Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

Rules of professionalism

Some rules of professionalism that you will never be taught, yet are the most important ones:

  1. Respond.
    Yes, as simple as this. Bro, there is no point taking out the frustration of your bf / gf / ex on to your professional relationships. If someone is asking, it is professional to respond. If someone is sending an information, it is professional to give a thumbs up.

    People don’t work with people for product or services. People work for the care. Give them! Because it’s the right thing to do.
  2. Be on time.
    On time means on time. If it is a Zoom call, 4 pm means 4 pm. Not 4:15, stating 15 minutes is okay. No it’s not. So is the case with in-person meetings.

    The formula is again simple. People see how much you care about them. That will make them decide if they can refer you to others, or figure out a way to get out of this engagement asap.
  3. Do what you say you will do. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
    The line is maarofied from my boss, however, emotions are the same.
    You say you will deliver a report by 7? Keep an internal deadline of 5 and email it max by 5:30.
    You say you will come back? Be specific and tell by when will you come back. Not next week. Rather which day in the next week.
    You say you need time to think? Perfect. Can you please communicate by when will you respond?

    Repetition hashtag three: People care for people who care. It simply shows you are involved.

Living an organised professional life does not make you Monica from F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
It just makes you an accountable human being, about whom people would not think twice, before referring.

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

It’s been a while

It’s been a while, and all this while, I have been thinking of what I’ve lost. I never knew I loved my old work so much. Who misses work so much?!

Everyone has to lose everything some day. What stays back is how you responded to such losses.

You know what’s the worst part? A friend of mine is dealing with another loss and all this while I have been bringing her back. And she’s recovering quite well, despite the fact that she is the most vulnerable om the weekends.

Another example I see is of Brahma Kumaris. They had a well established network of services in India, when a senior Sister of the organisation was told to leave this and begin her services in London. And as much as she resisted it, her stint in London paved the way for more and bigger services.

Strange how “me” and “mine” works. While in reality, only God is mine. Because I am not this body, I am the observer in this body. That observer is answerable to God – to create karmas that set an example, not something that sets ego boundaries.

Nishtha, no we are not going back. Staying true to your karma is your dharma. And life always moves beyond.

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

Why time sheets kill productivity

Organisations have time sheets for their employees to fill.
Which every employee fills with productivity hours.
Not realising, it indeed hampers their productivity.

This is how it works: If an employee works for 8 hours and another one for 5 hours, the first one is more productive.

Except that its not true.

What if the second employee took 30 minutes to nap?
Or went for a walk for an hour that indeed multiplied her productivity?
Or perhaps went to the office balcony and stared at the nature for a few minutes, which indeed let her look at an error that the “8-hour-productive employee” failed to look at?

We all function at different levels of efficiency. But most people term people just as “productive” or “unproductive” on a system that silently makes the productive one also unproductive. Because she cannot do all of that and has to be at work for 8 hours, she will lose her interest, curiosity, and of course, productivity.

The last thing we signed up for, while creating timesheet productivity!

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

How does a cohort help?

Currently, I’m a part of two paid cohorts:

  1. June Sweat Challenge (on Instagram by Kanav Vohra)
  2. Power Writing (by Shaan V Puri)

Do you know what is the surprising part?

They share NOTHING new, everything is already there as a free information on the internet.

Do you know what is the more surprising part?

  • I have been getting wonderful results with both
  • The Instagram and Slack communities are wonderful
  • We get to experience the fire of burning and the joy of learning together. That makes it priceless.
  • Not to mention, the time of an expert + the years of wisdom from them makes everything so worth getting into the room
  • When you pay for something, no matter how little or how big, you get yourself into a commitment – and that is the best thing that keeps you moving!

PS: Of these, the Writing course is employer sponsored 🙂

Up-skilling not only takes you out of your comfort zone, it makes sure you create new comfort zones for yourself. And then rinse and repeat.

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

Jobless for a year

Last year, I resigned from my job in March 2020, got relieved in June 2020.

Started freelancing then. Learnt multiple ways of sourcing new clients. Did wonderful work. Made a bit less than my salary but absolutely loved every day of the last one year.

After all this hustle, this April I got myself to a place where I was making more than my last drawn salary. And lo and behold, I got a job offer (that begins on 1st June) for a job I love.

So I said no to some of the prospective clients, said yes to working with some of those along with working full time on the job. And I guess we will 2X my last drawn salary at the start of the new job, leaving how things take us further to the future.

So, it is easy to demotivate myself by saying “I was jobless for a year”. Well, this is how society has conditioned us to believe.

Except, the truth is:

1. I finally had the courage to pursue my passion of writing, by giving up the stability of a full time job.

2. That taught me sales, negotiation and persuasion skills, along with polishing my skill set as a writer.

3. I was able to try an internship in content creation, among other things, that finally lead me to having a full-time job as Content Manager with one of the top brands of India.

4. I was responsible and accountable for my time.

5. I was finally not killing myself daily.

Thus, I was (and still am) living a life of choice. A privilege a lot of us have however very few of us have the courage to live by it.

The best part? For the first time in life I’m going for a job for which there is no degree on my resume, just a skill set and an experience to prove its mettle. Isn’t that amazing? 🤩

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

To those who have failed in CA exams…

19th January 2015.
The day I became a Chartered Accountant.
I still vividly remember the day.

We had just returned to Kota (my hometown) after an overnight train trip from Mumbai, after attending a family function there for three days. So the winter was a harsh reality from the pleasant zero winter of Mumbai to being back to Kota. Because of this train journey, I had taken a shower quite late, around 10-11 am.

The moment I came out, I saw a miss call from a fellow article at the firm I did my articleship from.

Oops, my heart started pounding.

As I called him back, he picked up the call and asked: “Kya hua?”

“Result aa gaya?” was my surprised response, to which he said yes.

My mom had gone to take shower and I was virtually alone at home. So I opened up the laptop, connected it to the slow BSNL router we had and checked the result.

452 out of 800, result: PASS. (*Top 100 scorers in India then)

Wow!

The day I will never forget!

Throughout the day I did not feel cold at all despite returning from Mumbai back to shivering winters of Kota. It was in the evening that I finally realised I should be feeling cold 🙂

My mom came out of shower and started crying a lot. A lot. She basically missed my Nanaji for whom I was a source of pride and who had passed away eleven months back. The day was something me and my parents had been waiting for, for years!

But this is the success story. That I cleared CA Final (both groups together) in the first attempt that too with very good marks.

Here is the back story: I failed in IPCC twice. As on date, given the number of failures we get to face, this doesn’t seem huge.
Back then it was. Especially for a class topper like me since childhood, who ended up with this major jolt for the first time in my life.

You know what, my Mom cried then as well, for how could such a thing happen to me? (Yes now I know that I was responsible, but I just couldn’t convince her to see that part. Maybe I didn’t want to see that either!)

But I did clear the IPCC exam eventually. One group at a time.

That is the word you need to remember my fellow CA students: eventually.

The world isn’t going to be smooth even if you clear all three stages in the first attempt with AIR 1. It’s true that social media is not going to have your pictures when you fail.
It’s true that your neighbours will probably stare at you when you’ll leave home for coaching classes.
It’s perhaps true that a friend who was not expected to clear is a CA today and you aren’t!

All this is real pain.
And it hurts, especially if you worked hard.

But there is one more thing that is real: Your grit. Your persistence. Your belief in your capability that no matter what, you will end up with the prefix CA before your name eventually.

Feel sad as hard as you want to. Clean your nose with your sweater that your friend likes who is a CA now. Look at yourself in the mirror and just be, it’s okay!

But when you are done, don’t waste a minute pondering about what was and what could be. Just focus on what you are going to do next.

Winning in life is less about numbers and more about your attitude.

For example, I’m not a cunning person and because of that I sometimes get walked over (sometimes by my hashtag friends), and that feels very bad. But then I tell myself that my systems and ethics are powerful, so I needn’t be scared. NEVER ever has been a place in my life that because of not being cunning, rather being a simple human being, I hadn’t won eventually. Things always turn out to be in the favour of the person who works hard with the rights systems and the right mindsets.

And if you are worried about number of attempts, yes I did get a bonus of 1L INR extra back in 2015-16 because of being a first attempt passout. But today, 5-6 years down the line, almost everyone is earning in the same income range. Time is a great leveller and a wonderful thing to forget.

So keep up your spirits high my fellow CA students, it is only a matter of time that you will become a member of the reputed ICAI. Till then, focus on building systems and attitudes that eventually and undoubtedly lead to success, instead of letting things happen.

PS: In case you are wondering if I used some systems while preparing for CA Final exams after failing in IPCC twice, of course I did! I won’t blabber them here because the purpose of this blog is not to show you how, the purpose is to show you what. If you need help with systems and processes while preparing for CA exams, drop me a note at ngehija454@gmail.com and I’d be happy to help you out.

PPS: It will happen, eventually!

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

37 YouTube subscribers

Around 2015-16, I started posting on YouTube.
Because I wanted to be a motivational speaker.

But of course, I failed. For several reasons:

  1. No consistency
  2. No research into customers
  3. No understanding of tags
  4. No understanding of re-indexing
  5. Zero editing

Also, over time I wanted to devote myself to writing full-time. So I stopped posting there.

Was it a failure?
I have recently gotten into a contract with one of the top ten startups of India to create video course for them on Content Writing. All because of those video speaking skills.

This is not to boast anything about. I still believe it was pure luck.

However, there is something from Steve Jobs that comes forward to help us: You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward.

Getting curious and doing the things without the intention of being famous or rich, just because you are inclined towards it is one of the biggest privileges of life.

And for YouTube, the subscriber base has finally grown. From 37, we have reached 41. LOL.
If you would love to extend your support, please follow me on Twitter as that is where I am planning to work more in 2021, YT is not on my list as of now. Thank you so much 🙂

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

One question I get asked a lot

One question that I get asked a lot is:

“How were you able to make your career switch? Did you not face any challenges? Did you fail? How did you bounce back?”

This blog, is an attempt to answer that.

Well, to give you a background, I am a Chartered Accountant by profession. Worked in the corporate for five years, and kept writing on the side because I loved it.
In 2020, I quit my job and took up writing full-time.

How was it possible?

Before how, let me address the question of why.

I used to work as an Internal Auditor. Which meant on any given day my high rating would be a function of how many errors and how huge errors I detected. It, in turn, meant that someone else had to screw up badly in order for me to perform greatly.

And I kid you not, I was great at my work.

Sometimes people were fired because of me, sometimes people were issued warning memos, and almost every single time someone else’s annual rating was adversely affected.

With all this going on, I was not very happy. If wherever you go, you are welcomed at a superficial level yet at a deeper level people wished I didn’t come or went away quickly. The money that we earn brings blessings. For me, it came at the cost of many people’s career. My career, no matter how legit, was someone else’s nightmare.

And with my love for writing, it was just nudging me daily to make that move.

So here’s how I quit my job and made a career switch:

  1. Started freelancing part time. I had already been creating my content – so initially that and a few cold emails served as a starting ground.
  2. Over a period of time and some force of luck (that always shows up when we do the good old hard work) when I got good clients + I managed to save a year’s worth of expenses, I made the move.
  3. The expenses that were saved are not used yet, thankfully, and will never be used as an emergency. But that cushion keeps you from making bad choices.

Simple. That’s it.

I did not know this would be the process, I just kept creating content without any direction of where it would go, and soon it did lead to some good places.

As far as problems that were concerned, I solved them the way I solve all my problems – by surrendering them to God. The results are never short of epic.

Try it out! And reach out to me to tell how it was 🙂

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

Entitlement

Today I came across a wonderful story on LinkedIn, wanted to share the lesson from it here.

A guy had gone to a tea stall, where he saw a father struggling to get his daughter admitted into a top college.

The man had worked really hard, and the daughter had gotten into a top engineering college. More so, he was willing to work harder to support her through college.

So this guy who posted on LinkedIn offered his help, and after few minutes of helping him out, also offered this Uncle to keep his phone number. Now he will help Uncle and his daughter.

Which brings me to hunger.
When we are hungry in life, we help others in satisfying their hunger.
When we are happy in life, we help others get happier.
When we have risen from nothing, we love to help others rise up.

However, only the people without entitlement can do it.
Only the people who love hard work can help others in theirs. The ones who feel they can work less and get done with, don’t know what lies ahead of them.
Only the people who believe they “have it all” actually have it all. As the 1984 Apple commercial states: “They push the human race forward.”

So, are we pushing the human race forward? Or are we pushing ourselves backward by letting entitlement get in?

Posted on by Nishtha Gehija

Making a career move

Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn yesterday, and really appreciated my decision of moving from a well-established job of an Internal Auditor, to full-time content writer.

A lot of people remark that it is a courageous move, however here’s my take:

(PS: This is a stoic move, not the I worked really hard part. We’ll cover that part later:D)

– God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform (Truly remarked Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich)

– If you have worked really hard and are doing it daily, the Law of thoughts will always be there for you.

– This also means, that the opposite of a good thought will also affect us, if we are really willing to listen.

If you don’t believe this, read it again. And you will see the difference.