Remember where life is!

One of an influential leaders at the client place recently retired. In a lot of ways, my career progression has been partly due to him...his vision of utilizing my organization in a strategic way to get accomplishments with lower costs kinds of propelled me to the top with the opportunities being utilized.
I have always been in awe of him, his judgement of character with just a meeting over coffee and talk of totally offbeat topics....a very well read man, mathematically sound, witty and passionate about cars and Diane Lane.
The one thing that will never let me forget Mr. Peter Rubenacker is the quote I last heard from him during his retirement celebration - "Gentlemen, one piece of wisdom I would like to share before we part - always remember, life is not what is in the office but what we do here (in the office) is for the life outside it". Well said!
Imagine how much of life we waste slogging for the organization and how much we continue to do outside too...I mean having a dinner with family and the moment we get a call, we drop everything, step out and complete the conversation. Have we ever thought of saying - "Is this urgent? Can you call me later or I can call you as I am busy right now?". In India, many people consider this talk as a sign of incompetence, especially if that call was from your boss. And true enough, the biggest concern in India is work-life balance!!
How can one who lives in a culture-rich heritage, forget to devote ample attention to that very fact and slog for an organization just cause they they give a salary? Is an IT professional's life in India equivalent to that of emergency services? Is the salary high that the same person has to work 24x7?
Here we are in a path where we have forgotten my hobbies, lost the track of time that will make us miss the growth of our children just cause our lifestyles dictate the need of money? Is it worth it?
Time to make a change and learn to work around the problem by remembering where the life is!!

Why this kolaveri di?

Yesterday, on chat with a colleague of mine, this topic came up, "Brain Dynamics". Being in the state of utter boredom, I asked as to what this meant. The reply I got was that it referred to drive of the person - from the left brain or the right brain.....and of course, with my perky humor, my reaction was - "from your perspective or mine?". The problem with me however is that my left or right brain is in domination depending on my mood and focus.....like when I am relaxed and resting, my right brain plays the major part while at work, its mainly the left.....so analysis for me - screw-up!! But anyway, chatting last night made me more relaxed and raise soul searching questions of what do I want to do? Why do I need to keep working this path? Why is competition so much of an addiction that its larger than life for me and why cannot I learn to enjoy little happiness that just fizzles away so many times in front of me? Why this pressure of wanting to get everything? Its so tiring or I just hit my mid-life crisis where I am looking for alternate source of keeping my mood up as I am not really good at anything..........here is the time to ask life - "Why this kolaveri, kolaveri, kolaveri di?"

Happy New Year 2012

Resolutions, tasks, responsibilities, aches/pains - can we not delete all of these and start from scratch?? Guess that's not going to happen soon.

Anyways, one of the things that I have decided this year is that I need to reduce my reaction of getting high stress when there is an action item pending on me (even if there is time to complete) and immediately jump to getting that closed while dropping everything else I am doing... so much so for reducing my 'passion' for work...I have realized that quality of life at home is getting drastically affected with my crazy reaction which actually gets me no returns at work too...so in effect, goal is 'better work-life management'. I hope that I am able to do this better and also help me in reducing my anxiety that I build up in my head with all the negative planning scenarios. I hope to become a better person going ahead from this year!