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I recall a sequence in a Bollywood movie 'Bluffmaster'. It was between two actors: Abhishek Bachchan and Boman Irani. "Tumhe aise kitne din yaad hai Roy, Your first job, pehla suit, pehli salary? Jab tumne ek ladki ko pehli baar chooa, pehli baar chooma? Jab pehli baar tumhara dil dhadka. 30 saal ki Zindagi mein aise kitne din hain jo tumhe yaad hain - 1, 2, 3 , 5 , 10 , 15, 30… 30 din hain na? 30 saal ki zindagi aur bas 30 din... baaki ke dino ka kya hua Roy?" Source: http://hindimoviedialogues.blogspot.com/2009/04/bluffmaster-dialogues.html?m=1 In summary, what Boman was relaying to Abhishek Bachchan is that no matter how long we live, we manage to construct only a few moments that are truly memorable and worth living. The rest of life serves a purpose that's likely not indelible. The assertion made in this dialogue is not hard to validate. If, for a moment, you take a rare-view mirror glance at your own life, you can really count such moments on your finger tip...

We live in a consumption economy. The whole digital revolution seems to built on the premise to offer the contents (in the form of news, updates from friends, images, videos etc.) to us as effortlessly as possible. We now have smartphones that are 24x7 content broadcasting machines. As a result of this, human beings are always in content consumption mode. While access to information is good in one way (it has made us more aware) but largely it has also robbed conciseness from the day-to-day communication. The emails tend now to be longer, verbal updates muddled up and our white-boards more busier than they have ever been. One of the pieces of writing that recently inspired me was the blog-  Create less, Consume more  by Tanmay Vora. Sharing couple of pieces of advise from this blog: Consume mindfully by  having right set of filters  that help you decide if something will *really* add value and increase your ability to create.  When you consume mindfully, less is...

It has to be a special day when you get to moderate a session with two champion Olympians. I got this privilege last week when the former Olympians Viren Rasquinha (Former captain Indian Hockey team) and Neha Aggarwal (First Indian female Olympian for Table Tennis) visited my organization (Citrix). Left to Right: Viren Rasquinha, Anuj Magazine, Neha Aggarwal I have been personally supporting Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) for a long time. OGQ's mission is to enable athletes to win Gold medals for India at Olympics. Citrix supports OGQ as well. After meeting with Viren and Neha, we had organized an employee interaction session with them. Till the last minute, I wasn't aware that I would be moderating the session so it was a sort of last minute plan. But eventually it turned out to be a good one. Some lively conversations and candid stories from their sporting careers kept the audience engaged, entertained and spellbound. Sports has this unique power that makes comprehension of lif...

Sharing more perspectives on the core career principles taking the sequence from  my previous blogs ( this and this )  forward: 5. Focus on managing relationships: There are a few skills that are as much force multipliers in your career as is managing relationships well. On this subject, I am reminded of my post at techwell.com , which i will reproduce here: While leadership and management are traditionally thought of top-down, there is a lesser-known aspect of leadership that's  referred to as "managing up."  Managing up allows you to positively influence the boss—or even the boss’s boss. Few people consider this aspect of leadership as a skill and therefore fail to make necessary connections with bosses. How do tech leaders manage upwards? In his book  Behind the Cloud , salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff talks about his relationship with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison during his tenure at Oracle. "I had many long conversations with my boss, Larry Ellison, about ...