Last week I watched a friend agonize over a LinkedIn post for forty minutes. "AI can write this better than me," he said. I told him to post it anyway. He did. It got more engagement than anything he'd shared for a while.

Why? Because it was messy. It was him. It was not perfect and therefore it was.

We live in a strange time. Everyone is worried about being replaced by machines. And that worry? It's the most human thing about you. No machine has ever been afraid of losing its job. No algorithm has ever wondered if it matters. That fear you feel right now, reading about the latest AI breakthrough and thinking where does this leave me? — that's not a weakness. That's the opening argument for why you can't be replaced.

Let me explain.

Fear Is The First Proof

Think about the last big decision you made. Not what you had for lunch. A real one. Quitting a job. Starting a business. Moving to a different country. Saying yes to something that made your palms sweat.

What drove that decision? Not a spreadsheet. Not a probability score. Fear.

Fear is the most primal separator between us and machines. And it works both ways. Fear stops you from starting a company. Fear of a wasted life pushes you to start one anyway. These two forces pull in opposite directions, and the tension between them is where every meaningful human choice gets made.

A machine calculates expected outcomes. You lie awake at 3 AM questioning yours. A machine processes risk as a number. You feel it in your chest. That weight behind a decision — the one that has nothing to do with data and everything to do with what's at stake for you — is not something you can encode into software.

But here's the thing. Fear is just the most obvious example of a bigger truth. Your entire operating system is different from a machine's. Not just your emotions. Your perception itself.

We Don't Even See The Same World

Ask ten people who watched the same car accident to describe what happened. You will get ten different versions. This is not a thought experiment. It's one of the most solid findings in cognitive science.

Frederic Bartlett showed in 1932 that human memory is not a recording. It's a reconstruction. We don't replay events. We rebuild them through our own filters, every single time (Bartlett, 1932). Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at UC Irvine, proved how far this goes. In her 1974 study, she showed people the same car crash footage. Then she changed one word in the follow-up question. People who heard "smashed" remembered the cars going 41 mph. People who heard "hit" said 34 mph. Same crash. One word. Different memory (Loftus & Palmer, 1974).

But what does this have to do with AI?

Everything. A machine given the same input produces the same output. That is what machines are built to do. Classical computing is deterministic by nature. Modern AI adds controlled randomness through things like temperature settings, but that randomness is engineered and adjustable. Yours is not.

Daniel Kahneman described human thinking as fast first, accurate second. Our brains evolved to make quick, good-enough calls with incomplete information (Kahneman, 2011). Gerd Gigerenzer at the Max Planck Institute went further: he showed that simple human rules of thumb can match or beat complex statistical models in messy, real-world conditions (Gigerenzer & Brighton, 2009).

We are nature's most efficient engine. Not perfect. Efficient. Your decision right now is shaped by the coffee you just had, the song in the background, the message you read ten minutes ago, the woman at the next table who reminded you of someone. This is not a design flaw. This is what makes every human a unique processing engine that no two copies of can exist.

So your fear is uniquely yours. Your memory is uniquely yours. Your perception is uniquely yours. But surely, you might think, there's one thing machines are getting close to matching: the ability to care.

The Empathy Illusion

Can a machine be empathetic? Sort of. And that "sort of" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Rosalind Picard at MIT founded an entire field called affective computing in 1997, dedicated to building machines that recognize and respond to human emotions (Picard, 1997). And the results are impressive. A recent study found that AI-generated responses to medical questions were rated higher on empathy scales than actual doctors' responses (Ayers et al., 2023). That's a striking finding.

But it breaks down the moment you look closer.

Human empathy has three layers. Understanding someone's feelings. Actually feeling something in response. And being moved to act because of it. AI can approximate the first layer. It produces words that look like care. Researchers call this the "compassion illusion" (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025). It reads like empathy. It is not empathy.

In studies where people discovered the warm, empathetic message they received came from AI, trust ratings collapsed. From 3.8 to 1.6 on a 5-point scale. We don’t just want the right words. We want to know someone consciously chose them. Someone who could have chosen differently. Someone who has their own fears, memories, and biases, and still decided to show up for us.

This same gap shows up in one of the oldest thought experiments in ethics, now applied to machines. Philosophers call it the trolley problem. A runaway trolley is heading toward five people on a track. You can pull a lever to divert it, but one person stands on the other track. Do you pull? Most people say yes. Save five, lose one — simple math. But change the scenario: instead of a lever, you have to physically push a man off a bridge to stop the trolley. Same math. Same outcome. Far fewer people say yes. The act of pushing someone to their death feels different from pulling a lever, even when the numbers are identical. That gap between logic and feeling is the whole point.

Now put a self-driving car in this scenario. Should the car save the driver or the pedestrian? MIT’s Moral Machine experiment collected 40 million moral decisions from 233 countries and found massive cultural variation in people's responses (Awad et al., 2018).

But this decision problem misses the point. The real question is not “what should the machine decide?” The real question is: can a machine carry the weight of a moral decision? And the answer, like the empathy research shows, is no. Because the weight comes from being the kind of creature we humans are, i.e. someone who has something to lose.

Fear. Memory. Perception. Empathy. These are not separate arguments. They are layers of the same truth: your identity — messy, irrational, unrepeatable — is the one thing no model can be trained on.

So what do you do with this?

Stop Defending. Start Building.

This is where most conversations about AI go wrong. They stop at "humans are special" and leave you with a warm feeling and no action plan.

I want to go further.

I think the biggest gift AI has given us is not productivity. It's the chance to kill our limiting beliefs. For the first time in history, you have a tool that is absurdly affordable and can help you past almost any hurdle you've been stuck behind. It can be a coach, a teacher, a sounding board, a patient explainer at 2 AM when you're stuck and too embarrassed to ask a person.

Whatever story you have been telling yourself about why you can't write that book, start that business, learn that skill, switch that career — the guidance to get past it is now one conversation away. If done right.

Archimedes said: "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth" (as cited in Pappus, c. 340 AD). Today we all have that place. The lever is in your hands. And the irony is beautiful: the thing people are most afraid of — AI — is the very tool that can help you become more of what makes you irreplaceable.

Your fear of these machines? Use it. That's what fear is for. It's a signal that something matters. Let it push you, the way it has pushed every human who ever built something worth building.

Stop worrying about being replaced. Start worrying about what happens if you don't use this moment.

Your flaws. Your biases. Your gut feeling that defies every spreadsheet. The way the wind in your hair on a Tuesday afternoon changes how you see the world. These are not bugs. They are the features no machine will ever ship.

Go, my friend. The tool is ready. Are you?

References

Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Kim, R., Schulz, J., Henrich, J., Shariff, A., Bonnefon, J.-F., & Rahwan, I. (2018). The Moral Machine experiment. Nature, 563(7729), 59–64. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0637-6

Ayers, J. W., Poliak, A., Dredze, M., Leas, E. C., Zhu, Z., Kelley, J. B., Faix, D. J., Goodman, A. M., Longhurst, C. A., Hogarth, M., & Smith, D. M. (2023). Comparing physician and artificial intelligence chatbot responses to patient questions posted to a public social media forum. JAMA Internal Medicine, 183(6), 589–596. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge University Press.

Bonnefon, J.-F., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. (2016). The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. Science, 352(6293), 1573–1576. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf2654

Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. (2017). Ethics Commission: Automated and connected driving [Report]. German Federal Government.

Gigerenzer, G., & Brighton, H. (2009). Homo heuristicus: Why biased minds make better inferences. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(1), 107–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3

Pappus of Alexandria. (c. 340 AD). Synagoge (Book VIII). [Archimedes lever attribution as cited in Heath, T. L. (1897). The works of Archimedes. Cambridge University Press.]

Picard, R. W. (1997). Affective computing. MIT Press.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

Procrastination is more than just delaying tasks—it's a subtle thief that steals our potential. I've watched brilliant friends with world-changing ideas never bring them to life because they were waiting for the "perfect time." I've seen my own goals gather dust while I convinced myself that checking emails while watching IPL Matches is somehow more urgent.

But here's what I've learned: we can be happier, smarter, healthier, and even wealthier (this one yet to be tested personally) if we could just push away the temptation to procrastinate. The question is—how?

After years of battling my own procrastination demons (and occasionally winning), I've gathered some insights that might help you break free from this productivity-killing habit or atleast get a jump start .

Let me share what I've discovered.

1. Practice Radical Awareness

Most of us drift through our days on autopilot, barely noticing how we spend our precious time. I suggest taking a more conscious approach to your daily activities.

Try this: Throughout your day, pause and ask yourself, "Is what I'm doing right now moving me toward my goals or away from them?" The simple act of questioning creates awareness, and awareness is the first step toward change.

I've found that when I'm truly honest with myself about how I'm spending my time, it becomes harder to justify internet browsing for "just five more minutes" when I have important work waiting.

2. Use Daily Affirmations

This might sound a bit new-agey, but our internal dialogue shapes our behavior more than we realize. When you catch yourself thinking, "I'll do it later," immediately counter with, "I like to do things NOW."

I started using this simple affirmation a few years ago, and while I felt silly at first, I noticed a gradual shift in my default response to tasks. The key is consistency—make it a daily practice until it becomes your natural thought pattern.

3. Visualize Completion

There's a reason elite athletes use visualization techniques—they work. Before putting off a task, take a moment to vividly imagine how you'll feel once it's completed.

For example, when I'm avoiding writing, I close my eyes and imagine the satisfaction of hitting "publish," the comments from readers, and the relief of having met my deadline. This mental preview of success often provides just enough motivation to get started.

Make your visualization as detailed as possible—see the finished project, feel the pride, hear the congratulations. The more vivid the image, the more powerful the motivation.

4. Set Realistic Deadlines

I used to set impossible deadlines for myself, then feel like a failure when I inevitably missed them. Now I understand that deadlines should challenge us without crushing us.

Be firm with your self-imposed deadlines—treat them with the same respect you would give to deadlines set by your boss or clients. At the same time, be realistic about what you can accomplish. Remember, the goal isn't just to finish quickly—it's to enjoy the journey while producing quality work.

5. Break Down the Big Picture

Looking at a massive project in its entirety can be paralyzing. I read an aticle once where a successful novelist mentioned that she never thinks about writing a "book"—she just focuses on writing one page at a time.

Think of your project as a jigsaw puzzle. You wouldn't try to assemble all thousand pieces at once; you'd work on small sections until the bigger picture emerges. Break your tasks into bite-sized chunks that feel manageable, and suddenly that mountain of work becomes a series of small hills.

6. Identify Your Efficiency Peak

We all have times of day when our brains are firing on all cylinders. For me, it's the early morning hours when the world is still quiet. For my night-owl friend, it's after 10 PM when her creativity really flows.

Take some time to identify when you're naturally most alert and productive. Then, schedule your most challenging tasks during these peak periods. Save the routine, less demanding work for when your energy naturally dips.

This simple alignment can dramatically increase your productivity without requiring more effort—just smarter timing.

7. Create a Conducive Environment

There's a reason companies like Google invest millions in creating optimal work environments—our surroundings significantly impact our focus and productivity.

I've found that creating a dedicated workspace, free from distractions, makes a world of difference. For me, this means turning off notifications, closing unnecessary browser tabs, and sometimes even disconnecting from the internet entirely.

Consider what environment helps you focus best. Is it complete silence? Background music? A clean desk? A busy café? Create your ideal conditions, and you'll find it easier to dive into your work.

8. Master Time Management

Effective time management is the backbone of productivity. Start by planning your days, even if it's just at a basic level initially.

I've found that blocking my calendar for specific tasks—including breaks—helps me stay focused and accountable. Try setting aside uninterrupted chunks of time for deep work, with clear boundaries around when you'll allow interruptions.

Gradually work toward managing your entire day more intentionally. The more control you have over your time, the less likely you are to let procrastination steal it.

9. Set Clear, Compelling Goals

Without a destination in mind, any road will take you there—and procrastination becomes all too easy. Setting clear goals gives your work purpose and direction.

I keep a simple to-do list with checkboxes beside each item. There's something surprisingly satisfying about checking off completed tasks, and it creates momentum that carries me through the day.

Keep your list focused and realistic—a 50-item to-do list will only overwhelm you. Prioritize what truly matters, and celebrate each accomplishment, no matter how small.

10. Just Start Something—Anything

This might be the most powerful anti-procrastination technique of all: just start. Don't wait for motivation or the perfect moment—simply begin.

There's a Chinese proverb that says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I've found this to be profoundly true. Once you start moving, energy and momentum gather naturally, making it easier to continue.

The hardest part is often those first five minutes. Push through them, and you'll likely find yourself flowing into the task with less resistance than you expected.

The Choice Is Yours

If you've read this far, I'm guessing there's something you've been putting off. Maybe it's a project, a conversation, or a decision that's been weighing on you.

My challenge to you is simple: when you finish reading this article, take one small action toward that task. Don't wait for tomorrow or next week or when you "feel ready." The perfect moment doesn't exist—there is only now.

Remember, procrastination isn't just about putting things off; it's about choosing short-term comfort over long-term fulfillment. The good news? With awareness and practice, we can make better choices.

So, what will you start today?

Bade Babu : Mere paas bungala hai, gaadi hai, bank balance hai, tere paas kya hai

Thullu Influencer: Mere pass 1,000,000 subscribers hai

Bade Babu : Yaar main to Aeiwayi mazaak kar raha tha. Chai piyonge?

Thullu Influencer : Saath Samosa bhi mangwa lo aur main sirf mineral water hi pita hoon.

Bade Babu : Bilkul, bas wo aap mere post apne tribe ko forward kardonge

Thullu Influencer : Fukat to main khud ke post ko bhi like na doon, aur tu share karne ki baat kar raha hai. Bhai Tu hai Kaun? Teri Pehchaan kya.

Bade Babu (aankhon mein aansoo thinking) walks away sadly, thinking to himself ye kay kar diya humne is nayi generation ke saath.

Background Score starts playing (Waqt ne kiya kya hasi sitam)

Me : Can you generate a list of top generative AI Tools

cGPT: I'm sorry, but I cannot generate a list of top Generative AI tools without additional information regarding the specific domain or application you are interested in. However, I can provide you with a general list of some of the most popular Generative AI tools available:

Output : A list of 10 popular Generative AIs

cGPT : These are just a few examples, and there are many other Generative AI tools available depending on your needs and specific use case.

Me: maybe a list of Generative Content generators

CGPT : Sure, here is a list of Generative Content generators:

output : a list of 10 generative content generators

These are just a few examples, and there are many other Generative Content generators available depending on your needs and specific use case.

ME :  Can you give a few more examples...

and the conversation went on & on & on ..

Now, as you have already realised, We (Me & CGPT) had a long list of AI tools that could have gone forever but i wont bore you with details here. Let's get to  the point i have to make.

So just like every one including the guy who has lived under a rock all his life, I was awestruck with the Exponential rise of Generative AI. And below is the biggest takeaway for me from last few months of using AI to find answers insted of Search engines

Finding answers is no longer about getting pointed in the right directions. There is a massive paradigm shift in the way we get informatoin in the digital world thanks to AI. We no longer want to be guided towards the source but our expectation is for the technology to source, process and provide the answer. Anwer that can be useful. I call it 'Intelligent automation'

All our lives we have been trained to learn from the past. Today we have the power to leverage the learnings not from only our past but the recorded history of the entire human civilisation.The ones who can leverage this to augment their decision making will be the ones who will shape our future.

Are you one of them ?

Afterthought : Let me know what is AI for you ? is it Augmented Intelligence or Intelligent Automation ..Should a man do what can be done by a machine better ? Look at how farming was revolutionised by machines and today Coding is already seeing the benefits of AI  

This can be a daunting task and a lot of sales guys falter in maintaining this cycle of sales but more on the service and validation of customers on a different day.  In this article, I want to address a different beast altogether.

The point to keep in mind here is that in the business world the decision to buy has one very important quotient to it i.e people want to look smarter and better than their peers. They don’t want their peers to question their decision and want to look good in front of them. In short the decision to buy from you is a way to build or destroy their reputation and they want to be assured that they are doing the right thing.

If the purchase decision Is made by a person on behalf of someone else paying for it than the process takes a different shape. This kind of buyer has a different set of risks when compared to a person who has his money/business or reputation on line. Many a time, prospect freeze at the decision making stage because they are afraid to take the risk with their reputation. Good sales team works to first to build tactics to overcome objections.

For a few weeks, at synclarity we have accelerated or direct sales activities reaching out to people we have no first or second degree of contact.. this is more of a test of a tried and tested way to sell product .. but I have a theory that this works if you manage to find people who are in the last phase of their buying cycle .. looking for a vendor who can solve their problem.. and as direct salesman you just hope

That you get 2-3 such leads when you get in front of a 100 people.. direct Sales has always been an aggressive and bold approach. In a world where we keep

Talking about permission to market I am surprised that this approach is still a go to strategy for most businesses.. However, as expected our result seem not any different.. we get in front of a few people who were looking for someone and we showed up.. a lot of times this get you inside the door but not necessarily help you convert,

I have a theory about humans, we don’t trust strangers but are always willing to make a connection to overcome this problem.. you are not a stranger if you are my family, my neighbor, a person with common religion, nationality, neighborhood, school, college or even if we both like the same food or speak the same language. we as humans like to form a connection and if we can’t or rather I should say till we can’t we will not to business.. good sales guys make sure that the first thing they will do is to find a common ground it could be a long distance aunt or the team.. it could be World Cup or a tea cup they will connect.. cause once the bond is made you are no longer a stranger.

Let me give you another example, think of your favorite actor and then ask yourself. Do you trust him/her? Most people I ask this question say yes.. why is it that we are willing to trust celebrities with their endorsements when we don’t know anything about them. We don’t know them .. what we have seen are characters they have enacted which could be nowhere close to what these people might be in real life yet we have this opinion about them.. I remember stories of how people used to hate the veteran actors like  Mr. Pran or Mr. Ranjeeth and abuse them because of the opinion they had based on his characters yet he was one of the finest human being in the film industry.in short we find our reasons to form an opinion about people and these assumptions can bias our decision making.. I could go on about this but I am Sure you get the point, getting a business depends on the other persons opinion about us.. this is why in direct sales we get 2 sales out of 100 cause the remaining 98 don’t trust you or like you enough.. on the other hand, conversion rates for leads coming from referrals is a lot higher. This is why bigger brands spend so much on building a identity &  reputation for their product.. sometimes they do that by leaning in the brand / reputation of others ( for eg celebrities)

This is a perfect example of what I define as trust elasticity. A new product makes an advertisement with a celebrity. You trust the celebrity enough to give the product a shot ..another element towards building a reputation is how the buyer give value to your product in my head..

Let me explain what I mean. Compare the price of cup of tea outside your office building and a 5 star hotel.. which one do you think is more expensive? Of course we know the answer but if you are like most Indians you would rate the roadside tea above the premium restaurant. Yet, if the tea vendor on the street charges you the 5 star price you wouldn’t appreciate that cause in your mind the value of the tea is very low.. Even though you agree that the product is tastier the price is not defined by that itself. There are other factor that plays equally significant for eg brand perception. Unlike a Products actual value, the perceived value of a brand is defined by the consumers. Regardless of what your advertising message is, what people think and say about your brand/ product , that is your brand’s identity & fair price.  

This is the key reason where Commercial companies spend tons of money on social listening to learn about the brand perception in its target audience. Companies have Pivoted their business lines  because of this.

Knowing what your audience thinks about your product line will hlep you better understand what aspects are contributing to their perception and help you make adjustments or take initiatives that can help reshape and increase your brand perception.

One of the easiest way to measure or improve your brand perception is through social Media.

This works cause the trust is based on how we join the dots yet so few businesses are willing to invest in building trust.

Will tackle the question about how you build trust in another post.  

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Soldier wakes up in his bunker, Looks at himself in the cabinet mirror in the bathroom. Opens the cabinet revealing calendar with D Day Marked.

He can't wait to get those f*#K heads. But for now its time to train.

He gets ready and joins his fellow men for the drills.

Brainwwashed with the propaganda, his hatred for the enemy is fuelled and he can't wait to get across the line and kill those bastards.

As day gets close his hatred & anger is intensified.

Tired with the hard regime he crashes in the bed and wakes up feelin ga bit odd. He walksup to the mirror  to see a different face looking at him..

Surprised & Shocked!! he is not able to understand but it seems he is now in the bunker of the enemy . Not sure whats happening and afraid that revealing anything might put him in trouble. he decides to go along with the drill.

As the time passes, he sees that the guys here are not any different. The propoganda still shows the enemy is evil and the guys are training as hard as they used to.

What made sense before, is now questionable. his ideology & beliefs get muddier by the minute and he doesnt know whats wrong or right anymore.

Finally D Day arrives and reluctantly he gets dragged to the war. His will to fight no longer there, he has no clue what he will do next.

As they land on the war zone.. Bullets start flying around he doesnt know who to shoot anymore. But his hesitation doesnt last long as a man lunges at him. his survival instinct kicks in and he defends himself. As he stabs the guy, he sees the frightened face of the friend who used to train with him. A friend who in his last conscious moment was confused why there was empathy in the enemy's face over his death.

Scared and confused, the soldier runs into a nearby building to hide, hoping for things to end.

Suddenly he hears footsteps and arms his gun not knowing who could it be.. the footsteps get louder and he hears some one arming a gun and his reflex kicks in as he loads himslef.

As he senses the person getting very close, he jumps out to attack.

But Freezes !!

He couldnt get himself to pull the trigger.

How could he ?

For the man in front of him had a face he has seen in the mirror all his life.

It was his own flesh and blood.

He was stunned & shocked. They both were.

Confused but yet in that moment things couldn't have been more clear to both of them.

They sat down & lit a cigarette to share.

He smiled at himself sitting in front and thought to himself ' What's the point'

Let me give a few examples of such quality content churning machines (Legends).

1. Brian Clark, founder of ‘Copyblogger’ — Our man churns out ‘1000 words’ essays as if they were tweets. I heard him say on a podcast that he has written a couple of long-form articles (1000 words +) each week since 2005. If you do the math, you’ll realize that Brian could get a book of 50K words done in half a year. And that while he is working on his business, podcast, training etc.
2. Then there is Mr Dan Sullivan, the founder of the strategic coach. I like to call him a book-writing machine cause the last time I checked on Amazon, and he had 40 books listed under his name. If I reference the 50K book calculation from the previous paragraph (6 months for a book), that is approximately 20 years of book writing. All this while running one of the most successful strategic coaching programs for 20+ years.
3. Another classic example would be the Perennial Marketeer’ Seth Godin’, author of nineteen bestsellers. He has been writing and publishing content on his blog every single day for more than a decade. That’s 3650+ posts in as many days while running the altMBA course, writing books (19 of them) and producing one of the highest quality podcasts out there, ‘Akimbo’. Along with a million other things.
4. And this list wouldn’t be complete without the Maestro’ James Altucher’. His Bio goes like this “hedge-fund manager, author, podcaster and entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded over 20 companies. He has published 20 books and contributes to publications including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and The Huffington Post.” Are you kidding me? Does this guy even sleep? Btw, his podcast is one of my secret weapons (highly recommended).

I could go on all day long with a list of creators, but you get the drift.

At this point, you might be wondering where is Amjad going with this? So without stretching it further let me explain!

Whenever I saw these super productive content creators, I wondered, are they gifted, or could I be as good as them? Should the rest of us mere mortals even bother competing with them? How the hell are these people creating all this content effortlessly while I am in a constant struggle? And what could I do to become one of them?

These questions troubled me for a while, and then I met Ahmed, the YouTuber. He may not be in the same league as the legends I mentioned above but is quite successful on the Youtube platform. He is a nifty content creator and produces a couple of 8–10 minute videos sharing cooking recipes every week. Over time he’s built a decent tribe/audience that is now a captive audience for his content. Today the channel has a decent number of subscribers with almost 100K+ views to any video he publishes. He produces an episode a week and put it out there, and the high viewership guarantees a decent flow on income. In retrospect, even Ahmed looks like an effortless content creator.

But wait a minute, is it that effortless to create his videos? Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Every week, he plans recipes, buys the ingredients, cooks the food, and records the whole thing on camera. If there were mistakes, then he has to cook the food all over again. Once the recording is complete, he has to edit the video, record the voice over, finalize it, and publish it on the YouTube channel. And then the marketing begins.

Phew, Effortless, right?

Now, you might be thinking — OK! It looks like some work, but he’s getting paid for it big time and has 100K views/video to motivate him. And I understand that it’s easy for him to get excited with his growing fan base. But what do you think kept him motivated when he had just started. It took him almost a year to get to the first 500 subscribers and then another year before the channel got its 5000th subscriber. And mind you, there was hardly any revenue generated, so the money to create those first few hundred videos were all spent from the pocket. In short, his overnight success was four years in the making!

When Ahmed started creating these videos, it used to take him almost 5–6 days to complete one video. Now, Ahmed can get a whole video done in less than a day. The man persevered and lo and behold he finally became a “Content Machine” churning out videos at will.

In hindsight, what he did looks like the smart choice, but it took a special effort to keep pushing forward when there was no guarantee of success. So many people didn’t believe that this would work, but he wouldn’t deter from his path.

It takes a particular person to know what they want and then not give up on the dreams, no matter the price.

There are so many talented people like Ahmed building their niche and their tribes one day at a time. What makes them unique is their approach & mindset. They know what they want to achieve, and then they go all in no matter how long it takes. It’s evident from the story I shared that success in most cases doesn’t happen overnight. Dan, Seth, Brian or Ahmed are all putting their hand up every single day for years. They have shown the discipline to do the hard work and hence are reaping the rewards.

As I write these words, I remember a Picasso story I heard a long time back. Once, the Maestro was having lunch in a restaurant, and a lady sitting nearby who was an admirer of his work approached him to say hello. She asked whether Picasso would be kind enough to draw something for her. The artist did a quick sketch on a napkin and gave it to the lady, who thanked him profusely for the nice gesture. As she was about to take his leave, Picasso stopped her and asked for $10,000 for the sketch. The lady was shocked and couldn’t believe her ears.

She exclaimed, “But that only took you five minutes!”

Picasso took the napkin back from the lady and said, “No, dear lady, that took me a lifetime.

Kudos!! To all the people who are putting in the effort every single day sharpening their skill. None of them can guarantee success, but this is not a zero-sum game, and there is always something to learn/ gain from the experience of creating any form of content.

So, my friend, the secret to great content creation is that “There is no shortcut to success”. Overnight success is a myth. We have to remember that success is the perfect black swan. It’s never predictable when looking ahead but obvious when you reflect. So the most logical thing to do is trust the instincts, put the head down and get working on our ideas.

And, I suggest the sooner we all start, the better.

Early next morning, instigated by the master strategy, the two friends left for the Dadar Vegetable market. The plan was simple.

• Pick up coriander leaves worth a couple of hundred odd rupees (a substantial amount for him at that time).
• Split the whole stock into small bunches
• Set up a stall near the local station nearby
• Sell the coriander to the commuters at a massive 100 per cent margin.
• Go back home with double money.

Brilliant!!

By noon, their shop was set up, and the plan was moving along perfectly. Charged with the potential upside to their entrepreneurial endeavour, the two of them started yelling at the top of their voice, marketing their fresh goods to anyone passing by.

Unfortunately, the passing commuters did not share their enthusiasm, and the enterprise died before taking its first breath. The two master salesman failed to sell a single bunch through the day. On top of that, by early evening, they noticed that the herbs were turning black.

In the face of total failure, the friends came up with one final idea to turn the situation around. They decided to throw a tantrum at the suppliers' shop about the quality of the product and get a refund. They immediately packed up and went back to the shop from where they bought the coriander.

The Vendor gave one glance to the returned good and then stared straight into the souls of the two friends for a moment that felt like a lifetime. He couldn't figure out if the guys in front of him were trying to trick him or really had no clue about the business. And after a few more seconds, he gave up. He had better things to do and couldn't bother with a couple of amateurs.

But before he walked away, he retorted, " Of course they turned black. Don't you know you have to sprinkle water on the herbs to keep them fresh? Did you do that even once? Dost, if you want to get into a business, at least take the effort to learn the tricks of the trade."

On realizing their folly, the two friends gave up on their idea to get a refund. They returned home a few rupees short but richer from experience.

The story seems anecdotal, but I still decided to share it anyway as it provides a few important lessons for life.

• Actions based on half knowledge can cause more harm than one can imagine. So when investing your time or money, please do your due diligence.
• Judging anything at surface value can be dangerous. Missing out on the simplest of information can destroy all your hard work. So pay attention to the minutest details.
• Understand the difference between information, knowledge, experience, and expertise. Just because you have the information doesn't mean you have the knowledge/expertise, nor can detailed information replace quality experience.
• There are no shortcuts in life. Easy deals to double money are never “Easy”. What seems too good to be true most often is. So when life shows a shortcut, be wary, my friend.

These lessons are interesting, but the most important insight was realizing how these labour intensive professions are not as simple as they may seem. Like any other profession, it takes training, discipline, hard work, and years of experience to succeed. Just because it is in our face and seems obvious doesn't mean it's easy or something that any of us can do effortlessly.

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I am not much of a traveller but i do love visiting my dual hometown - Nashik & Mumbai. Whenever I am in the city of Nashik, I never leave the city without having the timeless "Salim bhai ki chai". Similarly in Mumbai, I have a favorite eatery every few kilometers from Churchgate to Goregaon for e.g. I have to eat the Vada Pav near Mithibhai college or the Sandwizza in Santacruz. Don't worry, I won't make you cry by mentioning the super popular spots from downtown and neither is this essay  a top 10 list of my favorite food spots. Though, it is about how a Business stays on top of our mind because of its speciality.

For e.g. below is my top of mind list for certain food items

• Sizzler bole to Yokos
• Chinese bole to Discovery / Uncle's kitchen
• Kabab bole to Bade miyan
• Falooda bole to Haji Ali juice centre

Its like baaki sab to Aeiwayi hai.. time pass kar rahe hai. #bharosa hi nahi hota hai kisi aur pe. I could be having falooda anywhere in the world and i would go " Ye to kuch bhi nahi hai.. Mumbai mein Haji Ali ka falooda try kiya hai? superb hai " As if i am getting paid to make the comparison everytime.

It seems that once we are in love with a product & brand, we are more than happy to give it our stamp of authority by recommending it to every one including the minuscule reader base of one's essays. And i am willing to bet that just like me many of you al always ready to recommended a place or two to friends or colleague.

Associations based on trust in quality last as long as quality exist and the longer the relationship last with a brand the stronger the trust in quality. Its like #Fevicol ka jod, tootenga nahi.

Even the Pan Tapri waala's across mumbai knows that word of mouth is the best form of advertisement. All you have to do as a business is to do something so good that your customer can't stop talking about it. Do something that define your core competence and helps build your brand. It’s what everyone would trust you or recommend you for. Once you have it, boss... "#Life Set"

So did you ask what is core competence ?

It is a kind of work/thing that you are really good at and can get done better than anyone else. You may have the talent to do other things decently but this is not any other thing it is that one thing that you know you can’t be beaten at.

Jaise ke,

• Mom ke haath ka khaana
• Nashik ka angoor
• Nagpur ka Santra (orange)
• Mumbai ka streetfood
• Sardar ki gaali
• PM ka Bhaashan aur Man ki baat

Your core competence is something you can do with your eyes closed, your hands tied, locked in a box with the keys thrown into the bottom of the sea.. oh did I forget to mention while sipping your day/night beverage .. (mere mortals might be wondering how would one do that - keep thinking).

Core competence is that thing you are so good at it sometimes you are also wondering why people pay you so much for having fun.

Bole to total “Bacchan” mode.

Still need more assistance to understand then imagine

• Sachin ki batting
• Harshad ki betting
• Messi ki goal scoring
• Schumi ki Racing ( prayers are with him)
• MJ ki dunking
• Nadal ka clay court pe tennis
• Madhuri ka dance
• Bacchan ki awaaz
• Jackie Chan ka Kung fu

It’s your speciality and the key reason why your customers/ audience remembers you, loves you and why the competition feels helpless yet can’t hide their admiration.

Your core competence is key ingredient of your competitive moat (DalDal) my friend.

“Competition ke liye is daldal ko paar karna mushkil hi nahi, na mumkin hai, Mona darling”

Core competence is a special thing that can make your business untouchable for years to come.

Aisi divya shakti ke koi choo nahi sakta tumhein, Shaktiman

Samjha? Nope!

Koi baat nahi dost, let’s look at some examples from business - Google ki search engine, Amul ka butter, Amazon ki supply chain, Microsoft ki office,Apple ki design, Salesforce Ki APIs, aur Zoom ki kismat.

Let me explain, say for example if you are looking for something online, its a very high chance the first place you will start with is Google search page. Bole to dimaag mein pole position.

Why would you do that?

Cause you know that there is a very high chances of finding something relevant from there. Google wold recommend a list based on its algorithm and you might find what you are looking for in the first few listed items. People tend to forget that Google is at its core a recommendation engine which is listing sites based on a bias that it has developed. Instead of revolting against this bias we actually bend and twist to please the overlord of the Internet.

But we have to admit that Google's search engine is very good at finding things and the results it shows are most of the times relevant. Without Google, the chances for finding what you are looking for is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Their entire business model depends on how good they are at helping people find things on the internet.

In short, it is their core competence that has build a competitive moat around their advertisement business making them untouchable.

You get the drift now, don’t ya?

It’s the skill, expertise and the secret sauce that you built over time that’s puts you ahead of your competition.

As Javed Jaffery would say in the Maggi ads "Its Different"

Hope it’s clear now and we can move ahead. What !!! still don’t get it.

Bhai tu ek kaam kar .. Samajh meri baat. Tu Netflix pe nayi series aayi hai vo dekh le.. ye moh maya tere liye nahi hai. Baaki ke log you can please continue to put more dhyaan on the gyaan

So now that you understand core competence the next thing the Shaana’s from Dongri would ask.. Kaiko? In other words, why do we need core competence?Dada, It’s part of your USP.

USP ? Ye kis chidiya ka naam hai, bhai ?

Hmm , imagine a gangster calling an rich businessman for vasooli and threatening his family - guaranteed sale, right?  So in this case the builder is the client, product is families long life, Bhaigiri is your business, Kidnaping for ransom is the business model, threatening family for money is the core competence and quality gunmen / goonda log is your USP. Bole to “isko laga dala to life jhinga lala”.*

(Note: This Sales strategy may have a high conversion rate but is highly not recommended or it could lead to customers being added to extinct species and you to the endangered category which is never good for business)

To Chote, USP is the Pan Parag that you will use for the ‘Baratiyo ka swagat’. People get attracted to your business because of this and might stay on for more.

Ab tu phir poochenga “Iski zaroorat kya hai, bhai ?”

Soch !!! Agar tera ek judwa bhai hota. DITTO tere jaisa, to phir kuch differentiate karne ke liye chahiye na. Teri pehchaan kya hai? Aur Bhai mere, In business every second business is Judwa i.e. selling the same services.

To jaise lalita ji kehti hai “Daam kum ho aur vahi safedi to bhai koi kuch aur kyon le”

Your USP and your core competence is that part of your business which helps you become the Surf excel, the phantom cigarette, the Thumps Up, Sachin Tendulkar, Amitaabh Bachchan, Piyush Pandey of your business I.e. you own the “top of mind” spot in your category. Its part of your business that will define to a large extent your story and your legacy. It’s what drives people to your business.

In other words, your core competence is that stuff that when you do it stays done. Bole to Khallas.

Chalo Bhai log, aaj ke liye Kaafi hai. Now back to work.

It doesn’t start when you plan it nor is it a race that you have to win by getting ahead of everyone else. So don't obsess about destination so much that you ignore the beauties that exist in the way.

A few small ideas that can have a big impact on  your life

• Be more mindful
• Show more gratitude towards others
• Be humble in victories and gracious in failures
• Be firm on your beliefs and values
• Accept mistakes graciously
• Be forgiving, humble & honest with oneself and others
• Be thankful
• Acknowledge limitations and find the courage & willpower to stretch beyond

Cherish the next chapter of your life’s journey and wish the same for everyone out there.