Are You Marketing Yourself?

D: You are very good at work but you need to learn to market yourself. All this good work doesn’t help unless people know about it.

Me: Didn’t they say, “Let your actions speak for you!”

D: If only everyone knew the language (read ‘they believe what is presented to them’). When they ask: “if he is so good, why didn’t we hear about him before”, I’ll not be able to fight for you. Take it as a lesson for life: “We need to push ourselves to move ahead. When you do some good work let everyone know, it enlarges your circle of your influence and helps in long-term!”

I stood speechless while I learnt one of the most important lessons of life!!

D continues: Start by convincing yourself then market it to others. That’s why I asked you to explain why did you think you deserved a good rating (refer my previous post for this).

Image from:wulffmorgenthaler.com

For the first time I realized the importance of selling oneself. It changed the way I thought about work! Though I remember hearing something similar in school but I was too young (read ignorant) to understand it then. (at times I think I am so lucky to learn the important lessons of life early in my career; other times I think if I were so lucky, I’d have been much ahead in my career than I am.)

In essence, “Being successful is not only about doing the good work but promoting yourself as well.”  One of my friends said: “You mean to say it’s about vijibility (visibility)”  Yeah, sure it is…lolz..

Same People, Similar Situations, Different Perspective

School: If you get good marks in Maths and Science, you’ve better future prospects.

Undergrad: Besides marks you should have done some extra curricular activities and won accolades as well.

Grad: Marks constitute very small part of overall evaluation, you should have good work exposure, leadership and communication skills etc.

Does that sound reverse chronological to you as well?! Shouldn’t we encourage leadership and communication skills in school itself and once we’ve got the life skills, solving equations or calculating distance of the Sun from Moon would make more sense! More often than not, we fall prey to the prejudices and act likewise without challenging the basic notion.

Image Source: myopera.com

When we grow up and accept things as presented to us, we’re supposed to look at it from different perspective, to challenge the prevailing ideas and do things differently to prove ourselves worth competing with others (and I thought being good at Mathematics would suffice! )

Mr. D: Tell me why do you think you deserve a good rating?

Me: I’ve done all the things efficiently, didn’t make any mistake most of the time, and was always available.

Mr. D: Everyone else has done the same, what difference did you make? What value did you add?

Me (to myself): In school, if everyone did well in exams everyone used to get good marks. I didn’t need to do the sum differently (provided it was correct) to prove I was better.

I forgot it doesn’t work this way here. We don’t get marks for things we did rather we get points for doing things differently and adding value to it. “Efficiency” is no more a buzzword. Not sure whether to consider good or bad, but I believe this should be taught since childhood (remember, earlier the better)!

After learning to think differently I have a new perspective about the half glass problem, “The glass is neither half full nor half empty, it’s double the size than required!”

What are you Blogging Today

When I am not writing, I am most probably reading and there is so much of it that a lifetime doesn’t seem to be sufficient! Nevertheless, this weekend was not much eventful and I got chance to read scores of Blogs on almost all the topics of the world; people write about anything and everything. I read blogs related to college, sports, fashion, pets, pubs and the list goes on and on.

There are 9 years old kids who write about toys, paintings and school as well as 70 years young people who tend to write about life and other experiences.

Image from neilturner.me.uk

The most common topics include talking about personal lives, politics, places, sports, parties, weddings,  real estate, events, technology, environment, food and even about blogging. there are people who put only pictures (remember, a picture is worth 1000 words!) while there are guys who are crazy about advertisements and their blogs are full of ads worth watching!

Amidst all this fun and entertainment, there are those who blog about life’s challenges, struggles and how did they overcome those. I read a blog about how cancer changed the life of a lady and the way she handles her kids along with the treatment and hopes to live a cancer free life again.

There is this lady who had 12 pregnancies/miscarriages and she blogs about how did she learn that surrogate mother is not a bad idea and how things are taking shape since then.

Heidi, after being married and having a kid realizes that she loves her old friend,  gets out of the marriage and starts living with her friend. She changes her mind again and comes to her husband and kid to live a normal life, later realizes that she is not lesbian rather there is someone else within her (Katie) who is so and she suffers from multiple personality disorder!

I was amazed as well as shocked to learn that people put so much about their personal lives on a public forum (it requires so much fortitude). I’d never dare to blog something like that (It’s like being nude in public, not everyone can handle it). People think differently depending on how grownup is the society and how mature is others’ behavior after knowing all this about someone!

Overall blogging is a great tool not only to express oneself but to challenge the beliefs and thought pattern prevailing in the society. So what are you blogging today?!

Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?

The notion of the butterfly effect states that a seemingly minor event can create ripples that ultimately trigger an outcome of far larger proportions.

It’s not only significant in chaos theory but applies to life as well! Small things we do, decisions we take has much bigger impact in life than we think. Take a simple example of a typical day, if we get up 15 mins late, we might get late to office by 1 hour (stressed and frustrated by traffic of course), miss some important meeting and eventually end up wasting whole day. The initial delay of 15 mins doesn’t sound very important but the cascading effect does.

Taking the larger picture, had I not studied the subjects I did, I’d have been in a different place, doing something else and probably with different kind of problems. Have we ever thought choosing a different school, college or organization could change our lives to an extent beyond our imagination?

Picture by moviewallpaper.net

It’s quite possible that the other school had given more importance to literature inspiring me to become a writer or they could have identified any latent talent of mine giving a different direction to life!

A while ago I read the story of Sam (name changed), who worked at WTC and survived 9/11 in a strange way.  It was a usual day for Sam and he was getting ready for office when his son Parker insisted to drop him school (usually Parker used to go to school with his mom, but you know, children don’t think the way we do, they just want things without any reason or logic). Sam was in a dilemma, he knew it was getting late for office but he didn’t want to break the child’s heart. The decision he took saved his life!

As the above picture says, if we change one thing today, in due course of time, it might change everything. In essence,  “Each decision we take cascades its effect which does decide the destiny.”

P.S. This post is NOT inspired by the movie “The Butterfly effect” and I watched that long back.

The Bus, The Training, and The Struggle in between

Bangalore, 27th Jan 2010: It was the 2nd day when I had to wake up at 7 in the morning, believe me more than half the planet was sleeping! (I don’t remember when was the last time I got up so early.) I am not going to describe how awesome it was to watch the Sun rise, I’ve seen that zillions of times!

I managed to get ready in next 45 minute ignorant of the fact that the struggle had just begun.

Bus Stop: My watch showed 7.50 AM; being alien to the bus stop at this time; I didn’t know what to expect. I saw a familiar face (yeah, I did mention it was my 2nd day) and decided to ignore it…

No Prizes for guessing this!

Missed the 1st bus thinking it was too crowded… second one had similar rush if not more (If I don’t catch this one, I’ll probably end up taking more crowded one besides getting late, I said to myself).  Coincidentally the “familiar face” decided to board the same bus. Not to my surprise all the seats were occupied; since the journey was of more than 13 kms I thought I might get lucky in between.

Next Stop: The gentleman beside me decided to get down, leaving the most wanted place which was equidistant from me and the “familiar face“; I looked at her (to confess, she was a pretty lady; I generally don’t pay much attention to guys) and she seemed to be in need of that seat more than me. I smiled and offered her to take the place (then thought, don’t they always claim to be equal, so they should get equal opportunity to stand in a bus… it was too late by then besides I had to prove I was a decent guy!)

Nevertheless, so many other stops passed and I was still standing… finally at 8.55, I got down and proceeded towards the training room (and I didn’t have luxury to sleep there). There were 3 kind of ppl attending the training, those who were interested in it, those who were there because they didn’t have anything better to do and those who were there to entertain themselves and get a break from work. If you are still reading, you must have guessed which category I belonged to!

It was boring as hell and I literally had to struggle to keep myself awake; had I tried to read those slides myself, I’d have understood much more. Most of the times I was reading mails and trying change my browser’s looks. After trying scores of them, I finally settled for WordPress Vintage Press. Then came the most important part of it, “the attendance sheet.” How else was I supposed to prove my presence for the torturous bootcamp!!

When Was the Last Time You Saw Sunset

New Joiners’ Introduction Scene (not college, at workplace):

Hi.. My Name is  A… I’ve an experience of X years… My hobbies are [WERE]… Traveling, Reading etc…

Mr B: I am B having Y yrs of experience in Z technology… my hobbies USED to be: Singing, Swimming (another voice: in water or beer?!)… now I like Sleeping (someone from the crowd: With Whom?!)

Jokes apart, did you also notice something common between the two? They had hobbies, they used to do stuff they liked!

Coming back to the introduction:

Q: Why don’t you continue with the hobbies?

Mr. A: I don’t get that much time.

Mr. B: Work robs the time which I used to dedicate to my hobbies!

Did they cheat us in school saying: “You’ll always find time for what you like to do!” (I want all my money back coz I don’t see that happening.) I don’t remember when was the last time I saw the rising sun or even setting, do you?!

Pic Courtesy: graddiv.ucsb.edu

We tend to follow those who already know things we are trying to do; we learnt alphabets by copying from book, learnt walking by holding hands of parents but when it comes to having work-life balance, who do we want to follow! Some folks at my organization thinks it’s a passé and take pride in making resources work more than required.

Mr. C (being self-righteous): Can you guess what’s the maximum utilization of a resource?? it’s 186%!!

Me (shocked): What about the work-life balance they talk so much about?!

Mr. S (defending Mr. C): You can’t have your cake and eat it too!

Me (to myself): I just want to eat the cake in peace!!

Work is important; but isn’t life more important! We work to make a living not live to work!!

I couldn’t agree more to Mr. Dyson (30 second Speech by Bryan Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola)):

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, Friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the Air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four Balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.”