Hey folks, I'm Swati.
Welcome back to my weekly newsletter.
This newsletter is those conversations: what I'm seeing, thinking, and what I'd tell you if we were grabbing coffee.
This week's edition is about success.
But before that:
When you imagine being successful, what does that look like?
A couple of weeks ago I received the Inspiring Women Leader 2026 award for Excellence in Education Innovation at the ET Women Conclave, and Karisma Kapoor handed it to me on stage in front of a packed room.
When it was over, my phone filled up with messages from people I hadn't heard from in years: a former manager, seniors who had never reached out before and peers sending congratulatory notes.
"You're killing it, Swati."
"So well deserved."
I read every one of them. And knowing how busy they are, it means a lot when they take out two minutes to write that message.
Later when I put my phone down and checked in with myself honestly, I realised I wasn't happy in proportion to what the room seemed to think was happening.
And I’m sure you can relate.
That gap between what the world measures and what moves you is telling you which metric you are running on.
The metrics I see people build their careers around fall into four categories, and all are correct in their own ways:
I know business people in India who run businesses worth 500-600 crores and take home 100 crores a year, and despite that, nobody outside their industry seem to know them.
This is the metric actors and cricketers are built around, and increasingly founders too. Of all four, this is the only one that requires an audience to sustain it.
Their satisfaction comes from leverage over outcomes, and more low key they are, better it is for their role.
This is the metric that correlates least with the other three, which is why people working toward it often look like they're losing on every visible scoreboard.
I optimize for this, hence the fame doesn’t really excite me as it would for someone who is optimising for it.
Niemiec, Ryan, and Deci followed post-college adults and found that people who attained extrinsic goals (wealth, recognition, image) showed higher rates of shame, anxiety, and physical symptoms than those who hadn't.
These were people who actually got what they were chasing.
Simply put: most people end up optimising for one of these four without having consciously chosen it.
Knowing yours matters because without it, you'll chase the wrong things and only feel the gap once you've already arrived.
So here's what I'd do.
Strip out the placement season numbers, your peer group signals on LinkedIn, and what your parents' generation believed about career progression. What's left is closer to the truth.
You don't have to act on it immediately, but knowing it is there is the beginning of doing something about it.
Hit reply: What's your honest definition of success, and is your current path optimised for it?
I read every email.
Swati
PS: If you manage people, the single most useful question you can ask someone early in their career is how they will know when they've succeeded. Most people have never been asked it directly, and the answer tells you more about them than anything in their CV.