DEALING WITH "TO DO" LISTS

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A KEY WORK ACCESSORY – although its actual form can vary from person to person – is a To Do List (“TDL” for short).  Further, for most of us, it would be a very fulfilling day if we have managed to cross all items in this list when we prepare to wind up for the day.  Personally, I maintain several sets of the TDL – one in physical form strategically placed alongside my PC which I keep looking at, one inside it, another in my mobile and a truncated version of it on a page holder containing the top priority items.
IT HAS BEEN A MATTER OF CONSIDERABLE interest to me how items in the TDL get juggled or even dropped off. Further, for several days none of these items get accomplished when a whole set of new urgencies displaces them. It also requires presence of mind and a strong nudge for one to return to the old list as soon as one has completed attending to the emergencies on hand.  There is always a lingering interval before this happens and for some inexplicable reason, sometimes, the recovery time for one to attend to the original list that is crying for attention is longer than it should be.   

AN ENORMOUSLY POWERFUL factor that causes one to juggle priorities at the work place is when one is at the receiving end of persistent follow up efforts initiated by a Department or an individual to whom the disposal of a particular  item in the list relates to. The thought that crosses one’s mind then is this – “Well here is a guy who needs it badly or who is at least conscious of his needs. Let me attend to this guy first.” On the other hand a call from someone in the higher echelons of management can completely throw a TDL overboard even if, from one’s own personal perspective, the particular item with respect to which one’s attention is demanded is of considerably less importance!  But then as the saying goes : THE BOSS IS ALWAYS RIGHT AND WHAT THE BOSS WANTS, THE BOSS GETS ! 

IT IS ALSO A SOURCE OF AMUSEMENT when one sees personal and official items stated in the same TDL. In a former job I held, I had a colleague who always proudly proclaimed a success rate of 70% on his daily TDL only to discover on a particular day that 7 out of the 10 items read as follows : (1) Call Shobha (2) Get Abhay’s pencil box (3) Pay the BEST bill (4) Remind Ashok for the PAN Application Form (5) Contact Landlord for renewal of the lease (6) Get the Maruti Brochures (7) Ask for the financials of GESCO (8)Follow up on Mr Mehta’s Personal Guarantee (9) Recast financial assumptions of the Navneet Group and (10) Remind YS for his feedback on the draft letter to ABL submitted last Wednesday..  

SURELY IN A DAY OF 24 HOURS, allowing for 8 hours of sleep at least, personal things ought to be accomplished as effectively as the official ones and the trick in achieving what is termed as work-life balance is in the completion of both personal and official tasks to the best of our ability so that both spheres have less turbulence. Quite honestly, as long as the things that ought to be accomplished on time are indeed accomplished it does not really matter if one’s TDL contains an express declaration of both personal and official items. The TDL would actually provide the much needed focus that our lives need.

PERSONALLY, THE TDL has been a life-long obsession and indeed the item “To start a Blog” was on my TDL for well over  six months and got struck off only on August 15, 2013 when I wrote the Intro to this blog.  Fourteen years ago, my first short story that made to the Sulekha List of Finalists dealt with a TDL. Those curious may click on  :

OUR PERSONAL SIGNATURES AT THE WORK PLACE

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MY INTEREST HAS NEVER WANED on the subject of how we organize and manage our individual work spaces at the office. The place where one spends 8-10 hours a day appears ultimately to absorb one’s own personality. To a large extent it also depends on the nature of what we do. The space assigned to us is also reflective of how mindful we are at work. I have often envied the uncluttered office tables of some of my colleagues and secretly wished that I could also follow their example as at any given point in time several heaps of paper are stacked up on my table including material that may not have been read for months but which I am scared of losing !

ON REFLECTION I realize that one has to be ruthless too in the way we handle the flow of paper in and out of our offices. The concept of a paperless office is indeed fascinating and we should all be working towards that – notwithstanding the seductive presence of the heavy duty photocopier – if we still wish our grandchildren to talk about the forests in Amazon or in the Western Ghats for that matter. It is also true however that it is extremely difficult to get rid of deeply ingrained habits.  Being an old fogey, I still have difficulties in reviewing a document unless I am holding its hard copy – pretty much akin to my insistence in holding the newspaper that I read every day when actually one can read it on-line. I also realized of late that a key reason why papers get spread out on office tables is largely on account of our inability (or rather difficulty) to have a sequential approach to work. We should deal with a matter first and proceed to the next only when the earlier one is completely disposed of however compulsive or compelling the interruptions are.  This is easier said than done but not really impossible.

THE CHARM OF AN OFFICE is substantially enhanced by the personal touches that we provide to our own assigned work spaces – family portraits, notes and drawings of our children, texts of our favorite prayers, mementos from friends, plants and of course the ubiquitous post-it notes. My own personal favorite is the famous Holstee poster, which, if followed, I should no longer be working !  Two posters I saw in a Mumbai office however remain etched in memory :  EVEN THINKING ABOUT SMOKING IS PROHIBITED HERE  and 
I AM GOING TO BE ORGANIZED – TOMORROW.

DESPITE ALL TALK of a corporate culture, the need to use  a common font  in  corporate communications, et al, it is ultimately the individual stamp that is carried on all activities that we personally handle which makes workplace interesting. The way we draft a letter, prepare a spreadsheet or make a power point presentation will all have traces of our personal involvement even if the stuff that goes out bears the company name. Our mindfulness at work and the care we invest in whatever we do enhances the quality of work and ultimately if we do not take individual pride in what we do (and that finally is our personal signature) it will only be “yet another boring day” at the office. 

WORK BECOMES FUN when we become conscious of the impact that we can surely make on account of what we personally do – otherwise we only fill in the hours and the sense of fulfillment will always elude us.

WHAT WE OWE OUR CHILDREN…..

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A SHORT STORY COMPETITION is announced in class X  in an English medium school in Kannur. The story is  required to be set in a railway station. A 15-year old girl (let us call her Latika) submits an imaginative entry  dealing with an old man sitting on a bench on the railway platform reminiscing  about the day when he was in his twenties bidding goodbye to his lady love for the last time. The story is simple and beautiful but is not considered for the competition.  Latika is hugely disappointed and her mother visits the school to make inquiries only to be told that the story has been  disregarded because it was “less childlike” and “more adolescent” ! The mother was even encouraged to forget about the whole episode !  The mother had not even read the story at the time of submission.  Latika  meanwhile has got over this event  but she has yet another hurdle to cross – she nurtures serious ambitions of becoming a fashion designer.  Her parents sincerely think that fashion is all about spurious glamour and scandals and, more importantly, a career in fashion is not a desirable one given their family background. Latika, who has in her own small way demonstrated her flair for design,  remains fiercely determined.  I wish her well and hope that her parents allow her to realize her dreams.  Latika  has a long way to go and she needs to be also mindful of the fact that  there is a devil of a distance  between “dreaming” and “doing”.
IN THE ABOVE CONTEXT, I was thinking about my own career and wondered how unstructured it has been. My dream was to be a journalist but I ended up in a career largely dealing with law and insurance. I will not say that it has not been “successful” in the conventionally understood sense of the term. But surely, in retrospect, I do believe that a single minded pursuit of my initial ambition would have bought me more fulfillment and happiness.  In all honesty, I did not press hard enough with my parents (probably I was timid then) and I gave in too easily – it takes a lot of grit and determination to move out of the comfort zone and find one’s true metier.  India and the world at large  has meanwhile changed beyond recognition and there are innumerable career options besides the traditional ones in medicine, engineering, law, and,  thankfully, the young are  sharply  focused both in their needs and careers.
AS PARENTS we do need to allow our children to pursue their dreams rather than force our own choices on them. We need to tell them that as long as they are pretty serious about what they want to be (and of course if they are willing to put in the required amount of effort) it is not at all a bad thing to be a cartoonist, a radio jockey, a health trainer, a speech therapist, and yes, a fashion designer. There will then be less and less of “If Only..” questions to be answered.  If we thrust our own preferences on our children we will only be producing tired and disappointed professionals who may be earning more money perhaps, but not experiencing enough happiness.

SETTING OURSELVES FREE…

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NOTWITHSTANDING THE SENSE OF DEJA VU prevalent today (August 15) all over India, the occasion is not entirely inappropriate to actually think about how truly free each of us are personally.

IT WAS VOLTAIRE who said that habits are the shackles of the free.  We still remain fully at the mercy of habits that have enslaved us – and these are too numerous to list here. Yet, we can always redeem ourselves from these forces of captivity even if  sometimes it takes a great tragedy for us to simply give up practices that are not salutary as in the case of the loss of a dear friend to cancer which prompts one to give up smoking !

WE SHOULD ASK OURSELVES what withholds us from exercising the freedom to do simple acts that can touch and brighten our existence. What prevents us from praising someone promptly for a good deed done ? Or according timely recognition when it is truly due ? Equally, if something has to be done promptly are we not free to do it without delays ? Why, for instance, don’t we exercise our freedom for our own well-being such as doing a medical check up regularly ? Is anyone preventing us from exercising every day ?

TOMES HAVE BEEN WRITTEN on the nature of habit and the stranglehold it exercises on our mind and body.  Truly, everything boils down to a calm understanding and realization that we are masters of our own destiny.  Don’t we have the freedom to remain honest or the freedom to do the right thing always ? Why don’t we exercise this freedom ?

AT THE END OF THE DAY, to be truly free is to do the right thing – this helps us to sleep soundly and to enjoy the best things of life which, as the adage goes, are anyway free.  The true exercise of our freedom to do the right thing not only keeps us healthy but also maximizes our happiness.  Freedom also occupies a special place in our lives when we are willing to listen to and understand voices that are different from our own and when we learn to accommodate beliefs contrary to our own faiths.

WHEN WE SET OURSELVES free from our prejudices,  the air we breathe feels fresher and life rejuvenates itself.  We owe it to ourselves and our dear ones to set ourselves free as a matter of urgency.

INTRO

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A TYPICAL DAY  in our lives may invariably seem bound, as the cliche goes, by the tyranny of routine. Yet, if we care to be mindful, everything that we encounter – however seemingly ordinary – has its own richness that is actually life-enhancing.  A news item that may have caught your attention at page 10 of today’s paper, a casual remark made by a dear one at home, a strain of music that you cared to hear on your way to work or when bound homeward, a unique turn-of-the phrase used by a colleague at work, a random nugget of a fact that you mined in what was just another day at office, a challenge thrown at you, a lingering whiff of perfume that you inhaled as you got into the elevator today, an interesting incident at school that your child narrated to you after an impatient wait, something that made you lose your cool (read something that actually manipulated your feelings) – all have their lessons.  By the time you have hit the pillow and woken up next morning, a whole array of different experiences awaits you  – surrounding, in all probability, the same persons and objects that you encounter day after day !
THIS BLOG will attempt to chronicle and share the extra ordinariness that actually permeates our seemingly ordinary lives. It will share the excitement, take notice, draw your attention to, invite your thoughts, and sometimes vent anger and frustration in a bid to understand better the life that unfolds day after day.  It will make an honest attempt to “reveal the familiar”. It will have succeeded if it brings a smile of bemused understanding on your face, dear reader, as you read the thoughts that leave my mind on to this space for sharing.
SOME THINGS on this page will have doubtless occurred to others and some things given expression to, probably for the first time.  Authorship of any sort, a writer once remarked, is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.  To me, personally, it is the unburdening of something that has universal relevance.
COME, JOIN ME in looking at the world along with a cuppa – this may indeed kick start your day !