Don't correct the mistake...

Dondu and Pandu are both working in different companies as office clerks. Every evening after office, they sit together over a snack. Dondu was feeling especially down today as he got a firing again. He had made a mistake in writing the monthly rent cheque and wrote an extra Zero. Problem is that he had made the same mistake a couple of months back and this time, his manager really lost his temper calling Dondu a good for nothing, idiot and stuff like that. Dondu was quite upset because he writes more than 500 cheques a day and just because he made a mistake in one cheque, his manager called him an idiot. That is not fair. Further, he has been trying his best to avoid any mistakes.
Pandu tried to pacify him saying "Just imagine what would have happened if that cheque was encashed, your manager has a good reason to shout".
Pandu then continued sharing his experience, he had made a similar mistake once. He had once spelt a name wrongly on a cheque and the cheque came back dishonoured. The manager called Pandu that same day and introduced him to a friend (also a consultant) who will fix the problem and Pandu was responsible to ensure the same error doesn't repeat.
Pandu was initially confused. A wrong cheque doesn't really need a consultant.
Over the next 2 weeks, Pandu had to work with the consultant on installing an automated cheque printing system.
Today, almost 400-500 cheques are printed in less than 2 hours without any errors.
Dondu's manager tried to correct the error but Pandu's manager corrected the system.

I made the same mistake once. I had a colleague who used to make too many mistakes in his documents. I explained to him and then fired him a few times with not much results. Then I figured a much easier and peaceful solution.
Everytime the guy came with the document, I would just ask one question "Did you run spell check on the document?" If the answer is yes, I'll review the document else I would simply send him back.
Trust me, it saved tonnes of corrections, work and above all brought a lot of peace to me.

Infact, this was around the same time I got a lot of rubber stamps for entering repeat data. (refer the sharing titled Stampify)

Pandu's manager did one smart thing, he didn't run behind fixing the mistake. He fixed the system before it grew out of hand.

Even today, when I come across a mistake or any issues in workplace, first thing is obviously to fix the issue and then the next question is "How do we make sure it doesn't repeat? What system changes can we make to prevent this from repeating?"

You can either be Dondu or Pandu... Actually even better... You can either be Dondu's manager or Pandu's manager...

You can either correct the mistake or correct the system.

Weekend Rest...

What is your definition of rest?

Most of us will instinctively respond – “Lots of sleep”

If that was your answer too, welcome aboard… we are on the same team… still learning…

It has been a mega long, super busy, ultra hectic week for you. You come home on a Friday evening (those who work 6 day weeks… Saturday evening) and sleep properly. You sleep well into the next day… probably get up only for lunch and then back on dreamline express. And this goes on through the weekend.

Come Monday, you have to wakeup at 5 in the morning (ok… 6.30 for you). And you find yourself with a splitting headache, grogginess and unable to get the sleep out of your head.

I know, it was a long week and maybe you haven’t slept more than 4 hours a day, but you compensated it with a lot of sleep during the weekend, right? Then why the grogginess on monday morning?

Lets assume I’ve starved for 2 full days… is it okay if I eat 6 times the normal meal size just to make up for all the starvation? Will it be correct? Isn’t that what most of us do in the matter of rest also?

This was one category…

There is another extreme who go full steam even on weekends and stay active 18-20 hours a day without taking any rest at all. That too is like starving the body... starving it of the rest it deserves.

I think it is high time we understand the right meaning of “rest”.

A weekend or a day off is definitely time for us to invest in recreating ourselves. To fix the damage done to mind and body during the week. But sleeping is not the solution.

I did a bit of searching through my circle of friends and family and realized that there is a common pattern across people which defines whether they are lethargic or energetic on a Monday morning.

Category 1 – Sleep latenight on Friday evening, getup at noon on Saturday, watch tv, eat lunch, sleep, getup at 7 in the evening, maybe go out for a movie, or play games, eat dinner, watch TV till late night and repeat the same thing on Sunday.

Category 2 – Sleep latenight on Saturday (I guess that’s deserved), getup by 8 or 9 next morning, get fresh, go for weekly shopping / finish pending activities, have lunch, sleep for a couple of hours, getup at 5 in the evening, go to a park or place of worship with family, sleep early, getup early on Sunday, take up a social responsibility or learn something during the morning, sleep a couple of hours in the afternoon, evening family time, sleep early and get up fresh on Monday morning.

No prizes for guessing who is a better person on Monday morning.

To me, Category 2 looks a lot more balanced in terms of quality of life. A person has received sleep, family time, growth, completed works etc and still comes back fresh on Monday morning.

Category 2 above is just a sample list of activities, there can be any number of other activities, physical, mental, spiritual… anything is fine as long as one continues to grow during the weekend and come back as a better, improved and more energized self on Monday morning.

Even if I can’t do all of the things that are discussed in Category 2, I think I’ll start growing the moment I decide to even move from my current routine to this new routine.

Thanks to a few feedbacks and mails I received on an earlier sharing, these questions came to my mind, I became more aware and have started working on it. I think my plan for this weekend is going to be much more positive and the monday is going to be much more energetic.

What’s your plan for the weekend???

Sign of a man...

I still remember that expression of freedom on my classmates' faces when they started smoking for the first time. We were in 8th grade back then. Strangely enough, the most common experience all of them shared was that they felt like a man when they were having a smoke. A lot of my friends got into the smoking habit that way only.
Lets face it, if you are a smoker, your first cigarette was not bought from your own money... one of your friend pushed you into it and in order to be accepted, you probably started off.
"Smoking is a sign of a man..." I can bet that was the slogan given to a lot of us.

Same is the case for drinking.

We were a few friends sitting over a coffee and the topic came to the kind of dresses worn by girls nowadays. At times, some girls could dress in a way which you and I could feel inappropriate. Whether it is right or not is a different question, but lets face it, there are times when most of us turn back and look at that ultra short skirt passing by.
So the argument was whether to look at such beauty created by God and revealed by a person or not. Obviously, the moment one looks, one is not having any pure thoughts.
One of my friend actually told - "If you don't get thoughts by looking at a very beautiful girl, then you are not a man, something is seriously wrong with you... you can't be a man if you look at her and still not get "feelings"" (you are free to interpret what he meant by feelings)

But, this got me thinking... What is the definition of a man?
What are the signs of a man?
Do I become a man just because I'm able to drink or smoke? or just because I'm able to enjoy the beauty which the opposite sex willingly / unwillingly displays?
Or do I become a man just because I'm able to become a part of a group of men by doing what they do?

This also brought out the most painful part of our society - Peer Pressure but that's probably for another sharing.

Interestingly, I found my answer in Bhagwat Gita.
In one of the chapters, Krishna has explained the meaning of Brahmachari - A brahmachari, is a person who when unmarried, doesn't look at another woman; if married, he doesn't look at a woman other than his wife. This really clarified the meaning of the word Brahmachari to me as it shows that even a married person can be Brahmachari by mastering his thoughts.

After some thinking, I realised that I can extend the same logic everywhere.
The sign of a man is not in looking and getting thoughts, but in controlling the look and the thoughts. You obviously can't walk with your eyes shut, but how fast can you look away... keeping your thoughts in control...
If one is a smoker, then smoking is not a sign of manhood, but if one can pick up a cigarette, light it up, and throw it away without taking a puff, now that is the sign of a man.
Being a drinker, drinking doesn't make one a man, but taking a glass, filling it up, and throwing it away without feeling regret makes one a man.
Being a non-vegeterian, if I can look at the most deliciously cooked chicken and still walk away from the plate without feeling a craving, I think I can be called a man.

Ultimately, the sign of a man is not any of the above discussed habits. The true sign of a man is something inside, something which everyone cannot see and you need to be very close to a person to experience it.
Its a man's heart. The heart of a man makes the man. (What were you thinking?)
How much a man is a man is shown by the way that man treats the woman in his life.

Am I a man? I don't know...
Am I a Brahmachari? I don't know...

But, thanks to a few of my friends... I got a few questions, a few thoughts and now I'm on the way to becoming a better MAN.

How much time do you have!!!

"If you write it more than twice a day... then stampify it"... this is a rubber stamp manufacturer's ad I saw in a newspaper in late 2005.
Even though my boss had said it a few hundred times before that, this was an ad which changed my entire attitude.
Till that day, I used to write the cheque numbers on each and every bank deposit slip. I used to write my name and membership number everytime I signed and about a dozen other details on various documents which I write multiple times a day, every day... so much time used to get wasted and there was no guarantee for accuracy.
On that single day, I ordered more than 20 rubber stamps. Everything from account details, membership details, beneficiary names, client names, anything which needs to be written more than twice a day was in the form of a rubber stamp.

Today I work in an organisation where I don't do much of writing but work more on the computer. At times we need to run programs 10-20 times a day. Each run may 5 minutes of setup to get a result. This means one could take upto 1 to 1.5 hours a day just doing setups.

Personally, I'm an absolutely lazy guy, so obviously I look for ways to automate such activities... at the same time, I'm not willing to compromise on the results.
As a result, my knowledge in automation has gone up significantly in the last few year and I'm able to do much more in much less time.
That apart, the accuracy goes up manifold because you have removed the human element thereby removing the greatest cause of errors...

Whether you are in business, working in an organisation, teaching, any profession... you need to ask yourself...
Are you spending too much time doing the same thing everyday?
If yes, is there a way to automate it?
If yes, why not automate it?
It could be recording collections, tracking your employee attendance, entering accounts, writing up cheques / deposit slips, sending reminder mails, client update mails, entering time sheets... it could be anything...

As your SOW so you reap

Yep... you read it right... and no... there is no typo error either...
The title is exactly what I wanted to type...
As your SOW... so you reap...
SOW stands for "Start Of Week"

I was about to share this learning last Sunday but somehow I didn't. It so happened that I left my house last Monday in a less than happy mood and somehow every activity I took up during the week was getting completed but not in a good mood.
The last week only strengthened my faith in my belief...
My Teacher has taught me - "The Belief you hold at the beginning of the journey defines the journey"
I'm a strong believer in this one single statement and the ones close to me have seen this in my personal mails as a signature.
This statement came to me through my teacher somewhere in December 2009 and since then it turned my life around. All I had to do was adopt this statement as a thinking process and 2 and half years later this has become my second nature.
Very often, we begin our journey the wrong way... Monday morning is the best example I can think of right now.
We are starting off a new week tomorrow morning... Lets just do this small test...
Answer my questions honestly...
What is your thought process when you get up on a Monday morning?
What are you thinking when you get into your office on Monday morning?
Most of us... including me... are clearing up the backlog of previous Friday on the Monday morning. We could have easily sat for an extra 15 minutes on Friday evening and finished it up.

Infact these Monday morning symptoms are so strong, that we have even invented the term... "Monday Morning Blues"...
What I don't understand is how could someone be anything less than 100% on a Monday morning after 2 full days of recharge period. (unless you are doing some energy expenditure over the weekend)

Lets do this experiment and have a powerful start for our Monday tomorrow morning. After all, even our elders used to say the same thing... we just found a new meaning for it...

As your SOW... So you reap...
As your (Start Of Week)... so you reap... (the fruits of the week...)

Think about it...

Have a fantastic week ahead...

A Hundred Miles Travelled...

A hundred miles travelled…

A thousand seeds sown…

I know not which ones sprouted…

Alas… it shall never be known…

I do know that I did what I was meant to do

Maybe I took along a few fellow travelers too…

With Gratitude in my heart,…

I pray to that One force…

Let me just be the tool and You should be the source…

This is the hundredth sharing since I started writing this blog. Over this time a lot of learning has happened through life and whatever contributed to my growth became a sharing in this blog.

I do not know how many people have read the posts, which post clicked for you,  which one made a difference to you and which one was totally illogical, maybe a bit too extreme… (then again, those who know me well know that quite a few things I do border towards extreme)

What I do know is that it is never possible to make everyone happy. I just need to be myself, it may make some happy, it may make others not so happy.

Then again, I’m yet to meet someone who has the secret to make everyone happy.

What’s important for me is that atleast one person grew from every post that came through me. Atleast one person was never the same as before, after reading a sharing. If that has happened, I think the efforts have paid off…

There have been quite a few places where the sharings received encouraging feedback and some places where I got corrected…

Wherever I was able to touch your heart, my communication was clear and good. Wherever you think that I have not said something correct… it only means that I need to work more on the way I put things across…

I think this is a good time to share some of the nice comments which I have received over time…

So here we go…

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2012/04/cost-of-smile.html

-       This blog made me smileJ

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/12/alcohell.html

-      Little too extremist! Aren’t a few things made for adults, why to talk about kids consuming them? Everything in limited quantity is acceptable till one doesn’t end up being slave of same. Control lies in knowing how much can one handle and then abiding by the same…

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/12/did-i-say-that.html

-       your blogs are also as sweet as u… keep the good work going

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-anchor.html

-       interesting… ur blogs are going on different level

-       very true!! Rock on with your thinking hat!

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/10/strangers.html

-       stranger is none other than “MYSELF”

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/10/just-ask.html

-      Guls… rightly said… u need to have the urge to ask if you are in search of a solution… do not worry if the one you are asking is either a senior or junior… what matters is the answer / solution… This is what I have learnt from my previous Boss AJD… and Guls you will agree that you too have learnt this at AJD.

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/10/wants-and-needs.html

-       Life is definitely not about needs! Its about getting what you want

-       Guls… in such situations what I do is I analyse whether it is necessary to buy or not. I always buy or invest in something only when there is a need for it and not just because I like something. People do call me “kanjoos”… but that is how I am.

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/09/teacher.html

-       Good one I agree with you on this and dedicate the link to all my teachers as well

-       Good one dear… once again txs for your greetings and reminding me to wish my teacher and mentor… it was a great feeling when I received a reply from him… txs dude keep it up…

-       To the teachers over the world!!!

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-share.html

-       very nice… the best one so far.

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/06/train-journey.html

-       Even I wonder ‘where are you from’… ET?? Good one dear.!

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/20110/11/behind-every-successful-man-there-is.html

-       very true… keep writing such facts about life…

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2010/10/that-feeling-of-sometimes-i-just-hate_28.html

-       nice post… a good food for thought for people running aimlessly through jobs!

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2012/05/for-time-being.html

(this comment is from a person who is an expert on Organisational Behaviour)

-      We need to work on communication at different levels in the organization. We take it for granted. We also assume so many things and don’t bother to check these assumptions. Many problems can be prevented if we do so. We need to develop courage to ask relevant and pertinent questions, but we have to dare to ask a question to ourselves – why Im am doing whatever I am doing? Thanks for the wake up call.

http://gulshanseeks.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-beginnings.html

-      This was nice. Reading between the lines it gives us quite a few messages. If one can stick to this, there can never be breakdowns in relationships. So nice of you to express like this. Keep it up.

These are just some of the responses I received through emails and facebook in addition to the ones already posted as comments on the respective blogs…

This is just those who chose to express… there must be many more…

Like I said in the beginning…  I do not know which of the seeds sown through me have borne what fruit to you…

Forever in Gratitude…

I'll answer your question but...

Recently I was having a chat with my friend and my friend asked me a question "Gulshan, even I want to stay always motivated and energetic like you, how can I do it? Whats your secret?
(yes... a few people actually think that I'm always motivated and energetic)
I almost answered his question but stopped in time. I asked him a question in return. I asked him -
"I will give you the answer... I'll tell you exactly what I do to stay active and motivated... but on one condition... Will you do exactly what I tell you to? Follow the exact steps?"

As expected, my friend rolled his eyes... gave an innocent puppy smile and said... "Well....."

I didn't give him the answer.

You know why?

He asked the question but did he really intend implement the answer?

A lot of people come for free advice... How do you stay so fit? How can you do this? How can you do that?

Earlier I used to be very excited to answer... but over a period of time I realised that the answers I give would not be used and become a matter of gossip behind my back...

We keep asking so many trivial questions - How do I increase my memory? How do I increase my concentration? How do I get fit? Do you think Ravana was really that bad? etc etc.

Be honest... you also would have asked such questions at some time in your life. I definitely have.
Did you get answers?
How many answers did you implement?

We keep asking all sorts of questions without any intention... correction... without any serious intention to implement them.
Infact some characters ask questions just for the sake of asking and don't even wait for the complete answer before moving on to the next topic...
Its nothing but a wastage of our time and others'.

Thats why I decided that whenever someone asks me a question for which I know the answer but I don't feel that person will implement the answer... I ask upfront... "I'll give you the answer but will you implement it?"
Generally its a pretty good way to understand whether the other person will respect the answer coming through me...