NECESSARY DIVERSIONS AT WORK

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UNLESS IT IS AN ENGROSSING FILM or a book – in other words, unrelated to work -I must confess my inability to focus continuously on any piece of work at office with the same degree of intensity for more than a couple of hours. At the end of the two hour involvement I would need to get up, move around, and do something else completely unrelated to work for about 10-15 minutes before returning to work on hand. The pangs of guilt associated with this break from work have been less painful in the wake of psychological studies that reassure me that such intervals enhance productivity. I would like to term such breaks as necessary diversions even if someone were to remind me that I am paid for the work that I do and not for the diversions that I indulge in.  

LEST I AM REPRIMANDED FOR ENCOURAGING spells of temporary slackness at work, I must confess that I do not at all advocate long spells of chatter in an office merely because work on hand is genuinely uninteresting.  We are undoubtedly paid for what we do and hence the diversions we seek must be in the direction of alleviating tedium or anxiety and this should, by no means undermine the rendering of our deliverables at the workplace.  We should be mindful enough to ensure that while we switch off from work for a fleeting interval we do indeed return to what is on hand as soon as possible – no one can finish the unfinished tasks that are assigned to us individually. 

WHAT INDEED COULD BE THE SO CALLED necessary diversions at work ? This varies from person to person and no one could lay any norms on what these distractions can be except to say that the necessary interval has to be as brief as possible, without unsettling other colleagues who may be busy and without adversely impacting a previously committed deadline.  I know a CEO who plays Patience and yet another who has a crack at Sudoku when he is hot under the collar.  A colleague checks the SENSEX and quickly returns to his official Outlook screen. Yet another writes a few personal emails. Working  mothers check  out on their kids who have  been placed in charge of  maids at home or at the creche or whether their kids have returned home safely from school; some pay  bills on line.  Of course all of this usually happens accompanied with the ubiquitous cup of coffee or chai and if there is a cricket match on, the diversions can be intermittent too !

BEHIND MY DESK I KEEP SMALL pocket book of aphorisms that I dip into frequently for a shot in the arm and to mull over dreamily, and, depending on the day of the week, I am in the company of  my favorite FT columnists within arms reach. If  it is Sunday, (the first working day here in the Middle East), I savor Anna Metcalfe’s Small Talk or the FT Lunch Interview, and on other days it could be Lucy Kellaway, or a John Kay. Anne Wroe’s weekly obituary column in The Economist keeps me spellbound too and I am not ashamed to seek solace in a Shreya Ghoshal or a Sanjay Subramanyan.  For probably the right reasons, YouTube is out of bounds for us at office otherwise I would have probably checked out on the latest TED talk (as it does not last for more than 15 minutes!)  or even watched Gangnam Style ! 

SHORT AS THESE BREAKS ARE they make us feel relaxed and rested – pretty much like cat naps. They renew one’s energy which may have sapped somewhat after a continuous spell at work.  They assist in a kind of homecoming to our original work domains. As long as the breaks are not overdone, they relieve monotony.

THE ARGUMENT MADE FOR NECESSARY diversions must of course logically extend after office hours and to weekends too – one should aim to switch oneself off from work completely once out of office. Only then can we meaningfully attain a work-life balance.

MUSINGS ON CORPORATE CULTURE

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EVERY COMPANY IS SAID TO HAVE its own culture  and a mission statement reflecting not only the way it works but also justifying  the reason for its existence.  Among the lists and rankings that we are flooded with at all times is an interesting poll titled “THE BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR” and while one cannot vouch for the robustness or accuracy of such a poll, we seldom realize how much we are responsible ourselves in the building of a corporate culture at the company we work for.

THE WAITING PERIOD for anyone at the reception of company’s office is probably the first indicator (though not necessarily conclusive) of how efficiently it is run – it is also indicative of the respect a company accords to other people’s time besides its own. A CEO used to leave standing instructions to the receptionist to let him know directly if any visitor is made to wait for more than ten minutes after the visitor’s arrival !

THE RESPONSE TIME to inquiries, suggestions and complaints from customers, suppliers, service providers and, yes, regulators, is indeed a powerful indicator of how adeptly an enterprise is generally run. As a company grows in size it is not unusual to see that much of these functions are also outsourced both in the interests of cost savings and driving improvements in the levels of customer service.

THE WAY A COMPANY TREATS its employees is also a key element of its corporate culture.  The recruitment and induction procedures,  the manner in which  duties and responsibilities are communicated,  the presence or absence of a career ladder, the way employees are remunerated, trained  and retained  – all of this form an integral part of the company’s DNA so to speak. One forgets the name of leading HR consultant who said that the credo of good companies should be “EMPLOYEES FIRST” because if the company pays enough attention to its employees everything else will usually fall in place.

THE PREPAREDNESS OF A COMPANY in  handling an internal or external crisis – be it a scandal or an unforeseen emergency or disaster – is a key indicator of its corporate culture. The manner in which corporate decisions are taken, the levels of delegation of authority, the existence of well thought out policies and procedures and their robust compliance and enforcement, the management and avoidance of conflict of interests – all of these are key determinants of corporate governance within the company which forms the bedrock of its culture.

LASTLY, THE SOCIAL CONTRIBUTION of a corporate (not merely limited to the tax deductible it would enjoy in this regard) pretty much tells us how much difference it makes to the world beyond the profits it makes in selling its products or services even if these are in themselves game changers.

IT MAY SEEM THAT ALL OF THE ABOVE should necessarily emanate from company management.  If for example, at the workplace we encounter a situation which has no precedent, we should take it upon ourselves to put in place systems to deal with similar events in the future.  Small elements such as these also go a long way in determining the culture of the place where we spend such a lot of time.

WHEN ONE IS OVERRULED…

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IF ONE DOES NOT OWN A BUSINESS AND has made a career choice of “working for somebody” it is essential to ensure that one’s equanimity is not lost when, at times, bona fide acts done or proposals made in the best interests of the enterprise that one works for are either disregarded or overruled.

AT TIMES WE BECOME VICTIMS of our very own biases and we may have, as the saying goes, “missed the big picture” and all the passion and attention that we may have invested in a particular piece of work that we may have turned out may still be inadequate or even unnecessary in relation to what the enterprise really needs.  The answer therefore lies in understanding fully what is expected of us and to render the deliverables accordingly.  Indeed, lest our labors be wasted, we should not even embark on something the nature of which we have not fully understood.

BY NO MEANS SHOULD WE ACCEPT a “NO” with passivity.  This indeed is the real test of how thorough and persuasive we really are. We should ask questions or seek clarifications on why anything we have done is “unacceptable”.  The trick really lies in making it extremely difficult for the powers that be to say “No” and that also means that we are bloody good as well as serious in all that we do –  clearly, at the end of the day, the enterprise  has employed us because it thinks we can add value, and from the standpoint of its own self-interest, it is highly unlikely that we will face a rejection of something that is actually done in its beneficial interests.

EVERY ENTERPRISE OR ENTITY in this world has its own unique brand of politics. It is of course possible that one may be marginalized or rendered ineffective at times when power politics takes a toll on the well-being of the entity itself.  If the sidelining happens with increasing frequency, it is probably a clear signal that one’s time is up and to commence seeking greener pastures.  But even if the politics gets intensive and it does not affect what one is doing one should carry on, regardless.

MY BELIEF REMAINS UNSHAKEN that in its own selfish interests, an enterprise would hate losing its true performers because its existence depends on them. Our own survival in this world depends on how good we are and indeed the enterprise that we work for would be committing hara kiri if it chooses to marginalize those responsible for its sustenance.  At the end of the day, work has to be done, and done well, and doing a job well is the best insurance we have against all downturns.

SOME FEARS THAT HAUNT ME…

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“WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID” is an oft-repeated question these days and this query is directed towards our youth in the context of career guidance. A global shoemaker even has a tag line- “JUST DO IT ! ” There are indeed a hundred things that anyone can aspire to be doing and all of these hinge on two critical factors – the ability to move out of one’s comfort zone and one’s preparedness to face the consequences of the proposed choices.

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WORKPLACE, my take on the subject  is quite the reverse.  I have genuine fears about several things and paradoxically the presence of these fears during my waking hours have enhanced somewhat progressively the quality of my sleep.

ON TOP OF MY LIST OF DAILY FEARS is whether I will be emotionally intelligent today. Since reacting impulsively has been part of my DNA so to speak, my fear is whether I will allow anything or anybody to unsettle me. I wrestle constantly with the challenge of keeping at bay my emotional involvement with an issue which ought to be dealt with clinically.  Human, as we all are, it is a big challenge to keep our personal feelings or predilections divorced from an issue that we have to deal with. Sometimes, one happily discovers that there was no basis at all for harboring an emotion towards an issue or a person when one dispassionately weighs the pros and cons on hand or listens attentively to what is generally termed as “both sides of the story”.

THE FEAR OF DOING WHAT MAY BE WRONG paradoxically fuels one’s ability to assert what is essentially right.  In work situations when confronted with client-boss-subordinate-peer pressures, doing what is good for the entity that employs you slowly dissolves the dilemmas that confront you although in the process one may have disappointed more persons that one.  This is not easy but at the end of the day one will not carry emotional baggage and will be able to sleep well at night.

FEARS ARE SAID TO CRAMP one’s style and the  paralysis-by-analysis syndrome is said to be responsible for the inefficiency of organisations. On the other hand, one is of the view that we could act with a greater degree of certainty when we are mindful of the fears that haunt us –  I would term them as necessary anxieties for our own well-being.

IT IS NOT JUST A FANTASY…

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“HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS” IS a film that continues to haunt me to this day. It is classified as a fantasy or film for children. I think it has great lessons for adults too! Delightfully and exponentially it magnifies the small worlds that are in our midst which elude our normal vision but where a lot of both important and interesting things are going on.  In many quirky ways the film has often dissuaded me from thinking about the tiny speck that I am in this universe and instead goaded me to think that I am indeed the monarch of the space that I inhabit with the power to change everything in that space, however limited it may be.

WHEN, IN THE REAL WORLD, situations confront us and sometimes induce a sense of helplessness and frustration, it helps to turn the searchlights towards ourselves and reflect on the phenomenal powers that reside within us to bring about changes around us however small they may seemingly appear to be. When the cynic in us reminds us “STOP TRYING TO CHANGE THE WORLD, YOU CAN’T !” it helps us to deflect that thought by focusing on things that can yet happen if we exercise the powers that reside within us, on time, with the best of intentions and to the best of our abilities.

AS STEPHEN COVEY often emphasized, we need to move from the circle of concern to the circle of influence. Despite all the limitations and constraints that inherently exist in our jobs and in our individual life situations, we still have the ability to bring about change around us, if,  as stated earlier, we choose to exercise fully and properly the powers that reside within us.

SOMETIMES, ALL IT TAKES is one phone call, an email, a visit or a properly reasoned note to the powers that be to bring about long overdue changes that have remained needlessly elusive.  There are people above us, below us, and around us making decisions all the time. The traffic jam in decision making may be at one’s own table.  With respect to a matter, one may have, for instance, identified a problem as well as a solution and the final decision on implementing the solution may not fully be within our remit but we would remain the real culprits if we have not facilitated the badly needed decision if we have not “moved the matter” either upwards, across, or downwards, as the case may be for implementation.

GREAT DECISIONS are sometimes never made on account of self-fulfilling prophecies that we stupidly nurture within ourselves or quite simply because we may not get the credit for what we are doing.  The trick actually lies in presenting things in a way that makes it difficult for anyone to either overrule or disregard us.  How does it matter if some one has hijacked the credit due to you as long as you have accomplished something that you always wanted to happen ?

LET US NOT UNDERESTIMATE ourselves. There is a hell of a lot that we can do which can make a heaven of a difference. Doing what we are supposed to do is all that we have to worry about. Getting cynical about the awesome power that resides within us does not help. It only induces dullness and boredom. Life is too short to be frittered away in ennui.  We need to wake up, and, as the saying goes, smell the coffee…

BEING BETTER THAN YESTERDAY

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IN THE COURSE OF OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES we accumulate a host of beliefs and convictions some of which may make sense only to us individually and which others may not be convinced of.  Regardless of this position, it is essential to remind ourselves always that each one of us has something of unique value to offer – different from what others bring to the table.  Without this fundamental belief, success and happiness will always remain elusive.

IF WE BELIEVE THAT WE ARE GOOD AT WHAT WE DO, then we also owe it ourselves to raise the bar each time a task is completed, however mundane it may be.  This sense of mindfulness has two beneficial spin offs – we savor with deep satisfaction the result of our efforts and the beneficial impact it has made.  To the question “What is in it for me?”, the simple answer is : my own happiness.  Even if there is no immediate, express recognition for what we do, the intensely selfish motive that we need to get better than what we were yesterday neutralizes the negativity induced by the said apparent lack of  timely recognition by others.  As a matter of fact, if we calibrate our efforts in tandem with the recognition or reward that we are expecting, we may end up delivering a sub optimal performance and feel even more frustrated. If our focus is sharp enough on what we need to do, even in the absence of recognition, we would have moved milestones ahead in career advancement and indeed prepared ourselves for the next big opportunity that may be in store for us sooner or later.

TO BE GOOD AT WHAT WE DO, all that we need is a sense of mindfulness, a sense of consciousness of our actions regardless of whether we are drafting  a simple email, letter, memo or document, conducting  a financial, legal or technical analysis, or making  a presentation.  We need to be fully aware of all the elements that make up the particular item of work on hand and be in a “state of flow” when we actually become one with the object of our attention.  This is when excellence automatically emerges and when we get habituated into  accepting nothing less than the very best of our own efforts resisting all temptations for quick fixes on the basis  “this should suffice” or “that will do”.

THE SENSE OF WONDER AND AMAZEMENT that we experience while watching a Federer-Nadal match, or say, a Mira Nair film actually conceals the innumerable hours of care, effort and  attention invested by the parties involved. When we keep raising the bar each time with respect to our own activities at office or for that matter at home, we create our own magic which is by no means less significant than what the tennis players and the filmmaker put forth for us. The attention that we invest in our activities create our own little heavens. It enables us to savor the delight of jobs done well and having facilitated the making of something important we end up falling in love with what we do despite the cynicism that may surround us.

FOR A MORE RIVETING AND ROBUST ANALYSIS of what is aired above, I can only direct you to the remarkable work titled “Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience” (Harper Collins/Harper-Perennial) by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – yes I have got the name right !

"SO, WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY?"

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AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER the question was asked by my mother virtually every day after I got back home from school.  As I disappeared into adulthood it has remained a question that one asked oneself for survival. The advent of the internet changed everything and the acquisition of knowledge has indeed  become both difficult and easy in equal measure even if one “googles it” these days.

THE FOCUS TODAY IS TO KNOW where to find what we need to know rather than to know anything for its own sake.  The internet has universalized knowledge and, in the words of Peter Drucker, we are all “knowledge workers” now.  The core issue at the workplace is job knowledge and on the execution of tasks that we are remunerated for.  The acquisition of knowledge has now boiled down to the necessity of knowing anything. All of the rest is categorized as “useless knowledge”.  When Bertrand Russell sought from students the names of the beautiful flowers in bloom outside his lecture hall at Harvard University, he drew a blank and kept wondering whether the modern credo was that if knowing anything does not earn money, it is not worth knowing at all !

FOR THE PURPOSES OF REMAINING IN OUR JOBS and in being good at what we are doing we do need to know everything that our jobs entail.  But if we attach a price tag for everything that we may need to do for a better understanding of the world around us we may even be in trouble. I do not remember the context or the name of the person who made this remark : IF YOU THINK EDUCATION IS EXPENSIVE, TRY IGNORANCE.

ON THE OTHER HAND the sheer pace and intensity with which information is thrown at us relentlessly makes it increasingly difficult for us to sift and digest all that we come across.  Lest one suffers from information anxiety, one has to make a conscious effort to skip, skim and sometimes even speed-read to deal with all that we encounter.  The historian G.M. Trevelyan once remarked that education has taught a vast majority how to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.  This is indeed a dilemma that all of us face.

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW AND WHAT IS WORTH KNOWING depends on where we are and what we do.  For example, my job requires me, amongst other things,  to monitor the the risk prone areas in various shipping routes which is wholly irrelevant, say, to my friend Aneesh maintaining  a cable television network back home in Kannur. Yet when both Aneesh and I discuss (although I mostly listen) temple architecture or the folklore of Kerala we celebrate civilization itself and enrich our minds. Equally, I would be all ears if my friend Prabhu (a cricket buff and who plays the game) takes me through the differences in the batting techniques of Shikhar Dhawan and Mahendra Singh Dhoni or my friend Michael, a football  enthusiast,  explains why Rooney is a better player than Messi (or the other way round).

WE NEED NOURISHMENT FOR OUR HEARTS AND MINDS and this happens when we sustain a healthy curiosity beyond the small sphere of our own individual lives.  Knowing something that is beyond what is  essential for our daily life not only wards off ennui but also helps us forge a kinship across borders and cultures and we become, in a manner of speaking, citizens of the world.  Hence, it is worth asking  ourselves every day the question the title of this piece bears, which, those interested in our well-being  stopped asking us when we all became adults.

A SEVEN DAY WEEKEND?

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ALMOST ENTIRELY IN THE MIDDLE EAST TODAY (Thursday) and virtually in the rest of the world tomorrow, many would have made plans by now on how to spend their weekends. Nearly ten years ago, the entrepreneur Ricardo Semler wrote an interesting book called The Seven Day Weekend with an  appropriate sub title : FINDING WORK-LIFE BALANCE.  It is an interesting read. Today, I keep wondering whether the issue of work-life balance should be confined only to weekends.

OUR PREOCCUPATION WITH WORK has indeed got prolonged with devices such as the Blackberry.  The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are duty bound to look at our mobiles, tablets and laptops intermittently long after we have wound up for the day at office – any day for that matter and not just on weekends. It appears that there are sharply divided opinions on the issue, the latest being Lucy Kellaway (the acerbic columnist in the Financial Times) saying that it may not be an entirely good thing to shut oneself off completely from work  when one is on holiday.  The apposite question in this context is whether we are ourselves happy doing it and whether we are really comfortable ourselves in getting rid of our own compulsions of wanting to “be in touch with the office” while we are away from the place of work.

WHEN ONE LOOKS AT THE ISSUE CLOSELY, leisure is essentially a by product of work itself – rather one begets leisure after a spell of work. You feel that you have actually earned your leisure hours after your preoccupation with work.  But why should this happen only on weekends?  Regrettably, our wired world does not let us off easily. The trick lies in taking our work seriously and our leisure hours equally seriously and ensuring that these worlds do not overlap.  

IF WE CARE TO ENSURE that we  outlaw all personal interventions at work there is  a very solid case made that work should not infiltrate our personal space when we are away from the workplace.  For this to meaningfully happen, we do need to have strong interests or passions beyond our jobs – a deeply engaging hobby or sport, voluntary work, and engagements on a variety of family matters without which we will only slip back to work and end up doing nothing else, and as the saying goes, all work and no play make us all uninteresting human beings. I was thrilled recently when I received an email from a partner of a law firm saying that he is away from work for a while as he needs to attend to his interests in music – but he was courteous to say that we could contact him only in the event of an absolute emergency.

IF WE ARE FULLY INDULGENT on our weekends alone we slide into the other extreme of having Sunday or Monday morning blues depending on whether one is in the Middle East or elsewhere.  Instead we should pursue our avocation every day and indeed feel entitled to this diversion after a full immersion at work during the appointed hours.

THE WORLD SHOULD BECOME MORE  RECEPTIVE towards flexitime and  employers should not really be bothered about how many hours we put in at work as long as the expected deliverables are all in on time. For this to happen we also need managements consisting of individuals who  themselves have varied interests beyond the bottom line and who believe that in assisting their employees to maintain a work-life balance, overall productivity is almost guaranteed. Google and many others have already recognized this and there is no reason why others should not follow suit.

MINDSETS ON BUDGETS

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AN ALERT HAS LANDED IN MY OFFICIAL IN BOX for the preparation of departmental budgets and my thoughts dwell inescapably on budgetary exercises conducted at personal, corporate and national levels. 

IF ONE IS MINDFUL ENOUGH to live within one’s means all the scruples of a standard budgetary exercise are automatically taken care of. One can even reward oneself with an indulgence or two, if at the end of the day (read budget period) everything has been managed well.  The lifelong tussle of allocating limited resources for the fulfillment of our needs is an exercise of continuous improvisation and each of us get better or worse at this depending on how swayed we are by consumerism, keeping up with the Joneses, besides our legitimate aspirations to improve our station in life.  This may mean that yesterday’s luxuries may become today’s necessities and this can itself be the subject of never ending debate as our existential dilemma is whether we should necessarily enjoy anything and everything that we can afford. (More of this in the tailpiece). Barring those who are the darlings of credit card companies and those who have perfected the fine art of living on other people’s money, most of us (including those who have a debt or two to discharge) acquit ourselves creditably in the discharge of our “budgetary responsibilities.”  For persons like me, who are on the wrong side of 50, there is also the need to have some elbow room for what has been aptly called “catering to a coronary” when one will hopefully outlast the benevolence of corporate medical protection and slip into retirement before long.

IF WE ADAPT ALL THE SCRUPLES we punctiliously follow in our personal budgets to the budgets of our employers, the corporate budgetary exercise, in  which we may all be involved in some way or the other, should also be concluded well. Sometimes, this is easier said that done.  The care we need to take in spending “other people’s money” is probably greater than the attention we generally pay with respect to our own finances.  There are also  interesting pulls and pressures when at the end of a budgetary period one discovers that there are still some “unspent provisions” and it will be a brave person who will fill in just the right numbers that are required for budgetary purposes even if one has all the analytical tools to do so.  Besides, in some industries,  one is always chasing moving targets and assumptions – not to speak of the pressures of listed companies in publishing quarterly results – which  Jairam Ramesh,  in minor modification of the filmy acronym termed  as the Quarter Se Quarter Tak syndrome.

AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL the budgetary allocation of resources to meet the needs of a country and its people is of course far more incredibly complex but the people working on these numbers released every February are with the same compulsions like you and me – the only difference being that they have to contend with the pressures of innumerable lobbies demanding an ever increasing slice of the national cake.  The process does not differ – be it India or the U.S.

IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO “making both ends meet”.  In this context, I was rattled, moved and provoked when I finished reading recently a series of books on minimalist living by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus who take a fresh, clear eyed look at what we really need to make our lives comfortable and happy. I can only suggest that you buy, beg, borrow or steal the three books in question :  A Day in the Life of a Minimalist, Simplicity and Minimalism : Live a Meaningful Life.  Your life will not be the same again and you will not be unduly worried about setting budgets or meeting them.

THE IMPORTANCE AND USEFULNESS OF WHAT WE DO

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WHEN THE PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF ONE’S INCOME is a salary, the thought whether one is adequately paid for what one is doing inevitably crosses one’s mind and such thoughts gain intensity during performance appraisals – regardless of whether one is being appraised or whether one is evaluating his or her subordinates. The attainment or otherwise of key performance indicators is sometimes very hotly discussed and sometimes, too late in the day, questions are raised on whether they were even set properly.  All of this is an annual ritual which we eventually get reconciled to although this may also be the time when the more ambitious (more competent?) among us begin refining their resumes in search of greener pastures.

AT LEAST OCCASIONALLY, IT PAYS, I think, to take a hard look at what we individually do, our contribution to the organisation we work for, how indispensable we are and indeed about how useful we are to the society we live in. If, day in and day out one is always busy one is seldom troubled or tickled by such thoughts. But this reflective exercise, if and when conducted with honesty, can be a very humbling experience.

I WAS THROWN INTO A LONG SPELL of introspection on all of the above during the wet vacation I had in my home town in Kannur recently when we were mostly confined indoors on account of heavy rains. The catalyst for this thought process was the elusive plumber and a great book that I stumbled upon. The plumber did not turn up despite repeated calls leaving me aghast at my own helplessness in fixing what went wrong (a leaking tap)  and I could not help wondering how poorly equipped I was in terms of what is generally termed as “life skills” or “skills for survival”.

QUITE HONESTLY, we should consider ourselves truly educated only when we are in a position to provide solutions to the issues that we encounter every day and the issues in question are not necessarily confined to what we face when we report for work at the office.  One cannot of course be a jack of all trades to the point of driving plumbers and electricians out of employment but we do need to cultivate basic “do-it-yourself” skills and to this end, I think, IKEA, in its own unique way has encouraged those of us who loathe physical work to assemble the stuff that we buy from them for our daily use.  I  keep wondering about the kind of reactions one would elicit, say, in a job interview where MBAs are taking part,  if  one were to ask the candidates to sew a missing  button on a shirt !

IF SOMEONE WERE TO ASK ME TO SUGGEST A GIFT for a friend or colleague this Diwali or Christmas, I would strongly recommend  Matthew Crawford’s beautiful, life changing work “The Case for Working With Your Hands Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things is Good” (Penguin Books).  Besides running an independent motorcycle repair shop, the author has a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and is a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.  The book does not actually destroy the self-esteem of people in white-collar jobs but instead beautifully persuades us to reflect on our attitudes towards work and encourages us to cultivate “hands-on” knowledge prompting one to confidently say “Let me make myself useful” so that we not only do meaningful work but are also “self reliant” to the extent possible.