth is this: distraction today isn’t something you fall into.It’s something you live in. Like smog in Delhi winter. Or traffic on Bangalore’s Outer Ring Road. Or cats on the internet—everywhere, all the time, impossible to avoid.

We’ve got it all backwards, haven’t we people? The mantra for the next decade isn’t “don’t get distracted.” That’s a losing battle. The winning move is to flip the script: Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead, take breaks from FOCUS.

 

Let that sink in. It’s not the distraction that’s the break. The focus is the heavy lifting. The distraction is the default. And your attention? That’s the most valuable, fought-over currency you have. Every ping, every notification, every just one quick look is a tiny withdrawal from your cognitive bank account. In which your deposits are in any case scanty.

 

Your focus is a supermodel. Stop letting every cheap notification catcall it on the street.

 

If we take a quick world tour( we don’t need Expedia or Booking.com for this), we will discover the following including but not restricted to:

 

The Millennial Hustler( aka The Silicon Valley Techie)- They’ve got the triple-monitor setup, the productivity app that blocks productivity apps, and a standing desk. They focus in 25-minute sprints (Pomodoro, baby!). And their break? Checking LinkedIn and Twitter to see how much more successful everyone else is. They’ve swapped one screen for another. The brain stays in the digital doom-scroll vortex. Zero recovery.

 

The Indian Student( aka the NEET | JEE | any other competitive exam aspirant)- They’re on a brutal 14-hour focus grind. Their “break”? Mindlessly scrolling through memes on Instagram. They jump from the intense focus of organic chemistry to the dopamine slot machine of Reels. The brain never gets a chance to reset. It just gets a different, more chaotic master. The result? Burnout. Anxiety. And ironically, worse retention. (Cal Newport author of seminal books like Deep Work, Slow Productivity and Digital Minimalism) would say their deep work sessions are being sabotaged by their shallow breaks).

 

The Corporate Executive (aka The Mid-Life Marathan):Back-to-back Zoom calls. Excel sheets that stretch into eternity. Their break? A quick cigarette or coffee or both while checking office WhatsApp groups. They’ve traded focused stress for distracted stress. The cortisol never drops. This is the antithesis of the productive meditation Newport recommends.

 

Welcome to humanity’s new bloodstream: distraction.

This isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about strategically taking things off your plate so you can actually enjoy the meal. Because, you are not a machine. You are a human being with a finite amount of attention. Stop letting the world steal it from you in tiny, digital nibbles.

 

We’ve been sold the take a break from your phone wellness jargon so often, we almost believe it. But here’s the heresy: Don’t take breaks from distraction. Take breaks from focus. Because distraction is the new baseline. Focus is the exotic vacation. And if you don’t schedule it, it never shows up.

 

It’s probably called the currency of the century for a reason. If oil fueled the 20th century, attention is the crude oil of the 21st. Everyone wants a barrel of your eyeballs. Netflix fights YouTube, Instagram fights LinkedIn, Zomato fights Swiggy, your kid fights your boss—and you’re the war zone.

The real luxury now isn’t a Rolex or a Tesla. It’s 45 undisturbed minutes to do deep work. Or read Gulzar. Or just stare at the ceiling fan without checking if your Swiggy order is being prepared.

 

This disease is widespread and has no boundaries. Geography is history. In Japan, kids are being trained in forest bathing to reconnect with nature—because apparently trees don’t have notifications. In Silicon Valley, tech bros are paying $5000 for silent retreats where the main activity is… sitting. (I know you are suppressing a chuckle-your grandmother has been doing this for free on her charpai forever). In Bangalore, teenagers binge-watch K-dramas at 3 AM and then sleepwalk through their JEE coaching. Their parents, meanwhile, binge-watch stock market tips at 3 AM and sleepwalk through their careers. In Kerala, uncles claim they’re working from home while half their energy is spent refreshing India Today’s election exit polls.

 

Different geographies. Same disease. We can brand it Distractivitis. 

 

You have been doing different forms of fasting and abstaining for centuries. Karva Chauth. Ramadan. Ekadashi. Lent. Think of focus as fasting. You don’t fast from food forever. You fast for a period to reboot the system. Likewise, you don’t quit distraction—it’s impossible. But you can fast from it by gifting yourself windows of pure focus.

 

Analog is the new luxury. A paper notebook, a pen, and zero chance of accidentally doom scrolling. And if your neighbor’s dog is in open mic mode, use Noise-canceling headsets. 25 minutes of deep work and then the reward, 5  minutes check memes on Rahul Gandhi or you know who…Pomodoro if you will.

 

Warren Buffett once said he’s successful because he can say No 99 times out of 100. Not to investments, but to being distracted.

 

Focus isn’t default anymore. It’s design. Attention isn’t a resource you spend. It’s a resource you invest. And distraction? That’s just today’s monsoon—perpetual, unpredictable, and wetting everyone equally.

 

Before I conclude, taking the liberty of sharing names of few books for all those who want a bite into the perceived forbidden fruit called focus:

Deep Work by Cal Newport: Culminates in actionable routines for regular, distraction-free work blocks.

Atomic Habits by James Clear: Shows how tiny focus-building habits lead to major change, with hacks for routine and attention.

Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey: Explores balancing ‘hyperfocus’ for productivity and ‘scatterfocus’ for creativity in a world of pings and dings.

Indistractable by Nir Eyal: Offers frameworks to curb both internal and external distractions, reclaiming your attention span.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown: Helps ruthlessly prioritize and say no, freeing up deep-focus time.

Your Brain At Work by David Rock: Unpacks the biology of distraction and how to optimize working smarter, not harder.

 

You ever notice how LinkedIn has only one plot line? Yeah, it’s called: “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…” I tell you this line has more reruns than Friends.

 

If you smell a sense of authority in the caption above, let me tell you that I am trepidation personified as I draft this. And if you see this as some kind of forensic investigation, you might be partly right.

 

Caveat Emptor(Reader Beware): This is an honest attempt. And as I experiment with that, thought might as well do a deep dive into the peculiar psychology of professional announcements.

 

So there I was, scrolling through LinkedIn at 2 AM (as one does when one’s life choices need serious examination), when I stumbled upon the 27th “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…”post of the day. And suddenly, like a caffeine-fueled anthropologist discovering a new tribal ritual, I found myself asking: What’s really going on here?

 

Let’s get on with it and break down this fascinating specimen( no lab coats required):

 

” I’m happy to share that I am starting in a new position as XXX at XXX “.

 

Translation : “I’m contractually obligated by the unwritten rules of professional networking to appear ecstatic about this career move, regardless of whether I was headhunted by Google or just escaped a toxic workplace that made Chernobyl look like a wellness retreat.”

 

(This one comes from the Republic of Gratitude)- “I want to thank [previous company] for the incredible journey…”

 

Translation: “I will now perform the corporate equivalent of thanking the Academy, even though my previous boss once made me rewrite a two-line email seventeen times because the font wasn’t ‘strategic’ enough.”

 

Yet another one that is competing for The Humble Brag Finale– ” “Excited for this new chapter…”

 

Translation: “I’ve successfully convinced someone else to pay me money. In this economy. Please validate my existence.”

 

This one comes straight from the Valley of Nostalgia Overture- ” My time at [Previous Company] was invaluable. I learned so much, especially how to operate the microwave and which meeting rooms have the best Wi-Fi. I want to thank everyone, especially Brenda from Accounts Payable who once smiled at me in the elevator.”

 

Some seem to seeking validation like an Insecurity Vanquisher– This post is a cry for help wrapped in corporate jargon. They’ve just left the comfort of a job they knew how to do, where they knew which coffee mug was theirs. Now, they’re adrift in a sea of new acronyms. The LinkedIn post is a life raft. Every “Congratulations!” comment is a flare of validation, a tiny hit of dopamine that whispers, “You didn’t make a catastrophic error. Probably.”

 

The subtext here isn’t arrogance; it’s vulnerability masquerading as confidence. They’re not telling you they’re great; they’re asking you to tell them they’ll be okay.

 

Then there are these bunch of corporate hostages. Which is why we must consider and rope in the unwilling participant. You can almost taste the coercion in the text. It’s too polished, too full of branded hashtags (#GrowWithUsAtSynergisticDynamics #OneTeamOneDreamOneCult).

 

This post was clearly drafted by Marcia in Marketing, who cornered them by the printer and said, “We need you to post this. Gary in Sales only got 12 likes on his, and we need to beat that. It’s for the brand.” The employee’s own personality has been surgically removed and replaced with key messaging points. They’d rather be anywhere else than writing this post. Probably updating their actual, private, anonymous Twitter account with: “First day at the new gig. Help.”

 

Welcome to the post that is a philosophical take-letting go of a previous self. Every exit is an entry somewhere. Perhaps the most beautiful interpretation is that this post is a funeral for a former version of oneself. They are publicly closing a chapter. It’s a ritualistic shedding of skin. The “thank you” to the old company is genuine—it’s an acknowledgment of the person that job helped them become, for better or worse.

They are announcing the death of the “Senior Executive, Operations” and the birth of the “Head of Delivering Awesome.” It’s a rebirth. With slightly better health insurance.

 

There it is. We have enough evidence, don’t we? The most crowded temple of modern worship. Not Tirupati. Not Mecca. Not the Vatican. You guessed it- LinkedIn.

 

And the loudest chant in this holy shrine of professional self-expression?
“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as…”

 

A line so standardised it deserves its own ISO certification. And the coveted blue tick.

 

But what is it, really? A declaration? A confession? Therapy disguised as gratitude? Corporate Horlicks for the soul? Or a notice to ex-colleagues: “Guess who moved on first?”

 

The jury is still out on why the unflinching emphasis on “happy”? Nobody says “I’m moderately okay to announce a new position.” Or “I’m borderline depressed to let you know I’ve accepted employment.”

 

It’s always “happy.” As if happiness is written into the KPI of the announcement. Maybe HR slips it into the offer letter:

Position: Vice President, Market Expansion

CTC: Respectably above cousin’s salary

Condition: Must announce with happiness on LinkedIn

 

I shouldn’t miss out on telling you that there is one variety that stands out, hands down. The master tagger. Ten mentors, three previous managers, the chaiwala from the parking lot—everyone is name-dropped, because gratitude is LinkedIn’s legal tender.

 

And of course the poets in residence: “Thrilled to begin a new journey, turning pages in my life’s career novel.” Gulzar, watch out!

 

Which is when you notice unabashed neutrality which goes something like this, a stoic monk if you will: ” Starting a new role. That’s all.” (This guy is fried but refuses to admit it.)

 

You would have already seen the paradox here. On one hand, it’s insecurity covered in confetti. On the other, it’s a coded hug. A way of saying: “I survived. I still matter. Clap for me.”

 

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Because for every roll-eye inducing “I’m happy to share…”, there’s someone reading it at 2 a.m. thinking, maybe I’ll get out too.

 

So next time you see that familiar phrase, resist the snark for a second. Click the like. Clap along. Comment positively. Because in its own awkward, templated way, it’s just humanity leaking through LinkedIn’s algorithm.

 

And if you really want to shake things up? Post this instead:
“I’m happy to share that I’m still unemployed. Please endorse me for resilience.”

 

So, the next time you see that post, don’t roll your eyes. Hit like. Because behind every “I’m happy to share…” is one brave soul battling FOMO, EMIs, and imposter syndrome—armed with nothing but Canva graphics and hashtags.

 

And yes, one day you’ll see me post it too. “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as… The World’s First Chief Officer of Pretending To Look Busy On Zoom.”

 

Thank you, good day, and don’t forget to endorse me for Strategic Sarcasm!

 

PS: Human beings are rough drafts that continually mistake themselves for the final story, then gasp as the plot changes on the page of living.

 

 

 

 

 

This one’s for every dream that got RSVP’d “Not Happening” by the Ministry of Mediocrity.

 

They said Van Gogh was mentally unstable. They said Einstein was a patent clerk who’d never amount to anything. They said Kalpana Chawla should stick to mechanical engineering instead of chasing space fantasies. And guess what? The gatekeepers were spectacularly, gloriously, magnificently wrong. Every. Single. Time.

 

But here’s the nuclear truth bomb that’ll make your morning coffee taste a little more bitter: For every Van Gogh who painted through the ridicule, there are ten thousand dreamers who never picked up the brush because some gatekeeper convinced them their hands weren’t steady enough.

 

Welcome to the graveyard of dreams, where gatekeepers are the gravediggers and your potential is the corpse they’re burying six feet under.

 

You(or someone you know) would have experienced this: You are seven years old, scribbling rockets in your notebook margin during math class. Teacher spots you, snatches the paper, and declares with the authority of someone who peaked in teacher’s college, “Stop wasting time on silly drawings and focus on real subjects.”

 

Congratulations. You’ve just met your first gatekeeper.

 

These aren’t necessarily evil people plotting your downfall from their ivory towers. No, that would be too dramatic, too Hollywood. Real gatekeepers are far more insidious. They’re your well-meaning uncle who says “engineering is safer than art,” your guidance counselor who steers you toward “practical careers,” your friends who roll their eyes when you mention your startup idea for the fifteenth time.

 

They’re armed with the most dangerous weapon known to dreamers: the phrase “be realistic.”

Akio Morita pitched his idea for a personal stereo to focus groups who said, “Why would anyone want to listen to music through headphones?” Sony’s Walkman went on to sell over 400 million units. Those focus group gatekeepers probably still use boom boxes.

 

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw started Biocon in her garage in 1978 when biotechnology was as foreign to India as snow in Rajasthan. Banks refused her loans because they thought biotech was too risky, too complex, too advanced for an Indian woman. Today, Biocon is a $10 billion company, and those bankers are probably still explaining to their grandchildren what biotechnology means.

 

Wright Brothers—Two cycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, told they were “unqualified dreamers” by experts in flight. Today, we eat stale peanuts at 35,000 feet because of their delusions.

 

Narayana Murthy, before he was Godfather of Indian IT, was rejected by his future father-in-law because he had “no future.” (Imagine if he listened. Infosys would be an unfulfilled Google Doc.)

 

Stan Lee, told by his publisher that superhero comics would never work. Enter Spider-Man. The rest, like Peter Parker’s love life, is complicated history.

 

Surround yourself with dream amplifiers, not dream killers. The Bharat Matrimony founder Murugavel Janakiraman found his tribe of believers who helped him build a platform that’s  connected millions of hearts. Your dreams need cheerleaders, not critics in the stands.

 

Sometimes, not knowing something is impossible(Strategic Ignorance) is your greatest advantage. The Wright Brothers didn’t have aeronautical engineering degrees. They had bicycle repair experience and an unshakeable belief that humans could fly.

 

The gatekeepers aren’t going anywhere. They’re a permanent feature of the landscape, like taxes and traffic jams. But here’s what they don’t want you to know: they only have the power you give them.

 

Every time you water down your dream to make it “more acceptable,” you’re not being realistic – you’re being complicit in your own creative murder.

 

Dhirubhai Ambani was a petrol pump attendant who dreamed of building an industrial empire. Gatekeepers laughed at his ambition, questioned his methods, doubted his vision. Today, Reliance is one of India’s largest companies. The gatekeepers are still explaining to their children why they didn’t invest in his dreams.

 

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination and having no good ideas.” The same guy who created Mickey Mouse was told he had no creativity. Somewhere, that editor’s descendants are still trying to live down the family shame.

 

The choice is yours: Will you be the dreamer who broke through, or the cautionary tale who gave up?

 

Because in the end, the world doesn’t remember the gatekeepers. It remembers the dreamers who refused to let them win.

 

The “right way” is often the well-trodden path to mediocrity. Elon Musk built rockets reading textbooks, not waiting for NASA’s permission.

 

Gatekeepers, I am afraid do not have the same range as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and they come mostly in three flavours:

 

The Riskophobics – “What’s your fallback plan?” (As if dreams need mattresses.)

 

The Degree Dealers – “Are you even qualified to do this?”

 

The Has-Beens & Never-Was-es – “When I was your age…”(Yeah? And look how that turned out.)

 

They are gatekeepers to nothing but their own boredom.

 

Dreams are allergic to committees. Don’t crowdsource your courage. Because we weren’t born to behave. We were born to build.

 

The most dangerous gatekeeper isn’t your boss, your parents, or some industry expert. It’s the voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like all of them combined.

 

This internal gatekeeper is sophisticated. It doesn’t just say “you can’t do it.” It says “you can’t do it YET” and “you can’t do it WITHOUT proper preparation” and “you can’t do it UNLESS you have a backup plan.” It’s rejection with good manners and a safety net.

 

A.R. Rahman could have listened to his internal gatekeeper that said “you’re just a keyboard player, not a composer.” Instead, he composed music that won Oscars and revolutionized Indian cinema. That internal voice is now probably his biggest fan.

 

Remember, if everyone gets it, it’s not a dream. It’s a brochure.

 

It’s not about what we achieve, but who we become in the process.

 

I don’t mean to sound morbid, but let’s start with a funeral.

You’re there. Black suit, uncomfortable shoes, that faint smell of old books and regret. Someone is reading the eulogy. They list the deceased’s achievements: VP of This, Director of That, closed the Q3 deal, member of the exclusive golf club.

And you sit there, in the squeaky pew, and you think: Is that it? Is the sum of a life—the laughter, the quiet courage, the scars that taught us everything, the love we gave when it was hard—really just a bullet-point list of corporate milestones and acquired assets?

If that’s the final score, we’ve all been playing the wrong game.

We’ve been sold a lie, wrapped in a corner office and tied with a golden parachute. The lie is that the destination is everything. That the peak is the point. But the truth, the gut-wrenching, liberating, terrifying truth, is that the mountain doesn’t give a damn about you planting a flag on its summit.

The mountain’s only job is to make you into the kind of person who could.

 

Here’s the beautiful irony that’ll make your brain do backflips:

 

When you stop chasing achievements and start focusing on becoming, you often end up achieving more than you ever imagined. But by then, you don’t give a shit about the achievements because you’ve become someone who knows their worth isn’t tied to external validation.

 

It’s like trying to fall asleep – the harder you chase it, the more elusive it becomes. But focus on relaxing your body, calming your mind, becoming someone at peace, and sleep finds you.

 

Same with success. Chase becoming courageous, and opportunities will chase you. Chase becoming wise, and people will seek your counsel. Chase becoming kind, and the world will open doors you didn’t even know existed.

 

Start becoming. The world is waiting.

 

Looking for inspiration? Here are a few unsung heroines and heroes from whose book you can take a leaf out of.

 

Jia Jiang( also known as the Rejection Collector and founder of the concept Rejection Therapy) decided to get rejected 100 times in 100 days. Asked strangers for ridiculous favors. “Can I borrow $100?” “Can I teach a college class?” “Can I plant a flower in your backyard?”

 

He got rejected. A lot. But something magical happened in the space between ask and no: he stopped being afraid of other people’s opinions. The achievement wasn’t the book deal or the TED talk that followed. It was becoming the kind of person who could ask for anything because he knew his worth wasn’t tied to the answer.

 

During the 2008 financial crisis, James* lost his job, his house, his sense of self. Started baking bread at 3 AM because insomnia is a ruthless companion. Neighbors smelled the magic, started knocking. Soon he was feeding half his block for free.

 

Never opened a bakery. Never wrote a cookbook. Never became the next Great British Bake Off star. But he became something more precious: the guy who knew that feeding people feeds your soul in ways that profit margins never will.

 

Meet Lisa*( Failure Archivist, if you may- and this could be me, you, anyone), who started a museum of her failures. Every rejection letter, every botched presentation, every startup that face-planted. Visitors come expecting a pity party and leave with a masterclass in resilience.

 

The twist? She’s never had a major commercial success. But she’s become someone who transforms wounds into wisdom, setbacks into stepping stones. That’s not an achievement you can put on a résumé, but it’s the kind of achievement that puts something in your chest that glows.

 

*The good news is that there is a Lisa and a James in all of us: I don’t mean this as a Spoiler Alert.

 

If we let it, our culture would want to validate us ONLY if we are successful in the binary sense of the term. Because, ‘apparently ‘ productivity and success are hand in glove. The best way to counter it is to Practice Productive Failing.  Pick something you’re terrible at and do it in public. Sing karaoke badly. Try stand-up comedy. Learn to skateboard at 35. Or play the guitar at 55. The goal isn’t to get good (though you might). The goal is to become someone who can suck at something and still show up.

 

What would you do if you knew no one would ever applaud? That’s your becoming compass. Not what brings recognition, but what brings you alive. That’s where you will discover your 3 AM truth.

 

Ask people about their failures, their struggles, their moments of doubt. You’ll discover that every interesting person is a collection of beautiful disasters that shaped them into who they are. Become a story collector. No better place to extract inspiration from.

 

Think of the most inspiring people you know. I’m not talking about the billionaires on magazine covers. I’m talking about the real ones. What do you admire? Their net worth? Or their worth? Their title? Or their tenacity? Their possessions? Or their peace?

The magic doesn’t happen when you cross the finish line. It happens in the daily, gritty, unglamorous grind of becoming.

 

Let’s ditch the usual examples. No talk of Edison’s lightbulb or JK Rowling’s rejections. Been there, done that, bought the overpriced motivational poster.

Consider instead the Japanese art of Kintsugi. The practice of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy is breathtaking: breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, not something to disguise. The flaw is not a failure; it is the source of its unique beauty and strength. The achievement is the pristine vase. The becoming is the gold-veined, more resilient, more beautiful masterpiece that emerged from its shattering.

 

Our life is the same. That startup that failed? That’s not a line item on your failure CV. That’s the gold lacquer filling your cracks, making you more interesting, more empathetic, more strategic. That heartbreak that leveled you? That was you shedding your too-small shell, hiding under a rock for a bit, preparing for a growth spurt your old self couldn’t contain. That period of burnout or depression? That was the forest fire, clearing the deadwood so that something new, something stronger, could take root.

 

We live in a world where “achievement” is celebrated like it’s oxygen. Promotions, degrees, IPO valuations, follower counts — the dopamine buffet is endless. But here’s the truth no LinkedIn humblebrag will tell you: what you get pales compared to who you become in the process.

 

Take Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. Spoiler alert: he failed. Never made it to the South Pole. But his crew survived two years trapped in ice — because Shackleton became the kind of leader whose grit and humanity turned hopelessness into survival. History doesn’t remember his “failure”; it remembers who he became.

 

Look at the people you truly admire. If you permit me a bit of audacity, I recommend auditing your heroes. Reverse-engineer their character, not their accomplishments. You don’t want Elon Musk’s bank account; you want his irrational, delusional persistence. You don’t want Brené Brown’s book sales; you want her revolutionary courage to be vulnerable. Go after the trait, not the trophy. The trophy is just a byproduct. Beyoncé: Forget the platinum records. It’s her refusal to quit, her insistence on authenticity, that turned gawkers into believers. She’s living proof you can build an empire rooted in vulnerability. Closer home: Dipa Karmakar. She didn’t win a medal at Rio Olympics. But she attempted the “Produnova” vault — the death-defying move only a handful had even dared. India didn’t get the podium. But it got a new definition of courage.

 

Chase experiences that change your perspective more than your resume. Achievement is temporary, but character is compounding interest. Seeking the bruises is a worthwhile pursuit. Journal your lowest moments. That’s where alchemy happens, where yesterday’s panic becomes tomorrow’s wisdom.

 

And for all the beautiful, messy humans that are: This isn’t a call to abandon goals. Goals are fantastic. They give us direction, something to row towards. But stop worshipping the distant shore and start falling in love with the strength of your rowing arms, the calluses on your hands, the way you learn to read the currents, and the camaraderie you build with fellow travelers.

 

The world adores achievement because it’s easy to count—awards, promotions, likes. But look harder. The rare ones—the truly changed—shine with a light no finish line can buy. So next time you’re gasping for that next milestone, ask: Who am I forging in the fire? Achievement ends. Becoming, thankfully, never does.

 

Go forth. Don’t just win—transform.

 

Picture this: You’re standing in front of a vending machine at 2 AM, desperately jabbing the coin return button because your Snickers bar is dangling by a thread. You could walk away, find another machine, maybe even discover a 24-hour bakery with fresh croissants down the street. But no—you’re committed to this mechanical hostage situation because you need that sugar rush right now.

 

Welcome to your entire relationship with ASAP, my friend.

 

Full Transparency: I have been toying with this blog post idea for the past several weeks. Researching and scribbling points as time went by. Even got our designer at ISD Global to craft something( see below) and our video editor to conceptualise a video as well which you might want to watch here. It could have been published probably in June. But, instead, I asked: “What’s possible with this idea that I haven’t explored yet?”

 

The ASAP version would have gotten published sooner. The possible version might actually change how you think about time, decisions, and what matters.

 

Which would you rather read?

The greatest achievements in human history—from the pyramids to the internet—weren’t built by people asking “How soon?” They were built by people asking “What if?”

 

You feel it, don’t you? That tiny, digital fist that clenches in your gut the moment you see those four capital letters. ASAP.

It pings into your inbox, slides into a Slack channel, is muttered in a meeting. It’s the Swiss Army knife of corporate vocabulary—seemingly versatile, ultimately clunky, and almost always used to pry open a can of urgency that didn’t need opening.

We’ve been conditioned to treat “ASAP” as the pinnacle of priority. The alpha and omega of action. But I’m here to tell you, with the conviction of a man who has seen one too many “URGENT!!” emails about the font size on a footer, that ASAP is a trap. A sleight of hand that steals the Possible to worship the Soon.

It’s not a timeframe; it’s an anxiety-induced coma dressed as productivity.

 

The genius of the acronym is its disguise. It sounds so reasonable! A plea. Almost apologetic. As Soon As Possible. Who could argue with that? We all want things to be possible!

But that’s the heist. In practice, the ‘P’ is quietly kidnapped, thrown under the bus, and never seen again. What’s left is just “AS” – a frantic, breathless, panicked race to Just Do It Now.

The focus shifts violently from “Is this even a good idea?”to “How fast can I make this look done?”Quality, strategy, sanity—they are all sacrificed at the altar of speed. We become short-order cooks in the kitchen of innovation, slinging greasy ideas instead of crafting a Michelin-star meal.

You’re not being asked to do what’s possible; you’re being demanded to do what’s immediate. And there is a galactic difference.

 

Everyone talks about software bugs and missed deadlines. Let’s talk about the weird stuff. The history rewritten by ASAP.

 

Back in 1772, a Dutch orchestra commissioner, notoriously impatient, sent a letter to a young Mozart demanding a new symphony “a.s.a.p.”(or its 18th-century equivalent, “with utmost haste, post-haste!”). Mozart, needing the guilders, cranked out Symphony No. 22 in C major, K. 162, in a matter of days. It’s… fine. Pleasant. But, you guessed it, forgettable. Meanwhile, the pieces he was allowed to marinate on—like his later piano concertos—changed music forever. The world got soon instead of sublime. We lost a possible masterpiece for a hurried assignment.

 

1950s America fell in love with instant coffee because it solved the ASAP problem perfectly. Why wait 5 minutes for coffee to brew when you could have it in 30 seconds?

 

The trade-off nobody calculated: Instant coffee didn’t just sacrifice taste—it rewired our expectations about what coffee could be. For three decades, Americans forgot that coffee could be complex, nuanced, or worth savoring.

 

Then came Starbucks, which committed the ultimate sin against ASAP culture: they made coffee slower. Espresso machines that took 25 seconds per shot. Baristas who ground beans fresh. Foam art that served no functional purpose. The “inefficient” result? Starbucks turned a $2 commodity into a $30 billion cultural experience. The deeper truth: Sometimes the fastest way to transform an industry is to completely ignore what the industry thinks it needs ASAP.

 

Dr. Sarah Chen, trauma surgeon: “The doctors who kill patients are often the ones who rush. The ones who save lives take an extra 10 seconds to think clearly, even when every instinct screams ‘move faster.'”The paradox here is that even when speed is actually critical, effectiveness trumps urgency.

 

1969: America put humans on the moon. The obvious next step? Mars ASAP, right? 56 years later: Still no humans on Mars. From an ASAP perspective, this looks like spectacular failure. But consider what happened instead: By taking time to ask “What’s possible with space technology?”, we got:

 

GPS (which revolutionized everything from dating to pizza delivery)

Weather satellites (that save thousands of lives annually)

Communication satellites (that made global internet possible)

Materials science breakthroughs (that improved everything from medical devices to athletic equipment)

 

The Prognosis or rather The profound realisation: Rushing to Mars ASAP would have given us a few footprints in red dirt. Exploring what was possible with space technology gave us the modern world.

 

The most radical act in our ASAP world? Taking your time.

 

The rebellion is not in saying “no.” It’s in reclaiming the question. When ASAP comes hurtling at you, your new power move is to gently, deftly, and irreverently drag the “P”(possible) back into the light.

 

The problem with ASAP is not urgency. Urgency is fine. Firefighters need urgency. Paramedics live on urgency. The problem is false urgency—the kind that confuses soon with possible. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he didn’t say: “We’ll become the Everything Store ASAP.” He said: “We’ll start with books. Possible.” When ISRO put Chandrayaan on the moon, it wasn’t ASAP. It was “As Possible Given 30% of NASA’s Budget.” Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Not ASAP. Not even close. It took 4 years, neck cramps, and a paintbrush dipped in stubbornness.

 

If these giants had fallen for the ASAP trap, we’d have half-written books, half-built rockets, and a chapel ceiling that looks like it was whitewashed by a drunk intern.

 

ASAP is the currency of the anxious. Possible is the language of the impactful. Soon is the Opiate. Possible is the Oxygen.

 

Stop racing to be soon. Start striving to be significant. The world is clogged with the mediocre results of hurried work. What it desperately needs is the brilliant, the durable, the truly innovative—the things that are only ever possible when we give them the time and space to breathe.

So the next time that four-letter acronym assaults your peace, smile. Remember the forgotten symphony. Take a deep breath.

And go do what’s Possible. Because urgent and important are NOT two sides of the same coin. 

 

 

Clutch too hard, you bleed. Let go too soon, you fade. The dance is in the timing.

 

The most advanced AI on the planet, the kind that can write sonnets and doom-scroll through cat videos, is fundamentally incapable of understanding this. It can optimize, it can calculate, but it cannot feel the sacred pain of holding a newborn for the first time, nor the liberating agony of scattering a parent’s ashes. That tension? That’s not a bug in the human code. It’s the feature. It’s what makes us alive.

 

From the favelas of Rio to the tech hubs of Shenzhen, from the coffee plantations of Kerala to the startup garages of Tel Aviv, the same pattern emerges: Those who master the dance between gripping and releasing become the forces that reshape the world.

 

” This is the cruel contract of all experience, of aliveness itself — that in order to have it, we must agree to let it go “- Maria Popova | The Marginalian

 

The secret isn’t in the holding. It isn’t letting go either. It’s in the electric tension between them—that space where miracles happen, where breakthrough innovations are born, where ordinary humans become extraordinary.

 

The cherry blossom doesn’t cling to the branch, yet the Japanese hold onto the memory of its fleeting beauty for centuries. They’ve mastered holding onto the essence while letting go of the form. Result? A culture that finds profound beauty in impermanence. The art of holding on by letting go.

 

For 400 years, Swiss watchmakers have held onto tradition with religious fervor while constantly letting go of outdated techniques. They grip heritage while releasing obsolete methods. Today, they still dominate luxury timepieces in the age of smartphones.

 

On the ghats of Varanasi, in UP, India, life and death perform their daily tango in broad daylight. Families hold on to their loved ones with every fibre of their being, their love a tangible force. And then, in the ultimate act of faith, they let go. They release the physical form to the flames and the sacred river. They don’t just understand the paradox; they breathe it. The holding on (to memory, to tradition, to love) is given its power precisely by the act of letting go (of the body, of attachment to the mortal coil). It’s not a contradiction; it’s a completion.

 

Our belief is besieged by the myth of the permanent grip. Where, the mantra is “Never let go.” Hold on to your youth (hello, botox). Hold on to your job title. Hold on to that grudge from 2012. Hold on to that toxic relationship because God forbid you be alone. We’re hoarders of the soul, terrified of the empty space that letting go creates. But nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the universe. That empty space isn’t void; it’s potential. By refusing to release, we choke off our own power supply. We’re trying to breathe in without ever breathing out. It’s not sustainable. It’s a one-way ticket to a panic attack.

 

Life is basically a tug-of-war between a toddler refusing to drop his toy and a monk burning down his attachments in the Himalayas. And the real energy — the juice that powers our existence — comes from that exact polarity. Holding on. Letting go. Two opposite poles, same battery.

 

If you only cling, you choke. If you only release, you drift. The art (and science) is knowing when to clutch tighter than a Bollywood mother( none more qualified than Nirupa Roy, I dare say) in the final act, and when to let go like MS Dhoni lofting that World Cup-winning six into the Wankhede Stadium night sky.

 

Amul held on to its farmers-first cooperative model for 75+ years while letting go of old advertising formats — who else can run a butter girl campaign that’s still fresh in the age of Instagram reels?

 

Let’s not forget Buddha, who literally walked out of the palace, letting go of gold-plated comfort to hold on to a higher calling.

 

Netflix held on to storytelling while letting go of physical DVDs. (Blockbuster couldn’t let go — and boom, R.I.P.).

 

Apple held on to obsessive design purity but let go of buttons, disks, ports — heck, they’d remove oxygen if it messed with symmetry. That letting go gave us sleek devices we now can’t let go of.

 

Post-WWII, Japan let go of samurai swagger and empire dreams, held on to discipline and craftsmanship, and reinvented itself into Toyota, Sony, and sushi-as-global-currency.

 

Every empire, every brand, every love story is a game of grip and release.

 

Every lesson from Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra is a cosmic reminder: Don’t clutch too hard. Don’t release too soon. Ride the voltage.

 

Nelson Mandela held onto hope in a cell the size of a Mumbai bathroom, but let go of vengeance when the door opened. Japanese artists painstakingly glue shattered pottery and call it Kintsugi. They hold onto the cracks, let go of the shame. The repairs are the story. Suns rise because night lets go.

 

It might be worth auditing your grip. Ask yourself — what are you strangling that should be surrendered? A toxic client, a business model past its expiry, an outdated identity? Re-inforce what matters. What’s worth white-knuckling? Your core values, your integrity, your community, your health.

 

Letting go is not quitting. It’s making a strategic choice to reallocate your energy. It’s the tree shedding dead leaves so it can bud again in spring. It’s not failure; it’s rhythm. So, embrace the sacred release.

 

What are you clutching too tightly? And what are you finally, gloriously, ready to release?

 

Fear is a reaction, creativity is a response!

Yours in the beautiful struggle– SD

 

Dear Charles Darwin, if you thought humans evolved from apes, wait till you see what WhatsApp forwards have turned us into. Spoiler alert: We’ve gone backwards.

 

They say laughter is infectious. Clearly, they’ve never been added to a family WhatsApp group — that, my dear reader, is full-blown plague.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts — we are about to take a guided tour of the world’s biggest free Ivy League: WhatsApp University. Zero entrance exams, zero attendance required, and 100% guaranteed certificates — in conspiracy theories, half-baked health tips, and breaking news that never broke.

 

All of us have dealt with the Patriotic Uncle who believes that forwarding a flag emoji is synonymous with nationalism. His WhatsApp status is always “Proud to be Indian” with 47 flag emojis. Or the Corporate Warrior who Shares “motivational” quotes that Gandhi never said but are attributed to him anyway. Believes success is just one forward away. And the quintessential Health Guru who has the cure for everything except the forward addiction. Ironically, the only thing that can’t be cured by their remedies.

 

Welcome to the Economics of Absurdity where WhatsApp forwards have created their own economy. Where the GDP(Gullibility Domestic Product) measures how easily a population believes unverified information. And that is where inflation rate is the speed at which nonsense multiplies in group chats. Not to mention the unabashed unemployment as fact-checkers have given up and moved onto organic farming.

 

The international impact of these forwards cannot be under estimated. Rumors are rife that the United Nations is considering adding WhatsApp Forward Pollution to climate change discussions. Experts suggest the hot air generated by fake forwards is contributing to global warming. Several countries are embarking on high-level diplomacy with WhatsApp University. The Vatican is contemplating offering a PhD in Divine Forwards.

 

The WhatsApp University: No entrance exams, no attendance, no tuition fees. Just unlimited free degrees in Medicine, History, Geopolitics, Sports Management and How to Cure Cancer With Turmeric Latte. Forget AI, Blockchain, or Climate Change — the greatest contagion of our times is that cousin-in-law who believes WhatsApp forwards are Nobel-worthy research papers.COVID was a pandemic. WhatsApp forwards? An endemic. Unstoppable, hereditary, and immortal.

 

Your phone is not a phone. Not anymore. It’s a petri dish. A digital incubator for the most virulent, mind-boggling, and occasionally sanity-snatching strain of information ever conceived: The WhatsApp Forward( yes, the same thing that educates, medicates and occasionally eliminates). They are the reason you’ve seen a video of a lizard giving birth to a shivling, a grainy image of a miracle cloud that looks suspiciously like a Photoshop 2.0 filter from 2003, and a 47-minute voice note explaining how eating raisins at 4:17 PM will align your chakras with Elon Musk’s satellite network.

 

If you take a global tour of this contagion, there is lots to unearth. First things first- please note that the virus mutates to suit its host environment. Observe. The Latin American Variant where you get to see  frantic forward about a new mosquito that lays eggs in your laundry if you leave it out after 6 PM. It comes with a picture of a normal mosquito photoshopped to look like it’s wearing tactical gear. Or the North American Strain where a A 5G-tower-causes-COVID-consipracy theory, followed immediately by a forwarded chain mail from 1998 warning that AOL CDs are mind-control devices sent by the Illuminati. The consistency is breathtaking. While The British Mutation comes with a solemn warning that the EU has banned curved bananas and that Her Majesty the Queen (or now, the King) personally drinks a specific brand of tea every day at precisely 4:59 PM, not 5:00 PM. The audacity.

 

The Indian Sub-Species is in a class of its own. Had to be. Home is where the forwards don’t just spread misinformation; they spread with a sense of profound, unshakeable duty. It’s not spam; it’s seva. Where we are privy to The Medical Miracle. ” Good Morning. Do Not Eat Cucumber and Drink Water Within 17.5 Minutes of that. My friend’s nephews’ colleagues’ dog died. Forward to all your groups within 87 seconds “. The urgency is palpable. The grammar, a tragedy. The medical advice, a war crime.

 

Or messages that are Religious Ransomware in disguise( Kaspersky, are you tuned in?). A picture of a glittery Ganesha. The caption reads: “This is not a normal forward. This is a divine test. You will receive good news at 11:47 AM tomorrow only if you forward this to 25 people. I ignored once and my Wi-Fi broke for a week.” This is digital dharma, people. You wouldn’t want to risk your Wi-Fi, would you? And wait, let me not forget the Nostalgia Nano Bot– “1990s kids had real childhood. They played with stones and friendship. 2020 kids only with iPad. Like if you agree. Share to make others remember.” Because nothing says “real childhood” like aggressively forwarding a message on a $1000 smartphone.

 

If you haven’t seen these messages yet, I pity you. Anyway, suggest you wait, your turn will come. ” Forward this to 17 people and Mukesh Ambani will personally top up your Jio balance for Rs 99“. ” UK scientists stunned: applying onion juice to your navel guarantees IIT admission “. ” NASA confirms: chanting Om can recharge your Wi-Fi router.”

 

Global students are no less diligent. Americans get “Bill Gates is giving away $500 if you forward this.” (I always knew that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop). Nigerians specialise in Prince inheritance. (Royalty has to be passed on you see). And somewhere in the Middle East, “If you type Bismillah in Microsoft Word, your laptop becomes halal.” (We are in a consumption economy you bet). And this one is worth the Oscar if ever there was one for WhatsApp forwards. ” Coconut oil cures everything from pimples to Pakistan.” — courtesy of the WhatsApp R&D division.

 

The amount of flexibility that WhatsApp forwards have will put the best gymnast from China to shame. Especially when it comes to motivational forwards and audacious history revisionism. ” If you wake up at 4 a.m., drink hot water, and say ‘I am unstoppable’ ten times, you will become Adani.” (Currently, all we became is constipated.) ” Dalai Lama said this…” (No, sorry to disappoint you, he didn’t. He has better things to do). Shakespeare apparently wrote, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Sorry, that was Dr. Seuss, but WhatsApp insists otherwise. Suddenly, everyone from Subhash Chandra Bose to Albert Einstein is misquoted. UK forwards swear Queen Elizabeth once texted LOL to Prince Charles, meaning Lots of Love. Little wonder it is said, love is blind.

 

So, the next time you receive a forward, remember: you are just a sneeze away from being Patient Zero of Digital Typhoid. 

 

Those Good Morning messages( yes, the ones that come at dawn, like clockwork – A blizzard of sunflowers, dewdrops, motivational quotes, kittens doing yoga, and folksy wisdom) are actually weapons of mass distraction.

 

When your phone convulses with the collective anxiety of a hundred forwards, remember: you are not alone. We are all unwilling graduates of WhatsApp University, holding advanced degrees in Applied Nonsense.

 

PS: Forward this blog to ten people, or risk having your charger only work at a specific angle for the next week. You’ve been warned.

Yours in digital delirium,

Suresh Dinakaran (Professor Emeritus of Not Forwarding That Nonsense, WhatsApp University – Honours Dropout)

 

 

Introspect. And the Archaeology of Self  will reveal that your scars are not your story’s punctuation marks. They’re the commas in a sentence that’s still being written.

 

Every wound whispers: I own you. And every healing whispers back louder: Not on my watch.

 

The human condition has this funny way of playing trick-or-treat with us. One minute you are basking in the glow of a promotion, a love confession, or your startup’s first investor cheque… next minute you are punched in the gut by betrayal, rejection, redundancy, or a WhatsApp “seen” without reply.

 

We confuse the hurt for the whole. We stitch our identity to the fracture and forget the rest of the fabric.

 

But here’s the raw truth: There’s always more to you than what hurt you.

 

What if healing isn’t about forgetting what hurt you, but remembering who you were before the hurt tried to define you? What if your story gets better from here? Because, your trauma is not your personality. Your healing is not your brand. Your wholeness is not conditional on your pain being productive.

 

Let’s reconcile to one fact that your hurt wouldn’t want you to know. You are NOT a walking wound. You are not your worst day, your darkest moment, or your most painful chapter. You are not the person who left, the opportunity that slipped away, or the words that cut deep. You are not even your most heroic comeback story.

 

You are something far more extraordinary—you are a universe in motion, constantly creating and recreating yourself.

The culture, as it would have it, told you a story of the crack, but never about the light that got in.

 

Maybe it was a betrayal that left a permanent chill in your bones. A failure that echoes in every quiet moment. A word, a look, a rejection that became the ghost living in your hallway, whispering the same old lies: You are not enough. You are what happened to you.

 

We are not running away from the truth. Your hurt is real. It is valid. It deserves a seat at the table. But here is the revolutionary, earth-shattering, needle-moving truth: it does not get to order for everyone else.

 

This isn’t just fluffy self-help. This is the raw, gritty narrative of the human spirit, from Mumbai to Manhattan.

 

Pushed from a moving train by thieves in 2011, she lost her leg. The world saw a victim. She saw a mountaineer. In 2013, she became the world’s first female amputee to climb Mount Everest. The hurt was a horrific fact. It was not her fate. That is Arunima Sinha for you.

 

A divorced, unemployed, clinically depressed single mother living on state benefits. Society’s definition? A statistic. Her own definition? A writer. She gave the world Harry Potter not in spite of her pain, but by channeling its echoes into a story about love, loss, and the boy who lived. That is your global phenomenon: J K Rowling.

 

Oprah Winfrey, who endured childhood abuse, didn’t let that become her headline — she rewrote it into power, influence, and impact.

 

In Indian mythology, the wounded Karna was constantly denied legitimacy, but his pain sharpened him into one of the most formidable warriors of the Mahabharata.

 

Think of Amitabh Bachchan in the 90s. Bankrupt. Written off. Newspapers calling him a relic. Hurt in ways that would’ve flattened most.
But the man didn’t stop at “failed producer.” He went back, rebuilt, reinvented. Kaun Banega Crorepati wasn’t just a game show. It was his resurrection.

 

AR Rahman turned the grief of losing his father as a child into a lifelong devotion to music that reshaped the cultural landscape.

 

Steve Jobs? Kicked out of the company he founded. The ultimate professional heartbreak. Instead of being defined by exile, he built Pixar, and then returned to Apple to redefine the world.

 

The person who grew up with the searing label of “not good at math” and now runs a successful business, their Excel sheets a quiet middle finger to that old shame. The one who loved and lost so deeply they thought they’d never breathe again, but now uses that capacity for love to nurture profound friendships.

 

The pattern is universal. The hurt is the setting, not the protagonist. The protagonist is you—the you that existed before the hurt, and the you that is being forged, diamond-like, under immense pressure, right now.

 

What hurt you is part of you. But it’s not all of you.

 

And since we live in the Republic of Not Enough and most things in life are centred around ROI, here’s some food for thought: when we over-identify with hurt, we end up smuggling yesterday’s grief into tomorrow’s opportunity. We risk hiding our brilliance behind our bruises, just in case life hits again. And we end up pretending cynicism is maturity.

 

But healing does not mean forgetting. It means re-anchoring. Pain is only a place you visit. So, please don’t go house-hunting there.

 

This matters because right now, someone you know( probably you?) is stuck on repeat, playing their greatest hurt like a broken record. Because leaders who confuse wounds for identities end up building organizations from insecurity. Because you can’t inspire, build, or love fully if you’ve given your hurt the keys to your soul.

 

So, in conclusion, don’t audition for victimhood. The world loves a survivor’s story, not a martyr’s rerun. Rename the scar. Don’t call it failure — call it curriculum.

 

Stop letting trauma hold the pen. Hand it the highlighter, maybe. But the pen? That’s yours.

 

 

 

 

Your attention is prime real estate—and you’re renting it out to clowns for free.

 

We, the so-called smart, upwardly mobile, tech-savvy sapiens, are shockingly liberal with the one currency more valuable than time, money, or even Bitcoin—our attention.

 

Hello, you magnificent, distracted mess.

 

I see you. You’re reading this, but a part of your brain is wondering about that notification that just lit up your phone like a mini Times Square. Another part is replaying that slightly awkward thing you said in the meeting 3 days ago. And a third, more primal part, is debating between ordering a pizza or being “good” and having a salad.

 

We don’t just spend our attention—we spray and pray.

 

We scroll through reels at 2AM, generously tipping algorithms with our focus, binge Open House debates on TV where no one is actually listening, and clap like trained seals at motivational soundbites that dissolve the moment we swipe.

 

In short: we’ve turned our attention into confectionary—free samples, available on every aisle.

 

We are so liberal with this priceless social currency called attention, we’ve made the Weimar Republic look fiscally conservative.

If this makes your morning coffee taste bitter, I am sorry: We are the first generation in human history to be simultaneously the richest and the poorest when it comes to attention—the ultimate social currency.

 

Think about it. Your great-grandmother could sit through a three-hour Carnatic music concert without fidgeting. Your grandfather could read the entire newspaper (yes, the physical one with actual pages) from cover to cover. But you? You can’t watch a 2-minute YouTube video without checking if someone liked your Instagram story about your breakfast.

 

We’ve become attention billionaires and wisdom paupers. And frankly, it’s hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.

 

Let’s think through this to understand what happened.

 

Some very smart people in Silicon Valley figured out that human attention is finite and extremely valuable. So they built machines designed to harvest it. Not metaphorically—literally.

 

Facebook (sorry, “Meta“) has teams of neuroscientists whose job is to make you scroll more. Netflix has algorithms that know you better than your mother. TikTok has cracked the code of the human dopamine system so efficiently that it makes casinos look like amateur operations. We can brand them the Netflix-Meta-TikTok Holy Trinity of Distraction.

 

The result? We’re all running on hamster wheels, thinking we’re racing toward something important, while these companies are the ones actually getting somewhere—to our wallets. And laughing all the way to the bank.

 

To know more about what actually happens when you pay attention, it is worthwhile to segue back to a Swedish experiment conducted some time ago. In that, they asked a group of office workers to do just one task at a time for one week. Just one. No email checking during meetings. No phone scrolling during conversations. No background music during focused work.

 

The results were shocking: Productivity increased by 40% | Stress levels dropped dramatically | People reported feeling more human | One guy said it was like waking up from a dream

 

But here’s the kicker—most participants said it felt uncomfortably slow at first. We’ve literally trained ourselves to be uncomfortable with peace.

 

We seem to have outsourced our boredom. And that’s NOT good news. Boredom is not the enemy—it’s the birthplace of creativity. Every great idea in history was born from someone being sufficiently bored to actually think. Silicon Valley figured out how to monetize your boredom. You’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.

 

But now? The moment we feel the slightest hint of mental quiet, we reach for our phones like they’re oxygen masks. We’ve eliminated boredom so successfully that we’ve accidentally eliminated wonder.

 

We seem to be in a state of empathy recession. When you’re constantly switching between 47 different inputs, you lose the ability to deeply connect with any one thing—including other humans. We’re creating a generation of people who can manage 15 group chats but can’t have one meaningful conversation.

 

We’re so busy documenting our life that we forget to live it. Instagram can wait; our actual existence cannot.

 

The typical refrain when asked why so much attention on meaningless distraction is ” I want to keep up “- leaves you wondering, keep up with what exactly? They will quote verbatim every political scandal doing the rounds but I can bet my last cent that most are clueless about their own nervous system. They will wax eloquent on the global economy but will be totally clueless about whats happening in their own backyard.

 

With no exaggeration, let me tell you that if attention was cash, most of us would be declaring bankruptcy daily.

 

We are the first generation in human history to be simultaneously the richest and the poorest when it comes to attention—the ultimate social currency.

 

Your attention is not renewable. You get approximately 700,000 hours of consciousness in your lifetime. How you spend those hours is how you spend your life.

 

The choice is yours: Stay a broke billionaire in the attention economy, or become truly wealthy by investing your most precious resource wisely.

 

Globally, attention has been commodified faster than avocado toast. Entire industries profit from hijacking your eyeballs. Silicon Valley doesn’t sell tech—it sells your distraction.

 

We’re forever busy yet perpetually restless. Our stress warehouses are so full, we’d need GST | VAT numbers to inventory what we’ve stacked up inside.

 

Because attention is not neutral. It is like magnifying glass. Wherever it goes, that thing grows, amplifies. Feed gossip and outrage? Anxiety expands. Feed comparison reels? Insecurity mushrooms. Feed doomscrolling ? Congrats, you’ve invested in a flourishing stock listed on most of the world’s stock exchanges called Existential Dread Ltd.

 

Like water finding cracks, attention shapes our daily experience. And we’re busy watering weeds, not the oak trees.

 

Thought I am not encouraging you to be a rebel, I reckon it might be worth it. What is it that we could do to reclaim the territory that we have willingly bequeathed. Can we quarantine our notifications? Let me tell you that if the world is coming to an end, you will not hear it on WhatsApp or Insta first. Please add some sacred zero notice zones in your space. Morning coffee without devices. Dinner table without screens. Commute without doomscroll. It’s rebellion disguised as self-care. Single-tasking like a samurai. Responding to important emails? Then honor that task. Forget everything else. Audit your stress inventory once a week. Ask “What did I pay attention to that left me lighter?” If the list is shorter than a government queue, you know where the leaks are. Budget attention like money. Would you throw $100 notes at strangers? Then why litter your minutes mindlessly?

 

A gentle knock on the head to remember that every scroll is a loan. Every notification is interest. And, your mind is bankrupt.

 

Want less stress? Stop fertilizing it with your attention.

 

In closing: We’re not short on time or energy. We’re short on focus.
So, the rebellious thing today isn’t to do more. It’s to starve what doesn’t deserve your attention. Hunter-gatherer upgrade: become a selective-attention carnivore.

 

 

 

We live in an age where decibels are mistaken for dialogue. Too many shouts, not enough signals. Everyone is talking. Few are transmitting.
Take a stroll through LinkedIn. It’s an Olympic stadium of “noise-athletes”—smooth adjectives, polished jargon, lattes in the background. But behind the vocabulary? Hollow vacuums.

 

Without intent, communication is noise. With it, its leadership.

 

Picture this: A 23-year-old engineering dropout in Bengaluru, armed with nothing but a smartphone and an unshakeable belief that period poverty shouldn’t exist. Arunachalam Muruganantham(nicknamed the Padman) didn’t craft PowerPoint presentations or hire PR agencies. He simply spoke one truth, repeatedly, in every village square he could find: “A woman’s dignity shouldn’t depend on her economic status.”

 

That “noise” became a symphony that reached Bollywood, the UN, and millions of Indian homes. And earned him a Padma Shri. But here’s the kicker – hundreds of social workers had been saying similar things for decades. What made Muruganantham different? Intent so sharp it could cut through centuries of taboo.

 

Meanwhile, in corporate boardrooms across the world, executives deliver beautifully crafted quarterly presentations that say absolutely nothing. Slides shimmer with data visualization, voices project with MBA-trained confidence, yet teams walk away more confused than when they entered.

 

The difference? One spoke to change the world. The others spoke to fill the silence.

 

Anand Mahindra has mastered something most CEOs struggle with: turning corporate communication into human connection. His Monday motivation posts aren’t crafted by PR teams. They are personal observations, often from his weekend experiences, shared with genuine intent to inspire.

 

When he posted about a young innovator from rural Karnataka who built a water purification system from discarded materials, it wasn’t brand promotion. It was intent in action – using his platform to amplify voices that deserved to be heard. That post led to the innovator getting funding, recognition, and a chance to scale his solution.

 

The lesson? When communication serves a purpose beyond self-promotion, it transforms from noise into silence.

 

Let me be brutally honest. Most presentations in the corporate world  are glorified sleep therapy sessions. Not because the speakers lack intelligence, but because they lack intent. They start with “Good morning, everyone” instead of “By the end of this conversation, you’ll understand why our current approach is costing us $XXX monthly.” They say “Let me take you through our journey” instead of “Here’s the one decision that will determine if we lead or follow in the next quarter.” They conclude with “Thank you for your time” instead of “Here’s exactly what we’re doing tomorrow, and here’s who’s accountable for what.”

Intent transforms every element of communication:

 

Without intent: ” We need to improve customer satisfaction “.

 

With intent: “We’re implementing this specific feedback loop by Friday because losing one more customer to our competitor costs us more than fixing the root cause”.

 

In 2018, Dr. Robert Jensen published groundbreaking research about Kerala fishermen who started using mobile phones to check market prices before bringing their catch to shore. These barely literate fishermen achieved something Fortune 500 companies struggle with – perfect communication efficiency.

 

Their calls were never longer than two minutes. Every conversation had one purpose: maximize value from the day’s catch. No small talk. No relationship building. Pure, intentional information exchange that increased their profits by 8% and reduced waste by 25%.

 

Silicon Valley took note. WhatsApp Business was born from studying how these fishermen communicated with intent. Meanwhile, in corporate offices worldwide, employees attend three-hour meetings that could have been three-minute phone calls. The fishermen understood something we’ve forgotten – communication isn’t about being polite or comprehensive. It’s about achieving specific outcomes.

 

Here’s what they don’t teach you in communication workshops: Sometimes the most powerful leaders are the ones who know when NOT to speak. In 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested, the Montgomery Bus Boycott didn’t begin with a fiery speech. It started with E.D. Nixon, the local NAACP chapter president, making one strategic phone call to fifty other leaders with a simple, intentional message: “We don’t ride tomorrow.” No grand rhetoric. No emotional manipulation. Just crystalline intent wrapped in four words.

 

Contrast this with our modern affliction – the LinkedIn post epidemic. Scroll through your feed right now. Count how many “thought leaders” are pontificating about “authentic leadership” and “disruptive innovation” without saying anything remotely useful. They’re not communicating; they’re performing. And performance, without intent, is just sophisticated noise.

 

Even closer home, consider the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. When he addressed schoolchildren, he didn’t deliver complex speeches about aerospace engineering. He asked them to dream, then gave them one actionable step to take when they went home. Every word had a job to do.

 

Here’s some hard truth that nobody wants to hear. You have been trained to communicate wrong. School taught you to fill word counts. Corporate training taught you to “manage stakeholder expectations.” Social media taught you to optimize for engagement.

 

Nobody taught you the most important lesson: Communication without clear intent is just emotional pollution.

 

Every email you send without specific purpose clutters someone’s mind. Every meeting you attend without clear outcomes wastes collective intelligence. Every social media post you share without intentional value adds to the world’s noise problem.

 

We’re drowning in communication and starving for leadership.

 

We are drowning. Drowning in a cacophonous ocean of communication. We have more channels, more tools, more platforms than ever before, and yet, we have never been less heard. The signal is lost. All that remains is the relentless, soul-crushing static of noise.

 

Think about it. A foghorn blares with immense power, but it’s just a warning; it doesn’t steer the ship. A nightingale’s song, however, is gentle, but it’s sung with the intent to attract, to create, to perpetuate life. One is a sound; the other is a symphony. Leadership is not about the decibel level; it’s about the destination your words create in the listener’s mind.

 

In the late 1990s, as the Swiss-Swedish engineering behemoth ABB was grappling with a sprawling, inefficient matrix structure, its new CEO, Percy Barnevik, didn’t launch a flashy rebrand or a loud change management program. He wrote a memo. But this wasn’t just any memo. It was a 3-page document called “The Policy Bible.” Its intent was crystalline: to decentralize power, instill accountability, and kill bureaucracy. Every word was chosen not to inform, but to empower. He gave managers permission to act. That memo, driven by fierce, clarifying intent, didn’t just communicate a new policy; it communicated a new culture. It turned a sluggish giant into a nimble champion. The memo was the leadership.

 

In a quiet university in Japan, a professor of Ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) was teaching Western students. They were fidgety, focused on the technicalities—angle of cut, choice of vase. After minutes of observing their frantic activity, he posed a single question, laden with intent: “Before you cut, have you asked the flower for permission?” The room fell silent. The room fell silent. The intent wasn’t to shame, but to shift perspective entirely—from domination to collaboration, from technique to reverence. That one question, communicated with deep philosophical intent, did more to teach leadership (of oneself, of one’s craft) than a thousand instructional manuals.

 

Leadership is a granted authority. People grant it to those who make them feel seen, understood, and purposeful. Noise ignores them. Intent includes them.

 

Your words are either building a monument or adding to the landfill. The choice, and the intent, is always yours.

Choose wisely. The world is listening for a signal, and it’s waiting for you to lead.