Tag: Career
-
Doing Something as If Our Life Depends on It
When I started my professional career, someone told me that being a professional meant doing something as if our life depended on it. That definition has remained with me throughout my career that I can see when my work does not mean that way. Over the years, I have done several things with that level…
-
The Art of Being Ordinary
In my twenties, I knew someone who told me that we should not settle for an ordinary life. So many people live ordinary lives, he said, and we should strive for something extraordinary. At that time, I never asked him what an extraordinary life meant. Looking back now, I feel there is perhaps nothing more…
-
Real Work is Before Planning
One thing I am reminded of after every planning cycle is how much work happens before the planning event itself. When people look at a successful planning event, they often see the agenda, discussions, and final commitments. What is less visible is the preparation that made those conversations possible. Planning is rarely successful because of…
-
Away from Work for 3 days
I spent three weeks in India on vacation. When I returned to work, something surprised me. I’ve been away from work before. I’ve come back to overflowing inboxes, new priorities, and projects that had moved forward without me. This time felt different. It wasn’t the volume of work that caught my attention. It felt as…
-
Loneliness is not always Alone
There comes a point in life when you feel alone and realize it is not because you are physically alone. It is because you have become disconnected from yourself. No one can do that work for us. People can support us, but the journey of finding ourselves is one we must take alone. Some of…
-
Predictability and Clarity
Clarity on what a team can realistically take on. Clarity on dependencies, risks, and tradeoffs. All of these are critical to a team’s success. When teams lack clarity, everything starts to feel urgent. Work keeps getting added. Priorities keep shifting. People overcommit because no one wants to say no. Eventually stress becomes the new operating…
-
Why can’t we be Good?
I was introduced to Jacob Needleman‘s work in 2012. Pretty much the same time I was entangling myself with Jiddu Krishnamoorthi inorder to be free 😄 Through Jacob Needleman‘s work, I was introduced to Gurdjieff and his works. And even today I go back to all of them from time to time in my life.…
-
The blame games we get sucked into
I think many workplaces have the same reflex when something goes wrong. A deadline slips, a production issue appears, a customer complains or a team misses expectations. The immediate reaction is often to find who made the mistake. But many times the real problem is not the person. It is the system producing the behavior.…
-
Readiness is so important
Most delivery problems don’t start during execution. They start much earlier. When we convince ourselves we are ready. Readiness is probably one of the most less talked aspects of delivery. We treat it like a checklist. A few documents, some estimates, dependencies noted and we move forward. But real readiness is not documentation. It is…
-
Did I make the right career choices ?
I often look back at my career and ask. Did I make the right choices? It depends on what I wanted. It was all fun in my twenties. I did some pursuits in my thirties. But I was all the while lost, distracted, confused and directionless. One of my friends also told me this I…
