Wednesday 27 April 2011

Why?

Why?

What?

When?

How?

Where?

Where do these lead you to?
What do these words signify?
Why should we ask them?
How best we can ask them?
When is the right time to ask them?

The Power of Why, When, How, Where and What... Go sit down, Look at what you are doing today , at this workplace, with this life and ask these questions to yourself... post the answer if possible.


Tuesday 5 April 2011

Is work building your lifestyle..

Sunday I had a terrific conversation with an old friend who now works with a school in eastern part of the country, precisely in Assam. The school recently provided them fullton access to Internet and they learnt to use Skye.. The conversation that started from how schools are progressing ended up on a critical topic that I would definitely want to pull up here.. Yes the question does your work help you build your lifestyle..

The teacher friend really towed this thought in a certainly different but amazing way that leads me to ask and answer several questions myself...
"I now use Internet more effectively to keep in touch with friends and future. It also helps me in learning new things quickly than exploring books"
"Because our school children have sports as an integral part of the courses, we now exercise religiously"
"Because kids sometimes gets chaotic, we have altered role playing for kids, this ensures they get to see the further side of tutoring while they study"

Well been into IT, I have always heard the cribs about how people have screwed up lifestyles. "I work for 18 hours, don't get enough sleep, have pressure of deadlines" and "I work night shifts, takes me away from the my social life" blah blah blah... Well it is true, not for all but many of us. We spend 10-12 hours working at the office, 2-3 hours driving to work, another 2-3 hours handling issues/calls and conferences from home. We hardly get 2-3 hours at home with family and at home we just eat, sleep, have breakfast and come back to work. Weekends are full of finishing chores like laundry, grocery, shopping, kids blah blah... now is this what we call lifestyle? Or what type of lifestyle should one expect from this?

Well the answer is... it is not your work that is amending your lifestyle, it is you that is building this lifestyle for you. So for my "watch"ful friends.. working for 4 hours at office is not the answer to building a great lifestyle.. it is what you really do, that can build your lifestyle. Lifestyle is not about how much time you stay at home and at work... lifestyle is your behavior, things you do, habits and your actions with regards to things, people and places... Your work plays a major role in it, but its not about time, its about what and how you do things at work.

So how does work help you build a lifestyle?

Its simple... The person that sits beside your desk, if he keeps his desk dirty... there are very less chances that he will keep his house tidy or vice versa. Go check out. Now if he has got into a habit of keeping his desk dirty, he is not going home and cleaning up things. Don't wonder if you see socks lying around, laundry undone, stale food thrown over in fridge.. blah blah.

If you have an engineer who bluffs on why he could not complete his tasks in time, will surely bluff his spouse, friends on several things.

If you see a guy walking to office late, chances are that he will be late for most of the things that he do.

A guy who doesn't care about how he is dressed at office, chances are that he is never well dressed until been told to do so. If there is a dress code at work, it will help build a good dressing basics in turn help build a lifestyle.

A guy who often runs with hair and unshaven for days, chances are that he doesn't care about some hygiene no matter where he is.

If a certain set of procedures are followed, made to be followed... chances are that those procedures will help you be more effective in curbing your bad habits and making a few good ones to become your lifestyle. Well of course people will have to find a value out of these. Though I must say that I am against setting up RULES, there are those basic terms that can help build lifestyles.

I think its all about the quality of behaviour, habits and what you do at work that sums up to become your lifestyle. The guy who is passionate about a bug-free life would definitely much worried to take enough care of his code and quality of work. Now the question to each one of us.. is work building our lifestyle?

Are we concerned about improving it?
Do we action to improve anything?

We recently initiated a self help learning group as a part of fun@work.. A group that will begin to learn a whole new things on its own. We begin with a new language. We believe the attitude to learn something on oneself can help us improvise our lifestyles. I feel geared up for this experience and certainly those other 5 who join me in this. After all.... your lifestyle is more seen at work than anywhere else. And I certainly want a best one for me...

Now if you are doing some fun@work exercises at your workplace... ensure that you add a glimpse of building a better lifestyle for your team. We decided that we would do the following things in future as a part of fun@work :

1. Be a Chef : Having a day when the team will be asked to cook.. things that do not know , haven't heard of.. An exercise that will help them understand various cuisines in the world.. isn't that a better lifestyle?

2. Book reading : Picking up a best seller and reading it on a day out. Book reading becomes interesting when someone is reading it out for you.. in an effective way of course... isn't book reading a better lifestyle element?

3. Swim party : Our next party, we want it to be a pool party. People can enjoy been in water. Isn't swimming a better exercise? They would do it if they enjoy doing it.. and what fun if it is done with people you love.

So much more... so much more to do to improvise on our lifestyles... I am geared to build a better lifestyle for myself, right in the place where I spend most of my time.