Srikanth's Blog

No money, no problem! In fact the lack of money, resources, and a pre-built ecosystem presents you a rare opportunity to become self-made. It's probably blessing in disguise. Who would not want a good head start, plenty of resources, and a level playing field? Ideal worlds don't exist. So, in an unequal world where most people are inherited with wealth, familial fame, and many other opportunities beyond your reach, life might look and feel unfair. It's isn't! You can flip the narrative. See this as your chance to learn and grow from the ground up. If you ask me, competing with the fortunate is more fortunate. Remember, that inheritance has robbed the others of this golden opportunity of being totally self-made. All the wealth in the world can't buy you the satisfaction of becoming a self-made individual. Here's my speculation on inheritance . Here's my other question. Are your rich? Some are self-made and some are shelf-made. What opportunity did god bless y...

1) Punctuality (Respecting time is respecting yourself and other people) 2) Dressing is signature 3) Actively listen 4) Hold the door 5) No phubbing (Be present in the moment, pay attention to people around you, else excuse yourself) 6) Gossip is cheap 7) Break bread together 8) Don't interrupt people (It's disrespectful and they tend to lose their train of thought) 9) Respect everyone equally 10) Don't overstay your welcome

What else do you need, if you just believe in yourself? Trust your gut, abilities, skills, values, perspectives, goals, and dreams. No one knows you better than you. How can others believe in you, if you don’t believe in yourself. Let’s be reasonable and have a sensible argument here. The more you believe in yourself, the more others will believe your belief in yourself. They believe your belief. You are what you are, and you can be what you want to become any day with clarity, courage, curiosity, determination, strategic planning, reasonable efforts, and of course with a wonderful stroke of luck. Yes, luck plays a role too. Luck works for those who are prepared for opportunity. If someone can do something, you can also do it. However are you willing to pay the price for it? Are you willing to go through what that someone has been through? Are you ready for a gruelling climb? Apart from few physical and intellectual limitations, most people have a fair chance in making a successful lif...

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Share your knowledge learning lessons, and skills. Show your work and be absolutely open with your ideas and process. There's no upside to hoarding ideas and gatekeeping knowledge in this era. Write a book, a blog, start a streaming channel, or a podcast, or whatever format and medium that works for you. Start sharing and spreading your knowledge. This act can help others as well as the most important person: you. You learn twice when you teach others. Also, you’ll gain the respect and admiration of people. Teaching doesn't necessarily mean classroom teaching. When you show your work, you're more or less teaching others. Apart from learning twice, you build a live portfolio of your work. Two birds, one stone. Gatekeeping leads to a stale brain. Open the gates.

1) Show initiative, move first, and move fast. 2) Maintain a win-win mindset 3) Resourcefulness, not resources 4) Build alignment 5) Anticipate change 6) Independent thinking 7) Ask questions 8) High emotional quotient 9) Enable leadership 10) Communitas

Learn to age gracefully. You need to accept and respect how your body and mind are changing and evolving. This change is not in our control, and that’s the best part. There's no going back, no matter what. How ugly it would be if we did not age in body and mind? It would be quite boring after a certain amount of time. Life's beauty is in our growth. Don't cling to their younger self and be desperate for the younger version. No matter how hard you try to control your aging, it's impossible, beyond the surface. That part of you is dead. Move on! Every new moment is an opportunity for a new experience. Accepting age, respecting god's design, and being in tune with your evolving identity is the most elegant way to live. You're at your best, today.

If you’re humble, no one can abase you. If you don’t compete, no one can beat you. If you don’t expect, no one can disappoint you. If you’re silent, no one can dispute you.

This is the most important meeting you should attend, every single week. A meeting with yourself. This is not about some random me-time advice, but it’s about actively calibrating your life. Take a weekly check on how you’re doing in various aspects of your life goals, be it your health, career, marriage, relationships, wealth or whatever is most important to you. Have this meeting with yourself, no matter what! Spend half-an hour every week to review and preview your life. Even 15 minutes will do. Well, I'm quite sure, you can spare 15 minutes of your life for yourself. Make notes, introspect, reflect, iterate plans, take better action, identify improvement areas, and constantly measure progress. Writing in your journal is even better. My friend, this is a meeting you can’t miss, delay or reschedule. By all means, get this one thing right. This is most important meeting. Don't miss it.

If you want to accomplish something on the side, you should find pockets of time. Not everyone has the luxury of doing something full-time. For example, if you want to write a book, but you still have to do your full-time job as well as address the other facets of life, it's imperative to find those precious pockets of time. These tiny recurring pockets help you build things at an atomic level. In the case of a book, you can make simple notes on chapters, ideas, research sources, and inspiration for your book. It doesn't matter even if the pockets are small as 5 minutes. Eventually these recurring pockets add up to hours and hours of thinking and work. The idea is to leverage your time and energy to the extent possible. Some examples of these recurring pockets are when you just finish parking your car and you find some quiet time. You're on the metro or bus, waiting to reach your destination. You need to identify these spots as per your specific routine. I just gave some ra...

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company. — Seneca Retreating into solitude is peaceful, powerful and nourishing for the soul. When was the last time you were all by yourself for long periods of time? First, we must understand that being lonely and being alone are two different experiences. The constant demand for someone’s company, virtual or otherwise, does not give you the time, space and energy to think, process and act in the interest of your work and life. If you look at the positive side, the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were quite the events for us to experience the power of solitude, recalibrate our thinking and get our acts right. There are numerous cases of people who found new passions and built totally new careers after the lockdown. Probably the silence was the trigger to reflect on life choices. Just killing time is not really staying in solitude. We have to kill the very demand t...

1) Seize the narrative 2) Don't compete, be an outlier 3) Don't consume or curate, create 4) Don't follow, lead 5) Book, not resume 6) Build your own platform 7) Authority first, scarcity next 8) Challenge the status quo (first principles) 9) Acta non verba 10) Sprezzatura

In the race to upgrade your lifestyle, don’t forget to upgrade your life. Read more, travel more, experience more, walk more, play more, dream more and most importantly, rest more. More than life, most people are interested in upgrading gadgets, cars, and their wardrobe every year. Not bad! They are somewhat required to lead a comfortable life. Likewise, one should also continue to upgrade the mind, body and soul every year. When was the last time you upgraded your mind? What's the point if you have the best of beds, but you don’t rest well, best of personal transportation, but you don’t travel well. The best of living spaces, but you don’t live or walk well, and best of food options on demand, but you don’t eat well. What’s the point of acquiring the best of things and upgrading your lifestyle, but can’t upgrade your life and live at your best? Lifestyle and life are two different things. Wellbeing is building both in parallel. They should feed each other. Invest your time and mon...

First things first. This blog is totally AI-free. Not using AI is a personal choice. I enjoy the process of writing and creating work. Process is the first reward and this is the fifth rule in practicing the creator mindset . Occasionally, I do use Google search AI-mode to check meanings, synonyms, and grammar. I think now, Google search is inherently driven by AI. Here's my perspective on why AI is smart and one should be open about its capabilities. Don't undermine AI. AI is quite smart and it's getting smarter by the day. I say it’s smart, because it has learnt and is continuously learning from smart people like you and me, and all those people who have lived before us and contributed in building our world. We should remember that there’s plenty of intellectual work in the public domain and AI is training itself by identifying patterns, connecting dots, and drawing insights from our rich history. AI has a self-learning curve, so let’s give it some time and room to grow. ...

Looking at most software products today, I wonder who is using whom. Is the user using the product or is the product using the users? Anyways, that's tough to change and not the question here. The question is whether we should still call them users? I think the term "Interactor" sounds good, as suggested in this MIT article. An even better idea that's mentioned here, is to switch to the default names: like "patients" in healthtech, "students" in edutech, "shoppers" in eCommerce and so on. At times the term "user" does not have proper context when you're dealing with complex applications associated with a range of users and one needs to constantly mention the type of user one is actually referring to. Switching to default names, works best. Let's keep it simple. It gives us a good context, sounds more human, and also helps us to easily visualize their fundamental high-level needs. This article also reminds me of the boo...

If you ask any seasoned designer they'll tell you that redesigning a product, takes more effort than designing a product from the ground up. Redesign is a highly complex affair that could lead to a domino effect on the various aspects of the product, service, brand and the business itself. Apart from those so-called design aficionados, most people are happy with the current product design, unless there are pressing issues that need to be addressed. When was the last time, you as a user, woke up and dived into the day, seeking products or services to be changed. Change is tough for everyone. Change comes with a cost, both emotional and financial in most cases. Redesign is like fixing a bus on the move. Design leaders understand the intricacies involved and the repercussions of redesigning a product with interconnected systems. It's just not that interface, what your customers see or an amateur designer sees. I tend to ask this question in interviews as well. “Do you want to rede...

If you're a UX Designer, you should also address the UX writing aspect of your design. Writing can't be an afterthought and fixed at a later point in time in the design process. (At least work at a rudimentary level to address this aspect of design.Writing is an integral part of design.) While UX writing in itself is a specialised skill, it should not stop you from thinking about this aspect as it can help you build a holistic design solution which includes interaction, visual, motion, and copy. The copy address the usability, persuasion, and the trust aspect. User adoption and engagement depends on effective writing, blended into the design. You might not know that you're already a UX writer as well as a UX designer. If you have named your menu items, or given a name to a form-field, or even a label for an icon, you're more or less a beginner-level UX writer or a nano or micro copywriter. The idea is to embrace writing and think about how your design can bring in the ...

Learn to show contempt to both acceptance and rejection. If you take one, you have take both. The former is sweet, keeps you wanting more, and the latter is bitter and you don’t want it any more. Turn that bitter feeling into a better feeling. The pain of rejection is fuel. On the contrary, baseless acceptance and continuous success can be detrimental to your wellbeing. You turn delusional and complacency sets in. Rejection teaches you a lot more in life, preparing you for bigger things. Just imagine — you’re continuously accepted and appreciated every moment in everything you do. That’s the most boring, stupid, and meaningless experience you can have in life. Some critical rejection actually saves you and keeps you sane. Take both acceptance and rejection with a pinch of salt, or may be sugar, I don’t know. The point is to shun them away and not let external validation — good or bad to lead your life. Don’t think that the world revolves around you. It doesn’t! I repeat once again — no...

Inheritance in any form, be it money, name or fame could turn out to be a curse, rather than a blessing for you. Let’s talk about the perils of inheriting wealth. When wealthy people, mindlessly pass on their wealth to the next generation and everything is given on a platter, it’s seldom appreciated. Most people don’t realize the inherent value of inheritance, effort taken to build wealth, name, and respect. Excessive inheritance cripples people. Heirs just become gatekeepers of wealth and are not real keepers, if you know what I mean. Well, on the good side, inheritance could open great possibilities and give heirs a head start, considering they’re smart enough to discard the baggage, and appreciate the privilege of financial leverage. When Jackie Chan was asked on why he intends to donate his $370 million fortune and not give it to his son , he said “If he is capable, he can make his own money. If he is not, then he will just be wasting my money.” Did you know that several top billio...

1) Never ask permission 2) Start before you're ready 3) Master the fundamentals 4) Learn just-in-time 5) Process is the first reward 6) Resourcefulness, not resources 7) Think multidisciplinary 8) Think first principles 9) Don't hoard ideas 10) Don't hedge 11) Define perfection 12) Consume less, create more 13) Disband all validation 14) Collaborate 15) Failure is better than regret 16) Create your own rules