Busyness means that you are not in control of your time

Posted on May 27, 2020June 15, 2020 by bharathyvprakash

“Don’t be so busy, trying to make a living that you are too busy to make a life”

A simple and powerful quote to speak about being busy. Most of the times, in our day to day life, we get ourselves busy. We wakeup in the morning with the news alerts to office email alerts; then as we get ready to office, we are busy with the calendar alerts to the calls for the day; Once we reach office we are busy with the workload and at the end of the day we try to close all the pending activities, which we eventually procrastinate for tomorrow or few days away. This didn’t include all the activities which would be on priority in your personal life. Those gets pushed towards the weekend. When the weekend happens, we suddenly realize it flew away like anything and we are back into our regular mundane routine.

So, how do we avoid being busy. Busyness in my perspective comes from inability to prioritize your tasks. A simple comparison between being busy and being productive is, as below.

A simple comparison between being busy and being productive.

A quick look into being busy aspect of our day to day life throws us a much needed clarity

Multiplicity – By Multiplicity, I mean working on varied number of things at any point in time. Simple example can be filling the form at office and at the same time, quickly tweeting about a thought; then leaving your desk to grab a coffee.
Haphazard – There is not a proper way in which we work. That is we don’t block the time for a specific activity. We would be typing a contractual document, would have received an email alert; would pause our work on the document and proceed towards replying the email. In the due time a slack message or the teams chat update, we try to give a quick response.
Quantity – The biggest block which we need to break within ourself is the quantity factor. Over the course of time, we start to believe its the number of tasks we completed than the quality of the work. The quantity factor without realization, would push us to accept as many as possible. At the end of the day, it’s not the quantity that counts but the quality.
Scattered Work – With volume of task or work to be completed, we find ourselves as in an election room. The reason I refer to election room, there is work scattered everywhere. Documents lying on the table for review, multiple windows of tabs always opened on the screen, our official as well as our personal to do list keeps on growing everyday; even our workspace at home are scattered with all the files both online as well as offline.
Work in Waves – This reflects two main points. The task closure and delivery of tasks. We can see that, we would be working continuously to complete a task or work when the deadline nears and during that time, we would also focus to pull in other tasks so that we don’t get into the same trap again. Incidentally, what happens in reality is, post the deadline or extension of the deadline we start to procrastinate. Take a break till the next pressure mounts for the same. Break the momentum. This style of working is similar to a wave pattern, with multiple ups and downs. The ups are our pressure points and downs are our procrastination points.
Impulsive – The larger culprit of busyness is being impulsive. Being impulsive in delivery of task not only puts us at stake, even the team at stake. The reason is there is no proper predictability as to which task we might complete and by when; hence any task closure be it personal or official gets into this impulsive behavior depending upon the urgency and personal interest.

Thus, we can understand by this time, that being busy doesn’t add any value. It’s like spiraling water current, that pulls us down forever. The best way is to be productive. We shall look into that as a separate blog.

To conclude, busyness kills all the priorities for not planning properly. Hence, when we are busy, we are not in control of time. Time controls us as per the urgency than priority.

Professional Growth, Task delivery, Teamwork

Your work be your Gift

Posted on May 26, 2020June 15, 2020 by bharathyvprakash

Happiness doesn’t result from what we get,

but from what we give.

In our day to day work, we carryout the task in a mundane way. The reason has nothing to be blamed on us. It just happens to be repetitive. Being repetitive, reduces the charm in the task. The mind gets to feel, that there is nothing much new that can be done with the task.

Now, let’s think the same task from a different angle. Every task or job can be a starting point for some other task for a receiver. Or its a final product release to a customer. When you look from the point of receiver, as how your task delivery can improve his receiving capability, you would get ideas. Let’s look at different areas in our regular office environment, where the scenario can be build up better.

A good morning smile always by the receptionist whole heartedly.
A good morning wish or well wishing statement to the office boy or to your office cleaner as how are you? and how was your day? will lite up his or her day.
The delivery of task confirmation to your peer, with a good day note.
Concluding a regular project group call, with a small positive note even though the team’s performance was not up to the mark.
Sharing smiling snippets with your partner or kids as they are back from their office work or school work.

There can be multiple other cases, which you can think of and make it better. Once you start to do this, the receiver feels value. A sense of relativity. They feel, whatever they are receiving is of good work. That’s when the task you are delivering becomes a gift. When you start to treat your task as delivering an art, you become impeccable.

Thus your task turns out be an art. An art that just isn’t paint. It’s love. When you love what you do, you value the work from the receiver’s perspective. How the receiver would feel happy on receiving the work from me?. How they would love to cherish my work? Would like to hear from you about your task delivery. How are you making your receiver happy in receipt of your tasks.

Professional Growth, Task delivery, Teamwork

Effectiveness is more important

Posted on May 24, 2020June 15, 2020 by bharathyvprakash

Being effective means being able to produce desired result or outcome. In our work, we mostly give higher importance to the knowhow than being effective. A task when it is delivered as per the expectation gives value to the knowhow. Else, it’s just a knowledge on the shelf of the brain. Most of the times, the individual or the team gets carried away because they have an awesome idea. They get immersed in their intelligence towards a subject. They might be the subject matter experts. The team or the individual carries the information necessary towards the task. However, when delivery of the task didn’t bring the desired outcome, how much ever of information, idea or intelligence the team has, it goes futile. At the end of the day, it’s the outcome that speaks. An effective outcome or the desired result, takes you leaps and bound. The individual or the teams’ consistency of being effective is more important that anything.

Professional Growth, Task delivery

Treat your task as delivering an art

Posted on May 19, 2020June 15, 2020 by bharathyvprakash

The unique strength of any craftsman is that, they deliver their work as an art. Have you seen, pottery craftsman in action. You can visibly see that, his fingers and hand swiftly as well as smoothly play with the clay before it transforms into a pot. The reason is that, though it is his work, his practice towards the work had made him a craftsman. The craftsman who makes beautiful pots continuously. Similarly, when you practice your task, you become adopted to it. That’s when your working style, should be like delivering an art work.

Perspectives