Month: October 2024

Growth hacking your way to a 99-percentile and beyond

A few years back, I attended the Chennai convocation function for aspirants who cleared the Company Secretary (CS) exam (a relative of mine had cleared the exam). The Chief Guest was Padmashri-awardee T. N. Manoharan, who is a pre-eminent figure in the Banking and Accounting sector in the country with his book being a must-read for all CA aspirants. He was part of the government-appointed team that cleaned up the Satyam mess and paved the way for the transition to Tech Mahindra. His keynote address was leavened with wisdom and had too many punchlines for me to recount here, but one of the things he said is spot on when it comes to the way we should deal with success and failure. He said…

Why your actual abilities might not be as good as you think they are

The purpose of this site has been to examine the problems that students keep bringing back to me over the years, and as the important ones get addressed I keep getting other questions that depending on how one looks at it are either simple or hide more than they reveal to the casual observer. One such conundrum is this one, a paraphrase of a problem that I have answered in many comments: I do not know what happens to me during the test — I do pathetically, sometimes I am even ashamed to mention how much I score — but when I sit after the test, I find that I can answer all questions easily. How do I deal with this nervousness, how do I tackle this? You are looking in the wrong mirror — your post-test performance does not really count The biggest thing test-takers discount is that they are solving the whole paper for the second time! When you read it for a second time You completely and conveniently ignore the fact that …