Time Management

Take control of your time – It’s Now or Never!

When I was in school, I used to play, play & play and still used to have a lot of time. I used to get bored and then fall asleep; sometimes to eternity. When I moved to college, I had a lot of time to while away with friends, roaming round the city. There is a sudden change in life when I started my corporate career. As usual it was an MNC so the work was quite hectic; no time to eat, no time to sleep, no time for friends, very less time for bath! What was happening? Ask me, I was working. Working, working and working. How can a person work so hard for so long? Why not; we are building our careers and each one of us need were asked to exhaust the last available gram of weight, ounce of water and damn of oxygen from our body. I did that, many of my friends did, am sure many are still doing it, while I write this article.

Then why do we need to worry about Time Management when we had all the time in life? Why is time so relevant all of a sudden? I fell into the fallacy called “better future in the corporate world”. Many fall in it (Not sure how many people can it accommodate). Personally if you ask me, yes it helps to an extent, but you actually start living in a false world. Your work becomes your world, rather your only world. You get sucked in the day to day business of your company that you will lose few years of your life. You realize this only after a long time, when you would have lost quite some ground. Then there are 2 sets of categories people choose to move to: Accept what has happened and continue the way they live and keep doing the same thing. The other realizes that there is life beyond corporate life and start recouping the lost time. Again, why are we talking about Time Management here when there is no great relevance to availability of time? Because, time is anyway lost in both cases.

Let me give you an analogy: A young man who starts working with a reasonable salary starts investing right from day 1 of his work. Gets married but keeps saving for the future. After 20 years they realize they missed their honeymoon. They now have money to spend an entire month in a cruise liner, but they missed the time for this activity. Whereas another gentleman who started with similar salary went out for an expensive holiday after marriage and started saving only after 10 years. After 20 years he has no regrets, though slightly lesser money, but he did what was required at the hour. Live life! But, again where is the relevance to Time Management for whatever we discussed so far?

Well, I believe that life is nothing but accumulation of moments. Moments of truth, false, dare, fear, happiness, sorrow and many more. Time is measured in moments. That’s the relevance. That’s all the relevance. That’s to me is a big relevance. Life is not just working, eating, sleeping or doing anything else. Life is just living and living at that moment. If you don’t live that moment, you are not living; you are either dreaming about future or thinking about the past. If and only if you are living that moment, you are living. Else you just exist. Like a tree exist, a human lives. That’s a huge difference to me and should be the same to everyone.

The difference is that when you start living, you will start enjoying your life. When you start enjoying you will realize and feel life. Only when you feel it would you unfold the huge potential of one’s life. That’s true happiness! Only when you start enjoying the true potential of life would you have the zeal to have it more. That’s when you start asking for more time. More time means planning and planning is Time Management. You need to manage your time so that you start enjoying your life more and more. You will start asking for the 25^th hour in a day; is it possible? Well the answer is no, but there are ways to get more time per time. There are many theories, tools, concepts designed by many great people across the globe. One such theory that’s world famous is what I will explain in detail. I have modified the concept to ensure my readers could not only understand the concepts better, but also implement very easily. 

The below mentioned Time Management concept:

Ø  Explains the importance of Managing Yourself.

Ø  Helps you know Your Self.

Ø  Helps Plan Your Day.

Helps you find your Areas of Improvement.

The 4 Ps of Time Management:

Now need to watch closely all your day to day activities and start placing in the four boxes (Quadrants). Let me explain the 4 Qs in detail:

First P (Q I) - Prefer it – Do it fast.

Second P (Q II) - Pay for it – Do it without fail; or get someone do it for you even if you have to pay for it.

Third P (Q III) - Procrastinate it - Do it later. Not important now.

Fourth P (Q IV) - Push it – Don’t do it. Avoid it.

You should be able to place any task that arises in your average day under one of the four Ps. That’s planning. Planning for a better YOU.

The most funny part about time management is that when its not done properly, you not only waste your time but end up wasting others’ time as well. You end up getting into losing temper, losing contracts with your customers, get into bad relationships, etc. While you might gain your own self later, the damage cannot be drawn back. You cannot win that customer back, set right the relationship lost with your colleague or partner. The impact is big and at times irreversible.

What I recommend to all my readers is that nothing is permanent. As time ticks by every second, everything that’s lost can be gained. All you need is proper planning and execution. Keep the end objective in mind – Think BIG, Start SMALL. Success is round the corner and it’s just waiting for you to open the door!

Being Indian

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

India... My love.

We read, watch, talk and think. We read a whole lot of news about various events happening here in India. Watch a lot of things on TV. Talk a lot about these things with our friends, family, colleagues or partners. And finally think, a lot, that somebody should come from the blue sky and save us from this rut.

One thing we are NOT doing apart from reading, watching, talking and thinking is ACTING. Why are we not DOING something about it? Why can't YOU be the change? Why can't YOU take that charge?

My opinion (applies to me as well):

One: The smart guys are going behind the smarter ones.
Two: The dumb ones goes behind jack asses.
Three: Students, who are totally lost.
Four: Period.

The intellectuals like to rule the world because they feel they are God's gift to mankind. They have all the intelligence and qualities to lead, but unfortunately, very few have the right attitude. And those .001% people who posses right attitude, doesn't have the guts to do so. The funny part is that the bureaucrats and corporate leaders like to move up the ladder, for ever. They work hard to outsmart others. But they don't understand that its a trap, laid by their peers; like how he laid it for others.

People talk about the great American war... They fought hard for it like Indians, like every other country, for independence. But the biggest difference to me is, they fight for their country even today. Many great kingdoms have collapsed not because of their enemies, but the enmity within themselves. Their greed to move up the ladder, conquer seats, rule the world. This greed is their own enemy. And collective enmity is enemy of the state or the country. We all know about British's 'Divide and rule' policy, which made the kingdoms weak and made it easy to conquer India. This is no invention. They just observed the pattern and made best use of the policy. I see a similar trend now in India.

People have gone crazy, if not ruthless. Killing their own kin for a piece of land, succumbing to unnecessary pressures, stooping to a horrible levels. All this for what? More money and more power. All for a selfish reason. And what is it for the country? Well, who really cares!

Coming back, the dumb ones go after the jack ass is self explanatory. Can they do anything better? Especially when these cunning wolfs have special webs to keep a tab on them! It makes both lives easier. And who is getting benefitted? Definitely, not the country.

We now have lakhs of students passing out from colleges. Who would be their role models? A smart guy, smarter guy, dumb guy or a jack ass? Has to be one of them. And what else can we expect from this new generation? Will there be mangoes to an apple tree? Things will only get worse. They will work for more money and more power, as greed can only shoot up. Its competition time; when you have more people with hot blood, there could only be blood bath if the direction is wrong. I foresee this; and am saying this with great despair. I am also a reason for India to be in this state.

I have seen my own friends growing up with passion to do something for the country. I have heard a lot of stories from the earlier generation, and have seen few great people too. We all read about great Maharishis who walked on this very land. India is what it is, mainly because of its past. The deeds of people, attitude towards their countrymen and of course love for their country. But I am deeply worried that I might not be able to see someone in the future generations who can fight selflessly for the welfare of this great land. Not because we don't have people who can work, but for the eco system we have created that discriminates those who work for their country.

It is a shame that we have taken a wrong path and continue to journey in the same direction, knowing well that the end is not too far. For, I only pray to my Guru and the Almighty that India should reclaim its great stature it once possessed and bring back the lost glory. India is the mother of all lands. We all must know.

Selling services to Indian consumers

It’s not a cakewalk for companies to sell services to Indian consumers. Many say India is a land of opportunities; I say it’s a land of People. And when people are available in plenty, selling a service offering to them is extremely challenging. Not because there is no value to the offering, but because we are not used to appreciating the value of a service. I feel we might take another decade to increase our appetite for services. There is a strong reason why we have been behaving the way we have, for the past few decades. When we buy a TV or a bike or any other new product, we get emotional. We get personal with it and we take it into our lives. We think about it all the time (at least for the initial few days). We talk to it and we even dream about it. That’s when it starts playing with us; we become its toy (how ironic!)

There is no right or wrong to this. This happened to the West a century ago. That’s the reason we have some of the greatest inventions like Steam Engine,  Airplane, Automobiles and so on. They felt the same and thus worked on innovations for many decades in the past. Thomas Edison couldn’t stop with one experiment, because he was too emotional about his experiments.  He went to the extreme of living in a laboratory. That is when the experiments started using Edison for their inventions. They made him instrumental; and rest is history.

How I wish there is a button to repeat history. I would want India to take the baton forward and start the next wave of inventions, before this craze and craving dies its own death. By the way, it is not something new to us. Our great grandfathers have created history long time ago, Aryabhatta who invented ‘ZERO’, Sushruta who doctored medicine way back, CV Raman in Science, Tagore, APJ and many more inventors in recent past. One of the key differences that I noticed between India and America is that Americans have a pattern that we lack. They have a trend and they keep enhancing it. We need to improve our pace - our pace of thinking, acting, implementing and improving. It’s definitely easier said than done, but we need to start somewhere.

Indians are always in millions! A million fans for a movie star, on Facebook for a large cause, attending a political meeting, etc. The problem doesn’t end there; everybody has a Demi God. - Amitabh, Shah Rukh, Salman, Rajinikanth and many others. The problem here is that we are a billion people moving in million directions. We dig 1 meter deep at a hundred places in search of water instead of digging 100 meters at one place!! Our educational system talks about different syllabi - State, CBSE, ICSE, IB and each international school with its own affiliation to some University in US or UK.  We always have a problem of plenty. We want to do more in less time; and we end up doing nothing. We look for quick results and end up behaving like Zombies at times. Having said that, I admit that we also learn from our mistakes and take the right path.

Look at the houses in the US or Australia. Many of them are huge, some running into many acres. The people living here might have some of the best products at home like a 70 inch home theatre, oven, multi door fridge, Wi-Fi, security system, etc., but the same people have to do everything on their own when it comes to chores around the home -right from getting something repaired, driving to the grocery store, clearing up the lawn, laundry, etc. It’s exactly the opposite in India. We have people all around us to wash clothes, clean utensils, get the groceries, etc. But we might not even have a fancy phone at home. That’s the way we are and that’s how we were raised. Things are changing and we will see a huge queue for the next XBOX launch in India!

Going back to the point that I am making is same – Selling services to Indian customers is not a cakewalk. It’s difficult; needs a lot of thought, innovation and much more.