Good old days

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

-Aristotle

About 3 years back, I bought a book called “Word Power Made Easy” with the intention of improving my vocabulary in English language. It was a thick bright red book loaded with information that I desperately wanted to read. Everyday, I came back home tired from work and the moment I lay my eyes on the book, my mind convinced me to push the task to next day. The weekends were spent meeting friends, going out or doing absolutely nothing on most days as I was worn out during the weekday. One fine day, I thought to myself, “Enough is enough!I I’ll carry this book with me to work and read it whenever I find time!”. That’s how the book found it’s space in my office bag. I diligently carried it to work with the intention of reading it during the office commute. But that day never came. The only progress I made with the book were a few pages in the beginning. Other than that it ended up increasing the weight of my office bag. I had to remove it from my bag eventually and place it back on my bookshelf, where it lay gathering dust on it’s cover.

Last year as soon as the lock down was announced and I started working from home, I decided to do something everyday that wouldn’t have been possible due to the usual office routine. That’s when I was reunited with this book. I did one session everyday throughout the lock down. It gave me immense pleasure to learn about the origins of each word in the English language as read the book each day with the curiosity of a child. I stopped the practice as soon as I was called back to work. I could have still continued it, as it barely took 30 mins of my daily time but I discontinued it as now my mind was filled with anxiety about office work, commute, future and every other thing under the sun.

Yesterday, I saw the book again and couldn’t help but feel nostalgic about the endless free time I had during the lock down. I ended up doing a session even after the hectic day at work. During the lock down, I didn’t have to wake up early just because I had a train to board to office, I had my breakfast in peace rather than quickly gulping a glass of milk before I rushed out of my home as I was running late for work, I didn’t have to worry about not getting a seat in the train, I could take mini breaks from work whenever I wanted and could watch shows or read a book just to break the monotony. Aah, I could go on. I felt like a free bird during away from office during the lock down. Now I feel trapped by the force of routine life that I’m required to follow each day! Isn’t our career supposed to give us an identity, make us financially independent and make us happy? I have achieved the first two milestones long back but I’m yet to find a way to make my career a source of my happiness!

Shit happens!

Image source : https://www.pinterest.com/pin/282037995391689852/

Today was sort of an important day. I had an important professional commitment call in the evening that I had been mentally preparing for a while now. Needless to say, I had to be in my element for it. But my body and the universe had another plans. Aunt Flo decided to strike today at the most unwanted time. I was in pain throughout the day, the cramps were somewhat severe (according to my threshold).

Coming to the professional commitment, I’m really glad that it’s over! I don’t know how I performed as I was unsure of the other person’s reaction. I felt like I did the best I could yet my reviewer seemed unimpressed. I leave it to the Universe to decide, if it’s meant to be it’ll happen. For now, I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders. It feels so good, my mind is in a celebration mode. I want to read a book, watch a movie, eat good food and do absolutely nothing all at the same time. It feels so good to be anxiety free. I wish I can work hard to have better control over my anxiety in future. When I look at extremely confident people, I have complete admiration and respect for them. It is unimaginable for me to be bold and confident at occasions that demand the best out of me. I feel jittery and nervous to the extent of giving up. There are people who live up to the challenge and do really well under stress and I’m in awe of such individuals. They are the real rockstars.

All I can do is try till the time I can imbibe at least some portion of such confidence. I am in a much better phase now compared to my teenage and young adult years. There has been a noticeable change in my personality and I would love to grow further even if it’s at a snail pace. Some change is better than no change after all!

Can be better

#87/100

“I hope you do not let anyone else’s expectations direct the course of your life.” 

– Julianne Donaldson

In my previous organization, we were given a lot of work and there was never a moment to spare. The attrition rate was very high which practically forced us to be on our toes, learn different skills and grasp new work in a short period of time. The first few months were a blur, I never understood what I did at work. Slowly things made sense and by the time I left the organization, I was solving issues that I always admired my seniors for doing. In one of my review meetings, I was praised by the senior management for my quality of work which was better than was expected. The expectation there was basic, do the work allotted to you accurately and avoid making errors. Any work done beyond this expectation was applauded like handling a team well or completing work well within the deadline even with a low staff count.

Things changed (for the worse) when I joined my current organization. Firstly, I am part of the cost function here (I don’t make money for the organization) in a team filled with sales professionals and traders, hence looked down upon. No one says that directly but one can sense it from other people’s behavior or the general work environment. Secondly, I don’t get any feedback on my work from the only person whose opinion matters, my boss! I started with zero expectations (visibly excited to learn new things from scratch) which fizzled out in a month when the person who taught me work left the organization. I realized that I am on my own from now onwards without anyone in my team. I tried understanding my boss’s expectations but he was always vague in his communication. My boss who is 30 years my senior, has a very old school mentality of learning at work. Instead of giving more work, he expects me to ask him if he has any work. He wishes that I interact with every one in my vicinity and learn about their job. That’s how he wants me to learn everything about everything.

I tried doing it in the beginning. I probably didn’t give my best attempt as this way of learning was against my personality. I am a shy and introverted person, it takes immense mental strength for me to ask someone a normal query. I keep thinking that I’m disturbing the person or might not get a satisfactory response. This is not a new thing, I’ve never asked any queries to my teachers from school to college, I always tried finding my own answers. But this was the prime expectation from my boss and I had no clue how to live up to it. I kept shrugging it to off to a point that every single unsatisfactory response from my boss makes me feel that he HATES me! It’s really nerve wracking to end each work day on an unsettled note truly believing that I’ve disappointed my boss. He doesn’t say anything to me on my face but gives sarcastic replies at times proving my suspicion right.

I know I’m not going to be around working for this person all my life. This phase is temporary. It’s just that every single day at work becomes a burden when you feel unwelcome and somewhat hated. Oh yes, he has never really appreciated any of my work till now, it’s been around 2.5 years that I’ve joined this workplace. He compares people’s achievements to his own and feels that the present generation doesn’t work hard enough. You guessed it right, he is a ‘baby boomer’. His work ethic and knowledge is admirable, he earned it all on his own. When you have done so much in life, it becomes difficult to appreciate anything that’s less than yours. That’s where empathy comes into place. You lived a different life, it’s unfair to have unnecessarily high expectations from the present generation and mock them for not doing better. Everyone is doing the best they can.

This is one of the main reasons on having terrible Monday blues and dreading the end of each vacation. I don’t wish to go back to being burdened under the painfully heavy weight of my boss’s expectations. The only way out is to do my best and enjoy what I do. My sanity and happiness is always a priority and anything that goes against it doesn’t have a place in my life.

Patience is virtue

#64/100

Source : http://www.icantrust.co.uk/blog/how-do-you-eat-an-elephant-one-bite-at-a-time

Do you remember the feeling of complete disbelief you have when you come across any gigantic challenge in life? I’m talking about the tasks that require us to work hard for a very long time before we start seeing any results on it. We are a generation which is used to “instant gratification”. We are absolutely not ready to wait for a long time for our reward. For us hard work and rewards go hand in hand. Technology and the current corporations have utilized this phenomena to their best capacity to bring us applications that cater to the needs of the current generation. Everything is digitalized and available to us at the push of a button. We have the attention span of a goldfish, we need to see visible results for us to continue working on it.

The experience that I am about to share now relates to my struggle to continue working hard while battling the ill effects of this phenomena. The first month of my weight loss journey was extremely hard. I had never seen results with any weight loss method (casual ones) I had applied before. I had zero hope of being successful at this attempt (honest one) as I was trying it out for the very first time. Every single workout session was a challenge. There were so many instances when I questioned my decision of subjecting myself to the pain of exercise. For a person who has never been into any form of physical activity before, working out consistently without seeing any results whatsoever was a battle between the ease of giving up and my resolve to lose weight. It wasn’t just this, I had refrained from eating unhealthy food. That means I had to sacrifice on all the food that excited my taste buds but were unhealthy for my body.

However, I wanted to share this experience because it has been one of the biggest life altering lessons of my life. Though there were times I wanted to give up, I was able to motivate myself to continue working hard. I kept telling myself that the pain won’t last forever, I just have to do this for 3 months (that’s the deadline I had set for myself) and I can give up if I don’t see any results after that. This experience taught me to live in the present. For some reason, I felt that I needed to lose weight in a specific time frame, anything beyond that would be a waste of time. I really don’t understand why I kept chasing time earlier. Working on myself is a life long process, one can’t put a timeline on it. No one will judge us for not doing it before or after a certain time. The best time to start any activity is “NOW” and the best way to be consistent at it is to work on it “one day at a time“. We tend to compare our daily results to the end goal and get disappointed for not being successful at it.

I broke down my goal into monthly targets and celebrated each milestone. My initial goal was to lose over 12 kgs in 3 months. For the first few days I kept checking my weight after every difficult workout session and wanted to give up on not seeing any results (classic mistake!). Then I decided to mark one day each month (milestone) to check my weight and maintain a log of my daily food and exercise schedules. This helped me immensely as I could see gradual progress in my food and workout habits daily and that kept me motivated till my milestone days. On each milestone day, I could see a considerable progress in my weight, body and fitness levels and that just boosted my confidence to next level.

Although my initial reason for my weight loss was for completely aesthetic, healthy eating and workouts have become an integral part of my life. I have become stronger, physically and mentally after consistently working on myself and achieving this goal. This experience has taught me to stay patient and to keep going when things get tough. As they say, “The universe always falls in love with a stubborn heart“

The next time you have a huge task and keep questioning your abilities to complete it, just remember to be consistent at it, one day at a time.

Do I really procrastinate?

#54/100

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.”

– Francis Bacon

For the longest time I sincerely believed that procrastination = laziness. You have a list of tasks at hand for the day, you know it’s too important to complete them on time, you have plenty of time to strike of each task from your to-do list, yet, you choose to slack! I’ve done it with my studies, while getting ready to go out and majorly with my office work.

For the last 3 days, I have been waking up early to get a good head start on the day and complete my workout before I start my office work. I got the waking up early part right each day, however, every single day I procrastinated till the last minute and had to rush through my workouts and office work. This got me thinking, what really went wrong?

I had a super productive weekend this week. I woke up early both days and completed all my planned work. I even managed to squeeze in a 10 km run on Sunday when my mind tried it’s best to convince me against doing it. On Monday I noticed my energy levels dipping, I was gloomy and it was easier for my mind to convince me to procrastinate.

The point I’m trying to make here is that procrastination is not a state of mind or force of habit. In my case, I tend to procrastinate when I don’t like the task at hand. I’m an introvert by nature, going out to socialize with people can be a nightmare for me sometimes. I always procrastinated when I had to leave my house to attend social events. I don’t like being part of the corporate rate race. That explains my extreme procrastination when it comes to office work. I enjoy reading but studying for an exam makes me anxious and stressed. The fear of not performing well in the exams always overpowered my fear of exams itself. That’s why I always procrastinated on my studies. If I don’t study well, I can blame my lack of preparation for it and be a victim of the situation. On the other hand, I am always punctual on the days of my running events, for my trips or attending a highly anticipated event.

Not every situation in life is going to be as per our wishes. We can be depressed even after manifesting all our goals and achieving the life of our dreams. Life is how you make it. If I hate my current job, I’ll manifest more reasons to hate it. If I work hard on liking what I do, whatever it is, the universe will manifest more reasons for me to find things that I like. It may feel pretentious at first, but to manifest the life of my dreams, I need to pretend that I’m living it in the present. I absolutely couldn’t relate to this advise when I read it in self help books. How can I be happy or find reasons to be happy in a situation that I absolutely despise? Recently I hit rock bottom, I absolutely couldn’t find any reason to be happy in the present or visualize it in future. Being unable to imagine a happy future is the most painful thing one can experience. I got over it by trying to find happiness in the small stuff. As I concentrated on that, I found more reasons to be happy about.

I really need to use this technique at the work place too. I absolutely hate it at present. Starting tomorrow, I’ll try finding reasons that make me happy and fulfilled at my workplace. I’m really excited to see how this experiment turns out. Will I finally be able to be passionate about my work? Only time will tell though I’m optimistic about it!!

Start your day right

#50/100

“Inaction only makes a task more daunting in your eye. Act quickly, before you overthink, get anxious or give up.”

― Avina Celeste

Clearly I’m not an expert who can advise you on how to get your work done and be productive in life. I have dealt with chronic procrastination before. I still can be quiet an annoying procrastinator and terribly lazy at times. Over the years, I have come across few tricks that have worked well for me to complete my tasks well before time and get a good night’s sleep knowing that I have been productive today.

Although I have a good sleep schedule, I can’t avoid negative thoughts on those nights where I feel I have been unproductive throughout the day. This has happened with me almost all my life. When I was a student, I loved making schedules and timetables to study. But I never understood why I was always unable to stick to those timetables. I know now that it was my anxiety acting up and building unnecessary stress and fear in me to work on my tasks. I wish I had this realization back in the days. It would have definitely help me make better use of my time.

Well, it’s better late than never. I have picked up few techniques from my experiences that help get my work done, at least in most cases. I’m still the same person with a better ability to fight the evils of anxiety, fear and laziness.

The thing that works best for me is preparing a ‘to-do list’. Yes, I still get excited while preparing schedules. Preparing a to-do list helps me organize my tasks on a sheet of paper (you can use any method) so that I have a fair idea of tasks on hand (than leave it to the mercy of my unpredictable memory). I really wish to jot down a to-do list every night for the next day to be mentally prepared for each new day. Now this is something I really need to push myself to do. Next up, start before you can think. Yes, you have your to-do list in place which gives you an idea of the work you have to do during the day, pick one task (possibly the most difficult one) and start right away. You can spend some time on thinking of ways to get it done in the best possible manner but I tend to slag around and waste my time when I do this. On most weekends, starting from Saturday, I used to wake up late and then sleep some more till I came back to my senses at the end of Sunday. My weekends started getting more productive once I created a early morning running schedule and forced myself to stick to it each time. Once I got the most difficult thing done first thing in the morning on a weekend, the rest of the day just passed by blissfully. I am a morning person, I like to get to work first thing in the morning as those are my most productive hours. For night owls, I suggest you understand your productive hours and complete your work during that period of time. The last and most important thing that works for me is to plan well ahead of time. I hate last minute jitters, trust me when I say that it doesn’t help in the quality of work at all. I have shrugged off work to the last minute all my life and ended up with a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction at the end of it. It’s better to pre-plan your work and add it to your to-do list each day so that you are able to work on it bit by bit each day.

That’s about it! These are the ways I’m sticking to currently to avoid that nagging feeling of disappointment at the end of each day. Hope it helps you in some way or the other. Do let me know if it does!

Thank God it’s Friday!

“Life must be terrible for working people, considering they spend every Friday night celebrating a two-day break from it.”

Robert Black

#7/100

When I was in school, we had 2 holidays in a week. One would fall in the middle of the week on Thursday and the other one was our beloved Sunday. I was so used to the 2 day holiday routine in school that adjusting to just one during my college days was bit of a task. As I was studying for Chartered Accountancy exams during those days, I had classes throughout the week, even on Sunday. However, the fact that I didn’t have a break from my routine even on a Sunday had little impact on me. Throughout the week I had work, studies as well as the company of my friends to keep me busy. I did long for a rest day or vacation or just some time to laze around however the lack of it didn’t make me unhappy.

Once I began my professional journey, I realized the true meaning and longing for the weekend. My only motivation to drag myself out of my bed on Monday was the lure of the weekend in 5 days. By the time it was Wednesday, I had already started celebrating the onset of the weekend. Friday became the most happy day of my life, no external situation or being could hamper my mood on a Friday. Usually there’s nothing that I plan to do during the weekend that I patiently wait for. Even when I note one mentally or physically write down a plan, I forget all about it on the Saturday morning. Weekend for me became a 2 day escape from my daily routine, the life that I’m required to live to earn a living.

Don’t get me wrong. My daily routine or rather weekdays aren’t that bad. I have a comfortable job. However, there’s something about what I do for a living that bothers me. Every night during the weekdays, I reluctantly fall asleep knowing that I’m not living my best life. Trust me, I wasn’t like this during my student days, I was oblivious to the situations around me and had limited worries to take care of.

So what’s the difference between my student days and now? Back then my only worry was preparing and excelling in my exams. That’s all I had to do. I truly believed that if I could just clear my Chartered Accountancy exams, I’d be able to erase the existence of stress, worry and negativity from my life.I felt that lack of money was the root cause of all problems in my life. As I became a full grown adult, I had the unpleasant realization that things don’t really work that way.

What is it in my current daily routine that I desperately seek a timeout from? My core personality highly disapproves my professional identity. I do not indulge in work on a daily basis that feed my mind, soul and inner child. That’s why they are desperate to be their true authentic selves during the weekend, when I don’t have any professional commitment. That’s why Fridays are special and weekends celebrated. I truly envy people who don’t experience such feelings, have a life they absolutely enjoy and don’t wish to escape from any part of it. For now I’ll try to find all those little things that maintain my sanity and keep me happy.