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 :)
