Praveen joined our Telecom Product Centre as a Testing Specialist. He was only 21 days into the company when he surprised me.
With fresh eyes and quiet confidence, he pointed out weak areas in our product design that even our experienced team had overlooked.
It wasn’t just his sharpness that impressed me — it was his way of working. Praveen had a rare talent for what Cal Newport calls deep work — the ability to enter a state of distraction-free concentration where true insights emerge.
But what made Praveen special went far beyond his professional contributions. He was equally committed to his inner journey.
He once described it to me with a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: Moving from ignorance to knowledge, he said, is like trekking through a dense jungle. The path is dark, full of obstacles like self-doubt and limiting beliefs. At times, you feel lost. But if you persevere, breakthroughs arrive like shafts of light breaking through the canopy. Finally, you reach a clearing — a space of awareness and wisdom, transformed by the struggle that brought you there. - it was a wow moment listening to the young Yogi.
That inner clarity soon shaped his outer actions. Praveen wanted to start a community of meditators within the company, a place where colleagues could pause, reflect, and grow together. We had a prayer room that our Muslim colleagues used on Fridays. I spoke to them, and Praveen and his group started using it for meditation on the remaining days.
Praveen has since left IT. Today he runs Heart Café, a space where people gather not to network or transact, but to have genuine heart-to-heart conversations over coffee.
🌱 Dear Leaders, has anyone ever approached you to start such a community? Say yes to them. The community may actually emerge as a team of ‘Deep Workers’.
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