Krunal Patel

Productivity Featured

Discipline: The Missing Piece in Procrastination Puzzle

Why I think self-discipline is at the base of most other ways to beat procrastination.

Experiences Featured

30 takeaways for my 30th birthday

30 takeaways from 15 books I read this year about learning, productivity, happiness, money, and blogging.

Book Review Featured

Say no to everything

Make time for exciting things by using the thumb rule of “Hell Yeah Or No”. Book by Derek Sivers.

Book Review Featured

5 lessons to live a happier life

Key lessons from the book “The courage to be disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.

Lifestyle Featured

How to buy happiness

Notes from the paper “If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right” by Elizabeth Dunn, Daniel Gilbert, and Timothy Wilson.

Lifestyle Featured

The myth of motivation

Is motivation important to get things done? Can we trick our minds to feel motivated to do essential things?

Lifestyle Featured

Make the most of the unfair life

Life is unfair. Or is it? Let's see if we can identify and leverage our unfair advantages. Tips from the book The Unfair Advantage.

Academics Featured

My first conferences as a PhD student

My overall experience from preparation to post presentation in the optimization days and mobilit.ai conferences.

Book Review Featured

Methods for deeper learning

Tips about learning effectively from the book Make it stick.

Book Review Featured

How to deal with distractions

Book Review and Notes from Nir Eyal Indistractable How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

Academics Featured

Learning to teach better!

Sharing my learnings from a course about teaching.

Lifestyle Featured

My Thoughts and Experience on Work-Life Balance

In this post, I will talk about the importance of work-life balance and my experience related to that. I didn’t know the concept of work-life balance before I moved to Paris in 2017. I was introduced to it by my French colleagues. While I will mostly talk about my

Academics Featured

My Journey from a SWE at Google to a PhD student

Recently almost everyone who met me, asked me why I left my (hidden words: high paying) job and decided to go for a PhD. I would normally end up giving them a short answer like "Because I wanted to get into academia" or "Because I wanted to focus more on

Book Review

How do monks approach fear?

Tips for dealing with fears from the book "Think like a monk" by Jay Shetty.

Career

Skills over passion

Key takeaways about optimizing for skills over passion from the book 'So good they can't ignore you' by Cal Newport.

Book Review

On maximizing life experiences

Key takeaways from the book, Die with zero by Bill Perkins, about maximizing life experiences.

Academics

My 2023 goals!

My 2023 goals about PhD, career, finance, chess, book reading and more...

Experiences

How did I do in 2022?

Critical evaluation of my 2022 goals about PhD, chess, reading and more...

Book Review

Games and Motivation

Understanding motivation through octalysis gamification drives by Yu-Kai Chou.

Academics

Explaining math visually

Learning how to create engaging math animations using manim.

Academics

Is most published research wrong?

Scientific research can be manipulated through p value and other hacks. Let's explore how.

Academics

8 drives that make research addictive

Octalysis by Yu-Kai Chou explains why research is as addictive as games!

Negotiation

Negotiation 101: More tips

Tips about added value, choosing a first offer, and more!

Academics

My TA experience so far...

What is it like to be a teaching assistant at Polytechnique Montreal?

Negotiation

Negotiation 101: Be honest

Why being honest helps us get bigger pie in negotiation?