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“Your time management course is impractical. I was looking for some path-breaking time management techniques to fix my problem of procrastination.”

The other day I got this in an email from a learner.

Sorry to break her heart, but I had to say it:

“There is no path-breaking technique to live life.
There just isn’t.”

Back in school, I used to maintain a notebook, where I listed down what I did. Every hour!
And at the end of the day, I used to calculate the effectiveness ratio.

My aim was to always be above 75% effectiveness.

This pic shares a snapshot of the excel I maintained back at ISB, tracking my time!

I know exactly what I was doing at 9.30 am on Nov 5th, 2005. Giving a midterm exam!

Life is simple, my friend.

We all look for answers, because we are convinced that life is complicated. And that there is some magic formula that will solve everything.

That just isn’t true.

You want to get fit?
Simple – eat right and workout.

You want to manage time?
Simple – start measuring where you spend it.

You want to get better at relationships?
Simple – give more than you take.

You want to grow at your job?
Simple – challenge the status quo, at the risk of failing.The answers are always simple. Not easy. They are hard.
But, the answers are always SIMPLE!

Yes, I do.

However, what I don’t do is read my emails all day.

I have subscribed to MailMan, which lets emails into my inbox just thrice a day – 30 minutes post which I respond to all of them.

Emails are important. However, your life will end up becoming unimportant if you attend to emails all day. Not the best use of time, my friend :)

In our company wariCrew, all our work is done through processes.

I have a process for my shoot.
Then for my review.
Process for my team once I am done.
And it continues every week.

However, if the process makes you lose your peace of mind, you are doing something wrong.

You are supposed to be on top of your game.
Follow the process that has been designed in alignment with you.

However, if it takes you to places in your mind that you don’t want to be at, it is time to change the way you work.

Take a break.
Reach out for help.
Let things go.
And let yourself just be.

Anything that is supposed to help, when becomes a hindrance is a sign you need to pivot.

I am the biggest “non-fan” of hustle.
Not that I despise people who do.
Just that I believe you get more done when you do less. By planning and executing really well.

Not choosing to hustle does not mean, though, that you should not work hard.
You absolutely must.
However, how work in sprints like a lion. And make the most of that hunt of time.

Hustle is not truly needed, once you start working hard with planning and executing like a pro.

If you go back to my blogs 10 years back, I would be a totally different person.
So would it happen if you go to my Facebook from 12 years back.
Or even if you ask my family who I was a decade back, I was totally different.

We all change.

The idea is not to protect who you were yesterday.
The idea is to evolve from who you were, yesterday.

We plan for our next offsite once we are back from our previous one.

And the execution mode begins exactly 30 days before the take off date.
My shoot.
Coordinating with subtitling agency.
Team planning their tasks.
Everyone coordinating on what they are supposed to do.

Working for 30 days in advance. For a 3 day offsite.
Welcome to running a company!

It is not that we are stressed out throughout this.
However, we are rather chilled out and focused on not stressing out, which helps us before, during and after the offsite.

Isn’t that a plan?

After I finished my MBA, I joined a management consulting firm.

I was working with smart people, getting paid a lot of money, and I was good at it.
It made me happy.

But…

There was something missing.
While I was immensely satisfied, I felt useless.
It was then that I was introduced to the concept of ikigai and I realised why. 

Ikigai is a Japanese term that roughly translates to “a reason for being.”

It states that YOUR reason of being is the intersection of:

1. What you are good at
2. What you love
3. What the world needs
4. What you can be paid for

However, it wasn’t so much the intersection of 4 circles that was interesting.

It was the intersection of 3 or lesser circles that explained a lot more.
It explained to me why I felt useless in consulting.

I was doing something that I was good at, that made me happy, that made my money, BUT it was not something that I THOUGHT the world needed.
No one got up any morning saying, ‘I wish I had more consultants in my life’.
So while I was very close to my ikigai, I was still far away! 

It is this critical nuance that most people miss out on.

The meaning of your life is the intersection of ALL 4 things, not 3 or 2.
And understanding what the intersection of 3/2 circles means, brings us closer to the meaning of Ikigai.

I spend only 10% of my time in content.

20% is spent in learning and reading.
20% is spent in conversations with people.

And a good 50% in thinking and doing nothing.

It is a time distribution that has served me well, and also lead to the biggest opportunities I got lucky to be sitting on.

What does your time distribution look like?

I used to commute to my college by bus.
By availing of my unlimited bus pass.

However, how to get that bus pass was a monthly grind I used to go through, which had a fun of its own.

I used to stand in a queue every month.
For 4-5 hours.
To be able to travel in buses endlessly, by paying Rs. 13 per month.

Those were the days!

And the best part of those days? Meeting my wife on a bus :)

Every job sucks.
Every startup sucks.
Every relationship sucks.

The goal is not to find something that won’t suck at all – because at some point everything does.

The goal is to find something you are happy to struggle along – because you care about it. And who you are becoming in the process.