Nirmit Shah

How to make smart higher education decisions that justify your investment in time and money?

When we make a decision to invest lakhs of rupees and two to five years of our life for a particular college, what are we really thinking?

How do we think about our ROIs? Do those investments and returns make sense after we pass out?

This article is about offering a perspective of a degree holder to the students currently in college or thinking of applying to a particular college for higher education.

The hope for this discussion is to offer students an approach to think about making college decisions and help them in understanding the real value of a college education.

By Nirmit Shah, ago

Optimize your daily reading schedule: Best practices for what to read and when to read it?

If you are like me and suffer from an acute case of “So many books, but so little time” syndrome, you probably understand the struggles of maintaining a daily reading schedule.

As it is, the time starved nature of modern work and living allows us limited liberties when it comes to reading.

What if we could optimize the time we have and use it to maximize the value add we can get from reading daily?

By Nirmit Shah, ago
read next book

How to choose your next book wisely?

With time always being a finite resource and our daily schedules getting as unpredictable as the weather, it is fair to assume that we are never getting around reading all the books we want.

However, we can be smart about it.

What if we had a systematic approach that could help us choosing the right books? Could we optimize our casual browsing that we normally do and make it more effective?

Read on to find out.

By Nirmit Shah, ago

Productivity and Progress: The Exponential Power of finishing Small Tasks

Has this ever happened to you: You have a list of tasks you need to complete but somehow you never get around to finishing them and the reminder of that fact keeps agonizing you further?

In this post, my objective is to provide a different perspective on the idea of task lists and action items.

What if we found a better way to approach them? Can we use the idea of starting with small tasks and optimizing them to help us make exponential progress towards our big goals?

Can we find a way to execute and finish these tasks so that they can give us exponential productivity benefits?

By Nirmit Shah, ago
new year resolutiions

The Psychology of Commitment and Consistency: How to make your New Year Resolutions stick?

We are solid with our resolutions for the first week and in some cases, even the first month. But as the newness of the year fades away, our passion and enthusiasm also fades away. Eventually, we again find ourselves in a state of routine that we so eagerly promised to get out of.

But is there a way to overcome this? Can we ensure that we stay committed to our resolutions? Can we use psychology to program our minds to stick to our promises?

By Nirmit Shah, ago

The Evening Project’s 2018 Annual Letter to Readers

Traditional investors, entrust the managers of the pubic companies with their money, aiming for a higher than average return on their investment.

As readers of The Evening Project, you are entrusting me with something far more valuable than money – your time. Time, that could have been spent doing something else.

The resource of time is limited and finite. This makes it imperative for every one of us to understand and realize the opportunity costs associated with time. Reading The Evening Project means that you are not doing something else. Hence, it becomes my responsibility to make sure that you are getting an above average return for your time.

In this letter, I wish to talk about how we got here, what are we doing now and what can the readers expect from The Evening Project in the future.

By Nirmit Shah, ago
personal branding

The right step to get started with Personal Branding

“Do I need a personal brand?” is probably not the right question anymore. That ship has sailed.

The more appropriate question is “How do I choose to build this existing digital footprint further? How do I to grow this personal brand?”

In this blog post, my attempt is to provide a mental model, a tool to help you in brainstorming your own WHYs, your own identity. This is the important step that we need to get right before we start intentionally growing our personal brand.

By Nirmit Shah, ago
better opportunities

Little things we can do to discover better opportunities for ourselves

How we can find better opportunities for ourselves? Can we prepare for these opportunities in any way?

While we can always rely on serendipity and good fortune and believe that “If it’s gonna happen, it will happen”, there are a few things we can do intentionally.

It doesn’t take grand gestures or sweeping changes of lifestyle to access better opportunities. All it requires is little changes and we will see how these little changes can help us make a big difference.

By Nirmit Shah, ago
read effectively

How to develop an effective reading habit?

For some people, reading comes easy and naturally. These are bibliophiles who use the words like “voracious” and “avid” to describe their reading habits.

But I am willing to bet that the population of the above people is way less than those who struggle to develop an effective reading habit.

Is there a way we can use to create an effective reading habit? Can reading books become easier for those who struggle with it?

By Nirmit Shah, ago
career decision

A mental model to approach successful career choices

How do I choose the right career for myself?

It’s one of those questions that we have to ask ourselves, at some point or the other. While the answer is definitely not easy, it gets worse because everyone you know will have an opinion on what you should be doing with your life.

However, there is a huge difference in telling somebody else’s story and figuring out your own. This post is an attempt to address the latter.

By Nirmit Shah, ago