Out of Time

I want to keep this short and mortal. And by the time this article dies, I hope the words will be happy to have served their purpose. If I am asked to put ideas down in a tweet for the last time in my life, those will the best 140 characters I have ever known, won’t they?

If you ask me, smart work is not the reason people outperform hard workers in a given time frame. And even if it is, it is not the sole reason for success. Unless one cuts corners to succeed faster and we call that smarter, there is something awfully wrong with this entire philosophy. And what is wrong, is the TIME FRAME.

Maybe it is not true that smarter people finish things faster in short time. It is because time is short that they are forced to operate within it and finish faster. It is mortality which ensures there is meaning to the time spent. Of course, this is the origin of deadline-based operations. Everything that we do has a deadline, some put down overtly and others not. We can choose to brush our teeth starting sunrise and take it to sunset. We can stay in the bathtub forever. But we are forced to come out not because we are bored of it, but we have other things to do – maybe but not necessarily, better things.

Speaking of time frames and deadlines, it is all too obvious that it is one of the best ways to get work done. But does shorter time to turnaround work well than longer ones? The answer quite unfortunately could be yes! We tend to be more productive if it is mandatory shorter work hours, shorter weeks. Research says that a 4-day week is equally or more productive than the current trend of 5-day/6-day work weeks. In sport too, T20 cricket opened up the possibilities of scoring 200+ in 20 overs and in the process, unorthodox, innovative stroke play came into being. Tighter, crisper and entertaining screenplays have proven to work well for movies because it pushes the film maker to show the best in every frame. 

All of us work so frenetically hard, not just because we want to make a livelihood, but also because there is a fear of death somewhere deep within.  And that death could strike any moment makes us push our limits and live life fully. I am not sure if we would work this hard if we were immortal. Absolutely no pressure whatsoever! Now, that is like a client asking you a solution giving no expected date of delivery. That is like us walking into a cinema knowing it would never get over. Unless we want to experience it fully, we are more likely to sleep in such a scenario. Yes, SLEEP. And sleeping after revelation-esque knowledge of immortality is itself like a breathing coma.

Having tighter time frames might sometimes encourage compromising on quality of output because timeliness pips quality in such a universe. In the end, imagine the deadline being extended by a couple of days after we deliver. This time, we would make sure it is high quality. It would be evolved. It would be more than what our client wanted. It is the same feeling you get after you die and your soul gets the knowledge that it is going to be in the world again. Surprise, surprise!

Disclaimer: Just a bunch of words. The deeper you dig, the shallower it shall seem :)

Hang my boots? Only for a new pair!

A senior leader in my organisation caught me off guard when she asked if HR will be my career forever since I had graduated from a top HR management school. I have been thinking ever since if there is an ounce of truth to the phenomenon of inner calling. And even if there is a call from the inside, should we pay heed? And if we heeded and chose a path, should we journey along it for the rest of our lives?

So where, does a career end - when you grow old in the job/ when you have reached the pinnacle / when you are no more doing your best in the job?

It would be sadistic of me to make you read the entire post to get what my opinion would be. Our career in something ends when we are no longer useful to the world doing that 'something'. Since the jobs we do also feed us, we are most times tempted to believe that they are for our own good. We may be passionate about the career we finally choose to pursue but when the world does not derive value out of our existence, we quite have not justified the existence itself. Scary thought, really.

When pursuing a career, we should ask ourselves these questions -

1. Am I doing this only because I am passionate about it?
2. Is there still somebody in need of my services (is there a market for me) ?

For instance, I gave up public singing because I did not see the crowd being entertained anymore. Although I had good reviews for a few shows I performed early up, I could no longer do what I loved because that is not what others loved. I gave up table-tennis because I ended up runners-up thrice in a row in regional tournaments. I did my share of fighting but could not just carry on because no one got entertained except me. All said, we should exercise caution and not give up on things so easily.

Sometimes in life, the warrior in us fights for so long that it becomes hard to admit failure and walk back all the way to the point of divergence of the roads. Maybe we are simply scared to start small again. Maybe we are pleased being an average failure than a trifling success. I do not know.

One thing to be aware of when we persist and try to make a career is the time lost in the process. Thomas Edison would disagree with me. He had his share of failures and he finally succeeded. But when he did, it was a revolution in the field of science. It was a lifetime achievement. If everyone in this world waits for a breakthrough that would have their names in the history books, are we wasting time in the pursuit of one big game-changer? My feeling is that we should do small things, thick and fast without aiming for a breakthrough. If you are failing enough in something, it is perhaps time to move on and try something new. Failures are not stepping stones to success, rather are stepping stones to trying out newer options and success lies in one of those options.

Our power and skill lies in deciding when to give up on an option. The power and grit to go back to the drawing board. And the power to decide when to sacrifice a domain of interest for something with a better possibility of impact. But sacrifice is a different matter altogether. It would mean trade-offs for the greater good. But in this case, also comes an opportunity to learn and contribute in more ways than one to the world in the one big lifetime we have got.

If the career ladder is not taking us upstairs, maybe it is time to try The career jungle gym. If we cannot make the heights, we can at least go the distance.