Kindness And All That

Only 13 companies have survived being in Nifty50 since its inception.
~50 companies have come in and went out.

500+ recognized historical empires have crumpled over time.

Data storage costs have gone down a BILLION times from $1000/MB/month to $1/TB/month. Technology gets outdated REAL fast — iPods were launched and went out of manufacturing within 10 years.

NFTs selling for $millions are now lying wasted in wallets.

Artworks selling for peanuts get sold in millions, and other way round. We have all seen multiple market crashes to know what happens to ‘perceived’ value once the last fool has been exhausted.

The first 100m Olympic Gold was for 11.6seconds. College athletes now run 100m in <10seconds.

ALL human achievements have an expiry date.

No matter how great a legacy you create, someone WILL surpass it. People will remember you after you a die — till the time someone else comes and breaks your record.

What matters therefore is NOT your legacy, but your today.

Who cares what people remember when you die — you won’t be there to see it. But you are here right here, right now. And what matters right here, right now is how you make others feel. Are you nice. Are you kind.

Because someone will always replace you in record books. But no one can replace you in someone’s diary entry. Achievements make you live longer. Kindness make you immortal.

Be kind. Everything else is just a matter of time.

As you grow in life and enter 30s you will realize most of the things that stressed you in your student life were baseless.

Different people follow different trajectories in their life. You can still live a happy and satisfactory life even if you are not from a tier 1 college. Your life can still be full of struggles even if you are from a very good college.

You are never a permanent failure or a permanent success. Life will remain an open playing field. You just need to figure out how to bounce back after a set back.

If you are a student right now in a not so fancy college, don’t beat yourself for it, life will give you fair chances to bounce back. If you are a student in a tier 1 college, don’t put your guard down, the world will judge you differently due to the fancy college tag and hence you need to push yourself to meet the expectations.

The struggles and rat races will never stop in life.

You should treat your Employer like you’re an Investor in their Company. So ask these 3 questions back to them in your next interview…

1/ What kind of growth are we expecting the company to achieve in the next 3–5 years? And what’s our leverage to do it better than the competition? Is it capital or something else?

2/ For me, an incentive bigger than any kind of monetary compensation is the cultural fit I feel with my company. What kind of upskilling can I expect at the job that will improve my career prospects within the company over the next 5–7 years? And, what skills would you want me to pick up to do my job better?

3/ What would be the north star metric for my department in the company and would love to know how it ties in with the next major milestone for the organization?

The first question aims to understand the growth ambitions of the organization. The second tells them that you prefer learning and cultural fit as an important factor. The third helps you understand if the organization will help you find “purpose” in your work.

There are two currencies. Time and Money. If you’re not investing capital, you’re “investing” time.

And in today’s time where intangibles are more valuable than tangibles, manpower is the biggest asset of any company. It doesn’t show you’re arrogant; it shows you’re a partner in their growth.