Episode 64: HabitStrong: Importance of Habits, Boredom and Discipline w/Rajan Singh
About Rajan Singh:
In the modern world, where ample distractions capture our attention and constantly pull it in multiple directions, staying focused and achieving our goals can be a significant challenge. Moreover, with the rise of remote work and the shift towards an increasingly digital lifestyle, maintaining focus and productivity has become even more crucial.
My next guest on The One Percent Project is a discipline and routine fanatic, productivity expert and entrepreneur Rajan Singh.
Rajan is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and a former Indian Police Service officer who served as the Trivandrum Police Commissioner. But after a few years, Rajan felt a sense of intellectual stagnation in his job, and he decided to quit and restart his career. He then pursued an MBA from Wharton Business School and worked as a consultant with McKinsey in New York before returning to India as an investment professional at New Silk Route, a billion-dollar private equity fund. However, his restlessness did not end there, and he eventually became an entrepreneur, founding a habit-building startup called HabitStrong. At HabitStrong, Rajan helps people improve their lives by inculcating focus, self-discipline, and good habits.
Listen in to learn Rajan's insights and strategies for achieving goals and maintaining focus on the things that matter most, his views on entrepreneurship, building products within HabitStrong, his ideas about self-doubt and boredom, and much more.
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Key Highlights:
If one wishes to switch careers, one should not be scared of trying something new. As long as they are fearless, willing to put in the hard work, and not bound by the past, they can succeed in whatever career path they choose.
The idea of building a company and exiting for a quick profit appeals to many young entrepreneurs, but it may not lead to long-term success or sustainability. Entrepreneurs should consider building sustainable ventures and focus on getting product-market fit before worrying about scaling up. There is a need for a thoughtful and strategic approach to entrepreneurship, considering it as a career path rather than a gamble.
Creating a product that solves a problem is important, but the most challenging part of entrepreneurship is ensuring that the product/service reaches the intended customer. This is where marketing, distribution, and branding come in, which can be difficult to figure out. Paying huge sums to Facebook or Google for digital advertising is not viable as it may lead to cost-ineffectiveness. It is important to find an organic mechanism to connect with the potential customer base because customers buy not only useful products but also products they feel an emotional connection with.
Confidence is not a blind belief in something; rather, it is about having thought through the situation and acting on it until proven otherwise. Self-doubt comes into play when data from the world suggests that things might not go as planned, and it is important to respect that and reassess the situation. Self-doubt is about finding a balance between self-confidence and self-doubt. It is important to be open to feedback, adapt to changing circumstances, and have healthy self-doubt to ensure one makes the best decisions.
Attention management and resisting the constant need for external stimulation are two important factors in living a meaningful life. With the abundance of stimuli and distractions today, focusing on tasks that may be considered "boring" but essential for personal growth and success can be difficult. Those who can maintain focus and engage in challenging activities also have the opportunity to experience a deep sense of satisfaction and excitement in achieving a breakthrough or making sense of complex ideas.
One should not postpone living and wait for the perfect situation to start enjoying life. Life is still a multivariable problem, and something will always impact it. It is important to live in the present and experience every moment mindfully. One should ask oneself whether one will worry about something six months later, and if not, one should let go of it.
Rajan’s three productivity tools: First, breaking tasks into well-defined spends with a specific objective, lasting around 50 minutes or less. This allows one to eliminate distractions and focus solely on one task. Second, starting the day with some clarity about the most important tasks that need to be completed. This ensures that one is not aimlessly looking for work and getting caught up in busy work that is not productive. Third, limit one's engagement to no more than two or three tasks at any given time to maintain a laser-like focus.
Book recommendation:
In this conversation, he talks about:
00:00 Intro
02:49 How does he think about building a career?
06:26 Why did he choose private equity over venture capital?
08:21 How should one build a career as an entrepreneur?
12:33 His counterintuitive insight about being an entrepreneur?
17:46 Why and how he built HabitStrong?
24:30 Self-doubt as a founder.
27:27 Importance of boredom in building self-disciple and good habits.
33:19 Three productivity tools.
37:37 Three books
Transcript:
Pritish: Welcome Rajan to The One Percent Project. How do you reflect on your career, given you have been a part of numerous prestigious & competitive institutions such as IITK, Wharton, McKinsey, and New Silk Route and are now an entrepreneur?
Rajan: I can answer this question in two ways: one is how I have thought about it and how I might think of an ideal or better way of doing it. I have gone about my career by making optimal decisions at each point, which is practically what every one of us does, nothing surprising. Yeah, but I have been mindful of a few things: not letting risk aversion come in the way. If something felt really right, taking my chances and just going and doing that has been one thing I have consciously tried to do. Second is: sometimes, and again there is no right or wrong answer, but there are two orthogonal approaches to life. One is to go in one direction and go deep. Some people do the same thing for 30 years and become really good at it. And they can explore the depths of that field like others cannot, and others are open to trying different things. I am clearly in the latter category. So, just because I have done something in the past, I don’t feel that that should constrain me from what I do next, as long as it makes sense otherwise. Like after my IT, I joined the police service, one of those decisions where I felt that it made sense, the idea attracted me, felt like a promising great career, which it did, at least for a couple of years, and then at some point, I felt that I was feeling mentally saturated, it wasn’t really a piece of learning and slowed down substantially. Back to the same question, so now what do you do next? And I did not want to keep doing something just because it is considered prestigious or there is guaranteed job security or career growth. One thing I do have in mind is that while every job will have its ups and downs, you should feel somewhat enthusiastic about going to work on many days. So, there is a question mark if something feels like a drag every day or most days. So, I felt I had a big question mark when I decided to quit after a couple of years in IPS. Every career move has been driven by what makes more sense, which I think everybody asks, but also not to be constrained by the past. The past can be your strength, but it should not hold you hostage. And if I were to give you advice, I am not saying you should change careers too often or stick to something of your choice, but I certainly do feel that do not be scared of trying just because it is something new. And quite often, the fallacy that people fall for is that, whatever it might be, other people have been doing it for so many years, and I will be like a newbie, and I will never be able to catch up. Now obviously, experience has some value, no question about it. Still, I think we hugely overestimate how much value it has, and if somebody is willing to put in the work and take chances and learn quickly, many professions, in a matter of months, if not maybe like one or two years, you can get to a point where you will be probably as good as people who have been around for a very long time. Again, this is not a universally true statement, but I would say it holds for the most part. So, as long as you are fearless and willing not to be bound by your past, go ahead and explore and whatever you do at that point, give it your best shot. I know it’s like a motherhood statement, but that is what I have tried, and I think it has worked for me within reasonable limits.
Pritish: In your career, you went from McKinsey to PE. I was inquisitive to know did you also have a choice of going into a VC, so why a PE and not a VC at that point?
Rajan: When I worked at McKinsey, I was in the generalist consulting practice, though I did spend some time in their corporate finance practice in the financial, not financial services; financial services is an industry but also has a group that focuses on valuation. I spent some time there, but mostly I was a generalist consultant, and my understanding was at the level I could understand businesses and their operations and spot the flaws, possibly solving some of those problems. Those were the skill sets that I had at that point. VC requires very different skill sets. It is less about operating staff and more about spotting new risky, forward-looking opportunities. In private equity, we rarely take a bet on a massive disruptive change in business or technology. So, you are betting on things that are working already. The product-market fit is well-established, the market is there, and you have reached a certain scale. Now all you are saying is this business can go from X to 3X or 4X in a few years, not even 10X, rarely 10X. So, if you can get it 3X growth, that business is a yes, as long as other things also check out. Whereas, in VC, that's a different game. Both are technically investing, but the skill sets required are very different. At that point, I did not; I had never done a start-up when I had no deep expertise or inclination to do that. So, I did not even consider a VC role, and even if one had fallen in my lap, of course, it would not have happened, but even if it happened, I don't think I would have taken it at that point because I was not a good fit for that.
Pritish: I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, investors, and people from the media as well; because of the podcast, I do feel that the media has hyped the role of an entrepreneur or an operator, and I think what we keep forgetting is that it's also a career. How do you think about building a career as an entrepreneur?
Rajan: Pritish, the way people think about it, when I say people, again, I’m generalizing, obviously. The way a lot of us think about entrepreneurship is like a surgical strike. So, you go and do something for five years, build something, and then exit and return. Then you go and do the next thing. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's a fantastic model if that's what works for you. Very rarely do people think of, okay, I will build this company, and then I will hold my equity forever, or I will be less involved operationally, but I will be part of it for a long time. Now when you are thinking more in terms of, okay, I go in for five years, build something, extract some value, and then get out and do the next thing, then from a career point of view, it's less about building something sustainable or whatever. I mean, of course, it doesn't hurt, but your main priority will be on the exit. So, even when you look at an opportunity, you will be okay, can I get this to a certain scale quickly? Can I get out quickly? So quickly is going to be the operative word. If you can get to an exit, then it really doesn’t matter. Does it sustain? Does it become big? Will it be a market leader? None of those questions you have it. I think many entrepreneurs fall into that bucket. And some people want to build something sustainable. I would say I'm sort of on the margin. I want to build a business; will I hold it forever? I don't know. I very well could if things make sense. But I’m very clear that I don't want to ever exit a business and then see it collapse in six months or twelve months and say, " Oh yeah, I didn’t handle it well.” It should not be hit and run. It has to be sustainable. At least, that’s something that I feel strongly about. If anybody is looking from a career point of view, I would say think of it like which of those two buckets do you belong? If it is a former, the thing to worry about or think about is that if you go in for three years or five years, could you get stuck for ten years? And could you get stuck in something which doesn't really scale up? Something happens, but it doesn't take off as expected. So, I think those are the things one must worry about. But if you want to build something sustainable, think of it like, okay, you will hold this company forever. Also, what it does depends on how you take external investments, how the investors are, etc. If those things are aligned, you can be stress-free and take more time to figure things out. Very importantly, in that case, getting product-market fit and getting the product that people love and want to pay for is critical. My personal belief that, again, I’m sure many people will disagree, is that many companies in the start-up space in India have scaled up, but they don't have product-market fit. I said this because even if a company has product-market fit, then, even if you are not profitable at the overall level, the unit (?) should work. But in many cases, it's very questionable. Again, I'm not making a judgment. All I'm saying is those are very difficult situations. If you are in that situation, that cannot be sustained long-term. From a career perspective, if you want to stick to one company, make sure you get the product market fit. By the way, we are trying; we think we have developed product-market fit in certain products, but we are figuring stuff out, so we haven't solved it fully. I am totally aware of it. So, the scaling has to come after you have figured that out. At least any inorganic scaling. If you consider entrepreneurship a career, not just a gamble, that is my take.
Pritish: Brilliant! I’ll get to product-market fit. Before that, this is your second stint as an entrepreneur. The first start-up didn’t work, and now you have built an exploding product, or it is a breakout product. What is your counterintuitive insight about entrepreneurship?
Rajan: Pritish, I do not have a very deep, insightful, or counterintuitive insight, but here are things I have understood. Most people already know this, but I’ll share, nevertheless. One: I have learnt from Hard Knocks that marketing, distribution, branding, whatever you want to call it If you slice business into halves, one half is you create something which solves the problem, and then the second half is like you somehow make sure that that product or service gets delivered. Think of these two. Let's call the second marketing, just for the sake of simplicity. That is the hardest part, and I have figured that if you can solve that, then not that product-market is trivial, not at all. But that is what determines your success. Product-market fit you can hopefully figure out with iterations. But, if you have not, with some kind of marketing channel, marketing platform, or mechanism, I have realised that just by paying money to Google or Facebook or digital advertising, as glamorous as its feels, you will never make it. If somebody comes in with this idea, that’s okay; I have this fantastic idea. How will we get to the customer? I will go to Facebook. Son, don't do that. That can be the last part of the puzzle. Once you have built your brand, people know you and your other channels, and it can possibly be an add-on. There also making it work, making it cost-effective is very hard. So essentially, you are putting in all the effort, getting some cash, and then every month, you give it to Facebook and Google; please take it and go. And that’s why those companies have traded in hundreds of millions of valuations, right? So, they are extracting the consumer or economic surplus and leaving nothing for the companies, for the most part. So then, what do you do? That’s a big question. I do not have the answer. For some people, it might be your build-up plan on YouTube, or for somebody, they could be on a podcast; this could be a channel. But there has to be some mechanism for you to connect with the people that we are going to offer a product, and it has to be organic, not inorganic. The other thing, which I am realising more and more, is that when people buy into a product, like, if I am taking something from Pritish’s company, I am also buying into you. I am not saying anything counterintuitive, but if I don’t like you as a person, believe it or not, I probably will not buy from you. And if I like you, you know what? Even if Pritish’s product is 20% more expensive, I can speak for myself personally; only one person I will buy. But if I disagree with that person, or again this is not about ideology. The point I’m trying to make is that there is a purchase decision, for all of us, certainly has an emotional part, a comfort level. There are a lot of those factors that come in. So, when in Business School, they will talk about brands, I would keep thinking, what bullshit it is? Come on. People just buy useful stuff. Of course, they buy useful stuff, but there are many factors that we don’t realise. And one more thing I want to add here is that quite often, we feel that okay, you know what, all those guys need that, but I am rational. I am not affected by things. No, we are all the same, affected by the same factors, affected by emotions, and those of us who may have studied logic formally; in fact, I have studied logic formally back and have done a course on that, but it doesn’t change anything. We are still emotional. That is the part you have to crack. Then, of course, the product market fit in itself is like, I’m still trying to figure it out. So, it’s a tough game. One last thing I want to add is that you can circumvent all of it with external capital. If you have a lot of money and even if your product-market fit is not very strong, and you’re marketing it through a lot of money, the problem is that you’ll end up in a place where you have a hundred crore revenue. Expenses will be two hundred, and fifty crores, and then the question is what have you really built? I don’t answer that.
Pritish: Brilliant! In today’s world, the obvious has become the counterintuitive thing to do. Everybody is just looking at valuation, trying to get to million customers. We don’t even know what their revenue is. Your most obvious insights are the counterintuitive ones, which we must keep reiterating. Moving on to your present company, it’s fascinating because you are building something very close to you as a personal endeavour, and now you have turned it into a product. How did you stumble upon it? And, whenever you think about building a product within HabitStrong, how do you go about it?
Rajan: I’ll take these questions one by one. How I stumbled upon it is, what happened when I was running ConceptOwl, so, we were providing science and math learning programs for students, quite often parents would say that their child is very bright; he or she is very intelligent but doesn’t have good learning habits, so can you help them? My answer was obviously no because we can teach, but we don’t change the habit; that’s beyond my paygrade, and that’s not something I can or thought anybody could do. But over time, when you keep hearing those things again and again for years, you realize that the main bottleneck is actually behavioural. So, the solution to the learning problem was a behavioural solution, not just a knowledge solution. Could we do something? To me, the answer was unclear. Then COVID happened, and Lockdown forced us to shut out our businesses. So, we had a hybrid model with a physical model as well, and within a matter of a couple of days, it was all gone. That forced us to think about things from the first principles again; then I thought, let’s test some ideas. So, I started at home. I started testing ideas on how to be focused. I started reading much stuff on that. That is how I came up with a product idea around focus building because I noticed one observation I made was that many people were buying courses on Coursera, Udemy, etc., but they were not completing them. The completion rate was very low. There was an unmet need there. That was the hypothesis. I found that routines were all over the place, during COVID but in general also. I felt that fitness for me, building a fitness habit, had done wonders. So, I started learning meditation. All those things I found valuable. I said, okay, let’s see if somebody else also finds it of value. Then we found that it had some value and started offering it. In terms of the specific questions on how we think about products. So, it’s a wonderful question. I wish I could get better at it. So, I'm still figuring it out. I don't have it all sorted, but what I do is look at what are the problems that people are talking about. So, Pritish, because we have more than ten to twenty thousand people who have gone through our various programs, etc., we interact; our newsletter has twenty-five thousand odd people who get it. So, we have many of these interactions, and occasionally I ask people during conversations, and it comes up; people will send me emails asking, "I have this problem. Can you help me with this?" My responses often say, "We don't have anything on that." But when we hear those persistent customer queries or messages, we realize, "You know what? There is a problem there. There is stress and anxiety. Productivity is a problem. Handling our retention is a problem. Distraction is a problem." So that is something we don't find very hard to figure out that there is a need. Now the next question is, there are a couple of questions more, next is can we solve it? And the third question is, obviously, will they pay for it if we solve it? Will they pay for it at a level where it becomes viable? What I have done in most of these cases, and going forward, I do not know what I will be able to do, is create something and put it out. Initially, for the first week, I did not create anything. I would just do a lot of experiments, figure it out, and then I would run the program myself. Essentially, I am like the coach or the guide , and then we do it for a couple of iterations and invite people to join as a volunteer and then get their feedback. Sort of an MVP approach, like having something which is just like maybe brute force. There is no real product as such. The first batch, typically for every program we have done, has always been like a pilot batch, so we test it once, get real-world feedback, and then offer it as a paid product. Going forward, we will be able to do it all the time; I don't know because, as an example, we are currently working on rolling out a program for stress and anxiety. It's a pretty deep program, so the need a certain validated, so people have the need? 100%, for sure. To what extent will we be able to do it? Now, that is what we will be testing. But we are putting some effort there. So, there is a certain amount of moving forward and taking some risks. So, it's not something; let me put it this way: I have given enough talks at companies, which is a problem that companies often have talked to me. I have given talks at practically not all but many big multinational corporations in India on stress, anxiety, and focus building. So, I know that these topics resonate, and feedback has usually been very positive when I delivered that message. So, you have some sense, some sense that you know what? A solution along these parameters is fairly likely to work, but it’s never certain. The other thing we figured out now was offering those programs to companies, which again is in some untested territory. Because while we have given talks, we haven't run a detailed program. We have a few, but not too many. But the summary of the whole thing is that the way we create our programs is that verified customer needs test as quickly as possible. Sometimes it’s not that what you’re offering makes sense or not; then, see whether people are willing to pay. And, if it doesn't work, you just cut your losses and move on. And now, as we go to companies and wait for enterprise business, we will have to see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes Pritish, what happens is you have a product, and it might be working for a certain set of customers. Let's say consumers are happy with it but speak to businesses, and they say, know what? This is too long. We need something which can be consumed over, not twenty-eight days, something for two days; then we have to go back to the drawing board and rethink. So, all that is going on. I absolutely would not claim that we have figured stuff out, but we are trying to get closer to it.
Pritish: What are your insights about self-doubt as a founder?
Rajan: That’s a very interesting question. Let’s revisit the idea of self-doubt. So, there is one paradigm in which we should be confident, know what we are doing, be behind it and not look back. And there is another way to look at the world, in which you say, you know? Look at the data and what you learn from the world. Do these two contradict? And if they do contradict, then which is the right approach? I think at times when we have this kind of debate; the answer is in the nuance. And the nuance is that when we say confidence, confidence is not that I believe in A or I believe in X, and regardless of what the world does, I'll keep believing in X. So, I remember there was a joke which somebody cracked on George W. Bush. There was this White House correspondent, I don’t know if you’ve seen those, but they are pretty funny. So, every year, they have this thing in Washington, all these journalists will come, and there is one guy, and they will essentially roast the president. And when George Bush was the president, it was Steven Colbert, if I'm not wrong. And he said, "Mr. President, you are the ultimate consistent guy; the opinion you hold on Monday is exactly what you will hold on Wednesday, no matter what happened on Tuesday." You should’ve seen his face. He was horrified. And I think that was a little bit below the belt, but anyway, the thing is talking about confidence; I would go back to that joke. So, confidence is not about believing in what you believe regardless. That’s just foolhardiness. Confidence is that I have thought through that stuff. Once I’ve thought through it, I will act on it. And when I act on it, I will not act on it as you know what will happen. Until I get the data, until something tells me I’m wrong, I am not going to just revisit something because I have fear. I am feeling fearful. I will fearful, I will feel anxious, but I have thought through it, and once it is done, I move forward. The idea of having self-doubt is like when I get data from the world that, you know, I thought this was a great program but people don’t like it as much. Then you have to go back and say, you know what, too bad, I thought this will be great, but only a small number of people want it or people don’t want it or people want them in a certain variation. Then you have to respect that and go back and say we got it wrong or we got it only partly right. So, it's not either-or. It's not a binary choice between self-confidence or self-doubt. It's about the right kind of confidence and the right kind of doubt.
Pritish: In one of your interviews, you have talked about boredom because we have so many stimuli, notifications. Can you double-click on the importance of boredom in our life?
Rajan: The ability to manage our attention is, in my opinion, today's single biggest determinant of success and how you live your life. There was a time when I was in school, but unfortunately, television was not there. We did have Tv, but there was only one channel, Doordarshan, and there were hardly any books, no Kindle, and nothing. So essentially, there was nothing if you were looking for some external stimulation. So, then our attention was there. Of course, even then there would be distractions, but it was relatively easy to do what you wanted. Then, of course, cable TV and the Internet came, and we are I'm sure going in that direction at the speed of a rocket. Now, when we are constantly interrupted, constantly stimulated, there’s always something. It’s like trying to study for an exam in a Vegas casino. That's what life has become, unfortunately. It's not an exaggeration. Because when you open your phone, different variants of casinos, be it Facebook or an actual casino, maybe. All those things are right there. What that has done is it has, again, I am repeating some of the stuff that is probably known to your viewers, but every time you take an action that gives you a sense of pleasure, it reinforces that behaviour. When it is reinforced a sufficient number of times, that behaviour becomes automatic, and that automatic behaviour is what we call a habit. Once the habit becomes very deep, and once it starts becoming harmful, it is called addiction. These are all just the same thing, just differences of scale. So, addiction is nothing but a deeply ingrained harmful habit, in simple words. Now, what happens when we are constantly bombarded and peppered with this Vegas-style entertainment/stimulations, all those validations, and all that stuff? Our mind is seeking all those things. It starts seeking it desperately, and at some point, it becomes practically impossible to sit and read a book or sit and work for even twenty minutes, and it is not an exaggeration. Now, it so turns out that when you hack, look the aspect to the world has changed but there is one aspect to the world that has not changed which is that if you want to do research in Physics on a certain particle, you have to sit and read those dense research papers and books and you have to do it for hours and hours for every day and even for years. If you happen to do research in Finance or forget research, you want to become a good investment professional; you have to sit down and read stuff. So, on the one hand, the requirement is that if you have to live a meaningful life, you have to go through certain actions which should be considered “boring”. That has not changed. But our ability to do those things has changed. Now we have a huge mismatch. So, people who can actually do that, who say you know what, I’ll sit and read this 10k or whatever financial statement, I’m willing to spend three hours, and I can do it without too much of distraction, without checking email for a couple of hours, I am fine with it, Vs. somebody who has to check TikTok every 10 minutes or five minutes. The latter stands low chance today. This is the biggest competitive advantage. So, when we say boredom, I’m not trying to say we must live a boring life. No. That’s not the point. The point is meaningful things are not going to give you a kick every three seconds. That aspect of the world has not changed; it will not, and it cannot. We can do some gamification of certain things, but if you have to do research in Computer Science, sit and understand that map. Look at that dense map, and your mind will explode. So, sit and calm down, be with it. Nobody will gamify that. In fact, I am digressing a bit, but if you allow me to do this, the whole idea that things have been made exciting, well, if possible, do it for sure but the satisfaction you get from these things. It doesn’t come from the frivolousness or the idea that this was fun. But it comes from the idea that, oh wow, this thing clicked. When in your mind, a model falls into place, now it starts making sense; if something makes sense, it’s no less exciting than a casino if you think casinos are exciting. And we have to seek that excitement, find that excitement and stay with it. Still, to get to that excitement, you have to go through the start, which you may call boring, and therefore, not bore ourselves together but find, to stay on that meaningful path, we have to develop the ability to keep our attention with something even if it doesn’t give you a high every few minutes. And that is why the ability to do boring stuff is important.
Pritish: I read somewhere, “Reading is forced meditation.” Once you get into the habit, you enjoy it so much, and over a period of time you understand what you’ve gained out of it. But it really is a habit and practice. Children who develop it earlier on, find it natural, but if you are trying to pick it up in an older age, it’s very hard because it's basically sort of meditation, and you need to keep focusing. Great! Three productivity tools.
Rajan: So, one is when you want to do focused work, don't think of like an indefinite, undefined long effort. Think of it as a well-defined spend. The duration can be 25 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 50 minutes, not two hours. Anything less than 90 minutes but I would say 50 is the right duration. So, it has to be a well-defined spend with a well-defined objective. I think something as simple as that, does magic inside your brain. And the magic is does is that our mind is caught up in a lot of things, simultaneously. The problem is not a lot of things; the problem is the simultaneity of it. When, like right now, as you and I are talking, for me, the priority is to answer questions as best as I can. Nothing else matters to me. Because for this hour or whatever duration we have, we have a specific goal, I can drop out of everything else. There is no competing, nothing competing for my attention. The same thing, I think, we need to break to anything that we do in our daily life. That is one approach to productivity. Second is, if we do not start our day with some clarity, ok, I’m not talking about, like, sometimes I think I need to have a plan, minute by minute. No. You don’t need to have any of that. If you have that’s great, it wouldn’t work for me and it would not work for a lot of people. But we need to have some clarity as to what matters for me today. Like today is Tuesday, 7th of Feb, what do I need to get done? Some clarity is required because if we don’t have that, if we are, if the way we approach our day is OK right now, it is like 11:30, what should I do next? How do I find work? Because when we have that question, we have a default response: go and check your email, or check your Slack or something, and then we get in this responsive mode, and we feel good because we have been busy the whole day. But in army, sometimes soldiers have to be kept busy so they are told to like build the trenches, and then there will be told to break the trenches again, right? So, they are busy the whole day, but it is just business for the sake of business. So, we should not be doing the same thing. Of course, there it is for physical exertion. Here we don’t have that objective. So, we just want to be busy. So, you have to have the clarity as to today for me A and B. The D doesn’t matter. Forget when I’ll complete them but at least that clarity, I think, is important. Third thing I would say is there are so many things I would love to say here, but one thing which works is, at any point in time, you should not have more than two or three things that your mind is engaged in. This is something which I am following very strictly, and it’s super effective. Like, I may have a To-do list, in fact, I genuinely have a To-Do List of more than 100, probably 200 items. Right now, I’ll pick three. So, today, I will work until I am done with any of these, I cannot take anything else. All those 200 things, they may be very important. Maybe if I don’t do them, something bad will happen. I don’t know, I don’t care. But, if I have picked something thoughtfully, and now I am going to engage only in these. All these things I talked about ultimately are about your attention. How do you handle and coordinate attention? How do you make it a laser focus kind of a thing as opposed to like a broad light just being spread in all directions. Normally by default, our mind is going all over the place, and whether you dilute milk or you dilute your attention, the outcome is same. There is nothing learnt. So, I would say these are some of the things for productivity.
Pritish: Three books that have influenced and impacted you.
Rajan: I think Atomic Habits by James Clear. That was certainly and unsurprisingly a great book. There is a book on mindfulness called Attention Revolution, by Alan Wallace. I thought it was very good. There is another one, Mindfulness in plain English, again, very, very thoughtful, very scientific, I like that. I am reading another book now, which now which is Mindfulness with breathing and I could actually find some very interesting material there. So, this is by a Buddhist monk named Buddhadasa, who I think died in the 90s, but he was a very, very famous monk in Thailand. He had a very different, secular approach to meditation though he was a Buddhist monk. So that book seems to be very promising. Bunch of books on cognitive therapy. If anybody feels like reading, they can read Judith Beck, it’s called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, that I thought was very nice.
Pritish: What would be your advice to your younger self?
Rajan: Certainly, one thing, one advice which I would have for anybody in that situation, is even if you are highly ambitious and looking to do a lot of things, you want to do the next big thing, it's perfectly fine to pursue your goals and look for success. But remember that no matter how successful you are, that new life that you're thinking, looking forward to, it is not going to be materially different from what you have right now, regardless. So, don't postpone living until you reach that ideal situation where you have the perfect job, perfect authority, and lots of money and this and that. Because even if all those good things happen, something else might happen which would impact your life. Life is a multivariable problem, so don't wait to live your life. I would live my life when I was a student, I would be lot more present and live those moments more mindfully and experience those things. Simple thing, nothing very fancy. Second thing is easy to say but very hard to implement and I'm struggling, with is I don't worry too much about things that can possibly go wrong because we have this cognitive bias to focus on what can go wrong because it keeps us safe. But the end result is also that most of the things that I have worried about, most of them thankfully, have not panned out. And many things that you worry about now, six months later, it's not even in your mind, it's totally gone. So, I would say one thing I could do, maybe I should do even now, is always ask, 'Will I worry about this 6 months later, one year later?' And if not, maybe I should probably let go. As you said, all these things are theoretically easy to understand, but our behaviour and our response in such situations is not always logical. So, even knowing this, one may not be able to change things. But yeah, if I had to change something, I think those two would be on the top of my list.
Pritish: Brilliant! Rajan, that's a great place to close the conversation. Thanks for being on the show.
Rajan: Thank you, Pritish! Lovely to be here.
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