From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We've built two great contagion machines. Firstly, international travel which has enabled vast numbers of people to fly over great distances. Secondly, the internet – and in particular, the way the internet has evolved... we saw the rapid growth of clickbait, sensationalist content, and the internet became a machine for disseminating contagious ideas.
When you engage with highly successful individuals who are open and honest about their journeys, it's invariably surprising to learn how much they attribute their achievements to good luck and favourable circumstances.
It's not even about achieving something – it's about changing mindset. At that age, kids can go strongly in one direction or another in life, and being able to give them a steer is a huge accomplishment.
A lot of people in society understandably want to feel important, and one of the ways you do this is to show people how busy you are… and one of the ways you show people how busy you are is to describe how little time you have for sleep.
Today's civilisation is more fragile as a result of its complexity. We've created an astonishingly networked world in which we communicate and travel in ways which were unimaginable for most of human history... but at the same time, we have made ourselves more vulnerable to certain kinds of disaster, and even invented new forms of disaster that didn't' exist before.
Social media has decreased distance and that means that we are just as passionately bothered about things on the other side of the world, as we are things in our home town. Social media transparency has had, and is having, a huge impact on stakeholder visibility.
In our modern world, everyone has an opinion about everything; and it's powerful to step back and go, 'you know what… I genuinely don't have an opinion about that…' – taking that position is seen as most terrible in today's day and age, but if you really work to dismantle all the things you think you are, you'll probably find you don't have an opinion about so many things.
Too often when we find someone disagreeing with us, our question is about why. Why do you believe this ridiculous thing? What tends to work better is a how question... This kind of approach helps to view the real complexity of a situation and reveals gaps in knowledge.
People ask me all the time what do you want to be known for? My answer is simple. I want people to say 'Shaquille O'Neal was a nice guy...' forget how much money I made, forget how many championships I won, or what type of businessman I am.
India is conservative on the outside, but becoming more liberal inside. A lot of my stories are about the double life that younger India has to lead…. The conflict between conservatism and liberal values.
We keep getting told we need to be living our best life- but we forget we already are. We have a weird epidemic of hating on ourselves, if we stopped doing that, life would get way easier.
Understanding superhumans is to understand human potential. We have this immense potential which isn't always fulfilled individually, or as a species. I wanted to grab that by the scruff of the neck and write something positive about the best we can be.