I choose potential over comfort. — A few days ago, I was sitting in a cafe in Tbilisi and overheard a man sending a voice message. He spoke English with a heavy American accent. “I’m telling you, man. I made fifty grand per year in pounds when I lived in London. I was spending half of…

I am embarrassed. — I’ll be honest. I don’t like writing or talking about politics. Where I am from, nobody does. My generation — people born in the late 1990s — was brought up in a dictatorship country with no rights and no ability to voice our minds. We were sold the idea that…

There are two types of people. (The type that believes that there are two types of people and the type that does not. Just kidding.) There are “global” people and then “local” ones. The global folk are the ones who don’t care about the boundaries, including geo-political, cultural, or language…

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a short piece about how London feels weird. There, I talked about the fact that big cities drain your energy. They suck you up, chew, and spit out the little that’s left. Living in large cities like London or NYC takes its toll…

My father always told me, “There comes a point in life when you need to reinvent yourself.” Every New Year's Eve since I was 16, we would asynchronously re-read the same speech by John Gardener to McKinsey in 1998, called Personal Renewal. In that thought-provoking (and, closer to the end…

Do you know how successful people — especially those who like to be interviewed on podcasts —tend to have a coherent story about their success? It usually goes like this. They were young and ambitious. Then Something happened, and they Knew. That was the Turning Point, after which they “never…

Recently, I started to look at time differently. I used to want to stretch time, trick it, cheat it. Find a way to cram more things into my calendar than I possibly could. I would run while listening to a podcast, check my messages while brushing my teeth, and read…

Something happened to us that shouldn’t have happened. Decades ago, we were sold the idea that progress and technological revolution would free us from unwanted labour. We were promised large chunks of time to ourselves, following our passions and pursuing our hobbies. Many philosophers of the early 20th century sincerely…

Too many people rely on education for career advancement. And I get it. I do. My parents — especially my father — used education as a social lift to build the life they have today. For them, education was a practical way to get out of their immediate environment into…