Tag: work

Truth be told

I want to write about pain

I want to write about pain.
I want to write about pain I felt at a recent trip.
I want to write about the pain only my Mom saw in the photos, while everyone was saying I was having fun!
I want to write about the pain of self-betrayal when you don’t stay true to yourself.
I want to write about the loneliness of being abandoned by so-called friends.
I want to write about how is it even possible for people to wear different masks – of goodness on one side and of I don’t care on the other side.
I want to write about the pain I feel when I am sidelined, because I am not cool.
I want to write about the pain when people reach out to me only because I have access to certain data and information while others don’t.
I want to write about the pain I felt when you thought that just because I am strong, you can walk over me at any time.
I want to write about the pain that how I was so blinded to the truth that lay right in front of me, just because I craved validation.
I want to write about the pain I perhaps brought to other colleagues by running after useless validation.
I want to write about the pain of how I let my “friends” come to my home and take my book, do random stuff, talk loudly, etc., while I was not even allowed a place on their bed when I went to their home. How can I do such random stuff just for validation?
I want to write about the pain of how it is eating me up because from now on, I will show the strong non-vulnerable version of me.
I want to write about the pain of how I pick “familiar” unavailable people – either as ex-es or as friends. Btw, this one is liberating, because that is how I can change my patterns.

I want to write about the pain of writing about pain, just because I did not listen to my intuition.

It turns out, the intuition is always whispering to us to change our patterns. It is up to us to be silent enough to listen, so that we don’t carried away by the noise.

Manager

Making of a Manager 7.0

Recently I happened to conduct the hiring process for a team member, starting from creating the form to making them run through several steps of hiring, and here are some life lessons I learnt:

1. People will reveal themselves if you just sit and listen.

2. Be real. I had fun while talking with them, did not ask weird interview questions, and more than anything else, made the conversation interesting for them by researching about them before the interview.

3. While you may come across many sad stories that you may want to give them the job even though they are not eligible, it’s best to not give them the job. Because it will set them up for failure anyway. Not the best thing to happen to them.

Happiness

3 things that bring absolute joy

1. Staring out of the balcony

2. Writing without editing (this blog is the only place where I write without editing)

3. Blessing those who hurt you

Family

My father started working at 6!

Earlier this month my father completed 40 years of his shop.

He’s 67, and had already worked in multiple “jobs”, before “starting on his own”. Here’s a journey of his work, starting from age 6!

1. Worked for FREE in a bakery at the age of 6, used to get crushed powder of toasts as daily “stipend”

2. Worked at two general stores in later summer vacations at school.
He was so much into cleanliness that once the shop owner’s bag of cash fell off from a higher shelf!
Guess what, my father had such a repute of honesty that the shopkeeper never changed its place!

3. Worked at a readymade garments shop as he “grew up” 🙂

4. Worked at a crockery of a relative, created a huge repute and profit for them, however, later the relative had to sell it off due to financial crunch

5. Worked as a typist at the age of 18, at one of the reputed shops in our city

6. Got placed at a factory by his employer, where he almost died by sinking in a pit while riding his cycle back home, and “someone magically appeared from nowhere” and saved him! Yes, he and a friend went to search for cycle the next day and got it 🙂

7. He found refute that day at a nearby factory, which later hired him. That factory was JK Paper Mills. He was even hired by DCM, Waterworks, and all the factories but he was underage!

8. Along with working at JK, he opened his shop on 05 August 1981. Used to work there in the mornings and nights.

9. Quit his job in October 1982, while his kids were 3 and 4 respectively. Talk risk!!

10. When he started, his shop was in a narrow street. His Uncle, in 1983, suggested to buy one of the new shops coming up at the main road. He didn’t have the deposit money. The bakery shop owner, with whom my father used to work “for free”, lent him the advance deposit. Till date, our shop is exactly at the same place.

11. Not to mention, he also used to do “flipping” by getting socks, watches from Delhi and selling them in our home town in Kota. However, he felt he wasn’t playing it ethical by showing a low-quality item as shiny and that was unfair to customers’ money.

Last year, as I was freelancing, I had once suddenly lost a high-ticket client. One morning I was sitting in my room and thinking, I saw my father doing his prayer rituals as usual.

He was as tensionless, as free and as “let life come as it wants to” attitude on his face.
If 40 years of business could keep him tension free, I had no right to get tensed that day.

That day, my father gave me hope.
Today as I asked him this entire story, he gave me the power of resilience.
And every day, he gives me the power of love by getting apples / mangoes for me (instead of bakery stuff that both my parents love :D)

We are not the best of friends, but he accepts me when I’m doing a headstand in the middle of the room, and I accept him when he “turns on auto-download” of WhatsApp forwarded pics, and together, we all are imperfectly perfect!

Just as we should be 🙂

Documenting the Day

Monday is the easiest day

For a few weeks now, I’m pronouncing that Monday is the busiest day of my week.

Resultantly, it does become one.

So next Monday onwards, let’s call it the easiest day.

There must be some way to handle all this in a more productive fashion.

The idea, is to sit still and figure that out!

Thoughts

Pro tips for productivity

  1. Go for a walk to the parking of your home’s building during working hours. We can’t wait for offices to open up, to get our much needed share of outdoors.
  2. Read a lot, baby!
  3. Be kinder than necessary.
  4. Request, instead of dictate.
  5. Apply #4 for yourself as well.
Work & Business

Productivity in WFH

  1. Read a book for 10 minutes in breaks.
  2. Don’t worry about WhatsApp validation. If it comes one day, some day you will be sad about WhatsApp criticism. Calmness in either is the juice.
  3. Write that mundane activity also down on paper.
  4. You have a life beyond the screen.
  5. People are good. Just that so much exposure to screen has lead their mind to stop being empathetic – which usually comes when we go out and have a walk 🙂
Career

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.

Manager

Making of a Manager: 2.0

Since I’m juggling with my new role as a manager, I’m documenting all my experiences in this category of my blog.

Some recent life lessons:

  1. No one will value your time unless you do.
  2. Kindness is superpower.
  3. Be prepared for every type of issues. It will make you calmer.
  4. Give away the credit.
  5. Trust, but verify
  6. Appreciate in public. Criticise in person.
  7. Keep writing. NEVER EVER EVER EVERRR stop.
  8. Empathy. Be there for them. But don’t allow for lethargy in work.
  9. You can be friends and chill around; or get work done. Can’t do both.
  10. When you get work done, though, it does not mean that you have to be rude. You can still be fun and chill, but friendship is another dimension.
  11. Be kind when they screw up. We have NO IDEA what they are going through.
  12. Be honest. Because YOU are watching.
  13. What you think about your team in your head, is what will manifest on the outside.
  14. You don’t HAVE to speak when there is nothing to speak.
  15. If you do not require any follow-up, you are GOLD.
  16. If you follow-up with people when they are supposed to deliver, it shows how diligent you are.
  17. Leave signatures through your work and your vibes.
  18. Measure yourself. Because what does not get measured, is not treasured.
  19. Writing a progress mail to your manager helps. You get to know where you are, and where you could be going.
  20. And, don’t be too harsh on yourself.
Clients

The best people I work with…

A part of the work I do has these processes:

  • Go through the rough draft the client sent
  • Create a clickworthy post out of it
  • It gets posted on social media.

Mostly, the post is about adding value. Sometimes, that value added comes with some backlash from people (that is one of the secrets of getting viral…more about that later btw :D)

Now, there are two types of people I work with:

  1. Whenever the backlash from people points at the author (aka yours truly), my clients straight away state that they are the author. I love that so so soooo much! Standing as a guard to protect their people. Awesome folks they are 🙂
  2. They highlight a tiny spelling mistake for two consecutive weekly meetings. My writing for them hardly generates any virality. Because what they are always talking about is how will the people that know him, will respond.

I just love the type 1 clients. Never argue with them for money. They pay whatever I ask. Never interfere. Rather I request them to interfere.

Find clients like those, and keep upping your game. You will be left with awe, work you love, and most importantly, self respect.

Clients, Uncategorized

My client ain’t responding!

Last Sunday, my client and I worked on a particular task to be done by him.

Today’s Friday, I didn’t get a response from him so far.

Should I be mad? (No, I don’t do that anymore.)
Should I remind? (Who am I? A primary class teacher who ruins the curiosity of a kid?)
Should I stop doing the work because he didn’t respond? (No, he didn’t hire me to do stuff when everything was going fine, I was hired to figure out stuff even when things weren’t fine.)

So, I went ahead with doing his stuff. Even if it was at 60% output, it was way better than 0% output.

And today he messaged that he delayed because of a due diligence audit.

See – such serious reason and I would have reasoned him to simply avoiding our work.

This not only applies to our professional life, rather also to our personal lives. We are creating mental constructs based on our assumptions of feeling worthless, while the reality is someone is trapped in other physical constructs.

Strange, no? Not really. We get to choose our thoughts baby!

People, Success

Happy – not anymore?

Even thebiggest happiness could being about a place of sadness if you happen to compare yourself to others.

Someone else, younger than you, is going to get all the things you have been waiting for.

Does it feel bad! Maybe yes.

Should it feel bad? The answer to this could never be yes.

What’s the solution, then? The solution is to put yourself in more I more situations like these because that only would help you work harder and challenge yourself more often.

Think over it. Someone else won, you lost; and then you created your own plan of confidence a reality.

Truth be told

More wisdom, less work

More I have stacked having lesser work that is more valuable and comes with bigger responsibilities, the more I’ve to started realise that having more times precious.

Which means:

– “urgent work” is not important

– having a schedule is the way to get important things done.

– No is the biggest superpower.

It turns out, whatever we were taught in school – staying busy, working more, and saying yes in order to be liked – lose their power as we gain more wisdom.

Process

There’s nothing wrong with Instagram!

Today I attended a wonderful master class by Nir Eyal, author of the book Indistractable.

Some wonderful things he said:

1. Schedule everything – learning, work, leisure, family time, sleeping time, free time social media and even OTG!

2. To-Do lists should be done away with, because no one accomplishes all of those daily.

3. Instead, do whatever you had desired to accomplish during that time. That is powerful! You’ll then end up achieving MORE than your To-Do list.

4. Life is NOT about getting things done. Rather spend 30-45 minutes daily, thinking.

5. And last resort, make an identity pact: Is what you are doing aligned with who you are?

Very very thoughtful! This master class is definitely going to be a masterpiece.

Documenting the Day

Life updates

1. Life’s good. Enjoying work. And non-work.

2. Tried buying an iPad from Apple site, no deliveries as of now. Beta, thode din aur 🙂

3. Mom will make ice cream tomorrow. Since I cannot eat anything beyond dal rice roti subzi (i.e., no chhole, rajma, curry, mathri, etc.,) due to surgery, we came to a softer, easily digestible option.

4. Looking at the quantum of work I do, should I start charging more? Nope. I’ll manifest it. And let people pay me more out of will.

5. A prospect who converted has a problem understanding whatever I write on emails / messages. So then we have to get on a call. The entire process wastes a lot of time for me. Thinking of saying no to them tomorrow. Time is money. Not that I have communication issues. Rest all work perfectly well with messages / emails and once a week / fortnight calls.

6. Waiting to tell the new job info to my team at the right time 🙂

7. Gotta respond to the diligent guy who worked on the website. Been long.

8. Content, content, quiz, class, posting, uploading – six huge tasks for tomorrow. Gonna be fun.

9. Also gotta file the claim for hospitalisation. Saturday.

10. Did I tell you, idli still tastes good, despite having it a lot of times post surgery?

That’s it folks, stay safe and keep rocking 🤘🏻

Career

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? 🤩

Life

Tested negative?

Yes, it is the most positive word of 2020 and 2021, given the situations we are in.

However, what happens if a report is positive?

Do we dread death? Or are we scared if our family would be affected? Or do our deepest fears pop up?

The big wrong is not with the Covid. The big thing we have to deal with is not having to be alone. And that’s scary.

Success

Productivity like never

If you feel you have less work to do today

And it’s okay if you put off the most important task to later

Just to waste a few minutes here and there

The Law of Productivity (that no one uses the nomenclature of, however, it exists), says that you will still be unproductive till the end of the day.

People

It pays to NOT be the cool kid

Do you sometimes feel that your hard work isn’t validated?

Let me tell you a story of the cool kid.

It is easy to be the cool kid.

The cool kid does nothing significant.

The cool kid is just hanging around trying to look cool.

Does things that get attention of everyone.

Anything that escapes hard work and still brings in validation is what the cool kid lives by.

Except, that they themselves know they are hollow.

And that’s sad.

Because every effort of theirs is an attempt to look cooler by covering up that hollowness.

And in a sheer suddenness of move, the cool kid does something that they were supposed to do. When they do this, all of a sudden they become cooler. Because no one had expected them to do this!

Isn’t that a “virtuous” cycle?

Friends, we all come across “the cool kids” in every setup, in every work structure that we are a part of.

But you know what?

I have never seen a cool kid being trusted.

Or being entrusted with responsibilities.

Or even being looked forward to as a professional.

We can play around with colleagues. Because their validation was the first thing the cool kid was after.

However, rising higher is always preceded by hard work. Always.

Uncategorized

Is it something that you really want?

The world is glorifying what they have done.
Making all attempts to get famous (nothing wrong btw).
Or justifying why their parents failed them.

I get that.
I hear that.
I understand where you are coming from.

The only question is: Do you really want it?

If yes, please stop reading this right now.

However, if what you are chasing is something you don’t like fully, perhaps today is a good day to start with thinking alone for 30 minutes. Don’t you think so?