Most people who write about career and leadership write from observation. I wrote from inside the machine — first as someone climbing it, then as someone stepping off it, and finally as someone who had found a different way to move entirely.
Read them in sequence and you'll see the arc. Each book was the honest answer to where I was when I wrote it.
Written to help professionals climb faster and smarter. But inside it is something more important — the Paint Your Future exercise, the same one I used to design my own exit from corporate life six years before it happened.
I declared in this book — publicly, in print — that I would retire by 45. People thought it was motivational language. It was a target. In late 2022, it happened.
Read on Amazon →This is the book for someone inside the machine who wants to move faster — but is starting to wonder whether faster is the right direction. It gives you both: the tools to accelerate, and the question that makes acceleration meaningful.
The Paint Your Future method inside has been used in corporate workshops, executive coaching sessions, and the Viram retreats. Thousands of people have used it to get clear on what they actually want.
"The exercise in Chapter 3 changed my life. I came back to it every year for six years."
— Amit Chilka, on his own book
This is the book for someone at the edge of a major transition — or just back from one. It doesn't give instructions. It gives company. Stories from the shoreline between the known and the unknown.
Written during the first year in Dehradun — the fog of transition, the unexpected lightness of leaving, and the slow discovery of what actually matters once you stop performing for everyone else's approval.
"I wrote this standing at the edge of everything I had built. It is the most honest thing I have ever written."
— Amit Chilka
Written after the exit. During the recalibration. This is the book of leaving — the strange grief of walking away from a successful career, the unexpected peace that followed, and the stories discovered at the edge of the known world.
Read on Amazon →Everything I know — from 22 years of corporate life, from building and running HR for organisations of 300 to 30,000 people, from the Dehradun transition, from the Viram retreats — condensed into a single framework.
The blueprint that most senior professionals never received: how to design a life that works — not just a career that performs.
Read on Amazon →This is the destination book. For the senior professional who has read everything, tried everything, and still feels like something fundamental is missing. It is not a self-help book. It is a design manual.
The Viram retreat was built around the questions in this book. The coaching programme uses it as a foundation. If you read one book by Amit, this is the one — but it will make more sense if you've read the other two first.
"Most professionals spend 20 years acquiring skills. This book asks what those skills are actually in service of."
— Amit Chilka
If you're not sure where to start, start with Double Promotion — it contains the exercise that started everything.
The Clarity Workshop is a half-day session built around the method in Book 1. You'll leave with a visual map of your life and a plan — not just a feeling.
Book a Clarity Call →