Do multiple things or do only one thing?

Lately, I have geared up myself to do multiple things. I purchased a house, I set out to start a small company that sells products online, I have started exploring learning opportunities in Data science field, I have been playing an active role at Toast master club all while being a parent to two young kids (2.5 years and 0.5 years/) and with a full time job at Swiggy. I could manage to do make progress in all these endeavours (Sometime, I had to stop going to Toastmasters sessions as travelling was taking 1-

1.30 hours) because of support from my family, friends and my colleagues. Just about the time I was getting a groove of doing multiple things at the same time, Swiggy laid off 380 people that included me and my team.

Here I am without a job but with a lot of other activities going around me. As someone who needs a full time job to fulfill financial duties, I am scrambling to find one. In the process, I am wondering if I need to drop my thinking of doing multiple things and focus only on doing on the job. In my work, I never neglected any of my duties. We were working on needle mover projects for the organisation. My team and I were meeting in office regularly, I have taken important parts of the project such as building business P&L, owning the execution plan document. We have been working with our senior colleagues closely and have been setting up reviews with leadership. I had a feedback from my manager that he sees a visible change in my approach in working with my team from last quarter in the sense that I have started leading from the front instead of supervising the team. I had an opportunity to work with CEO for the first time I joined the company. But then, we got fired. 

I wonder if I had not spent time on identifying a home for ourselves or starting a business of my own, would I have had a chance to keep my job? I really don't know the answer. I could have probably found out another job within the organisation a little earlier? Not sure if I wanted to do that because I have only been in this job for 6 months. 

My wisdom tells me that sometimes  circumstances are beyond our control and what's important is to ensure we give our best in terms of adding value. If I can understand my strengths and focus on areas that I can contribute to where win - win can be delivered, things will fall in place. Ofcourse with the help of almighty and parents blessings 

 

a few lessons learnt

1. Never call people multiple times if they are not responding 

2. Do not suggest anything to people unless they ask you 

3. Always prioritise your well being first before helping the other person

4. Don't reinvent the wheel - if top 100 students in IIT JEE join in IIT Bombay for so many years. If you get a top 100, join there (works more often than not)

5. Always do productive things.  When you don't have a goal/struck somewhere in the process, you get distracted and you feel like whiling away time. Instead of doing unproductive things, change what you are doing to have variety 

6. Optimise for the material resources as far as possible. 

7. Never ask anything directly with self governing people. Show utmost empathy 

8. Health both physical and mental, family, profession are important in the same order. 

9. Always solve problem both qualitative and quantitative. There is no bigger joy than being able to solve problems

10. Work on inputs, process and output will be taken care 

11. Do your duties first and do whatever you want to do with the rest of the time 

11. When you look everything from money point of view, it helps to take objective decisions. 

12. Basic principles of money, make as much as possible, spend as little as possible, invest the surplus with the best ROI. Execution is easier said than done 

13. When someone rejects you, there is seldom a point in knowing why you and what went behind it, it is only important to ensure you use the opportunity to build character and thrive in life 

14. The road less travelled by may be tempting but do not take it because there must be a reason why it's less travelled in the first place 

15. Never stop showing up due to the fear of rejection. We often change paths or postpone things because we are afraid that we may fail if we continue in the  old path. It's a sin to not show up. 

Weighing in the art of waiting

Time is a scarce commodity. Isn't it? How many of us wish If there were more hours in a day?

We do not indulge in some of our favourite activities because we feel we don't have time. We don't spend enough time with our loved ones because we feel we don't have time. We don't fulfill some of our duties because we feel we don't have time. In all the cases, we feel guilty about not being able to find time. 

Then there are instances where we are asked to show up at sometime and the other party does not show up on time. We wait. If we look at it, this is the time that's gifted to us. Because there is no other engagement planned in that time. What do we do then? 

Do we do our favourite things? Do we talk to our loved ones? Do we do our duties? Hell no, we get impatient. We hate (briefly) the party that made us wait. We get nervous about not having time for next planned activity. We spend the waiting time worrying almost all the time. 

Why can't we wait patiently? What does it take to wait in peace? 

I think waiting patiently comes from practicing empathy. Do you think the other party who have committed the time for the meeting would make you wait intentionally? If no, then you can be relaxed as they will also work their best towards arriving as early possible. What if the answer the former question is yes? Then, we can debate whether this meeting can be postponed/cancelled. If yes, we can immediately do it and go ahead with life. If No, then we will have to accept that we do not have a choice but to wait. What we can then do is to wait in peace. May be this may be the gifted time we did not have for doing our favourite things, talking to our loved ones and fulfilling our duties!