Mind it! On making a strategy for a plan to prepare a time management process to begin my work - 29 October 2014

[2] Mind it! a diary of vagrant journeys within the mind.

On making a strategy for a plan to prepare a time management process to begin my work

I usually think that I am unable to get all my work done in the time that it should be completed. I plan to do my work within the time that it should be done, but then I turn around, and find that the time has a-gone by, and there is nothing left. So, I take the smart road. I start planning my work. And usually I find that I have planned all my work very meticulously. Very soon, I reach the same milestone – that all the time has gone by while I was planning to do my work, and there is no time left to actually do the work that I was planning to work on...

Now, I have begun planning the time that I am going to work on how to plan perfectly. Very soon, I guess that I will be able to divide my day perfectly into exact working hours to (1) learn how to plan, (2) read very good planning strategies, (3) understand the best planning strategies and (4) start making a time-table to make good plans. This way, I will probably be preparing the best plan and a superb schedule on how to begin my work.

I am sure that you are now wondering as to why I am not just getting to my work and start finishing it, instead of planning my work. That is very silly. That is not the way of a super manager or an efficient worker. You have to have a time schedule, to-do lists, a perfect plan and a list of team members to delegate the various portions of the plan and monitor and supervise them while they begin to start the work that you were supposed to complete in the first place.

Very soon, I have begun to realise that I am never getting around to actually beginning my work. I have therefore made a good plan on visiting the best book stores and surf the e-marketing web pages to look for the most excellent authors and books on time management, planning work and knowing my best psychological barriers in planning my work. I have also prepared a good strategy to purchase such books. I go to the best book stores, look for the books and check the prices and look around if there are good sales. The best books are very costly. But, I am very intelligent. So, I write down the title of the book, or take a photograph with my cell phone, and get back to the house and surf 2-3 different e-marketing sites. At least one of them is bound to have a sale on these books. Of course, during festivals, New Year or Christmas or other times, they do have a super sale. I could wait for those times.

This usually takes about a month of careful surfing, keeping notes, checking my notebook, preparing a checklist of the books that I want to purchase, and marking out my e-calendar of the best super sale times. Finally, I am able to pick up the 4-5 really costly and most useful and most absolutely necessary got-to-have books that will help me understand my inner self, recognise my time schedules and the inherent problems that they have. One of these books is bound to help me understand the gap between my energy levels, my problems with my aerobics and thereby make it very clear that I probably need to take up yoga or meditation because I am too stressed out by thinking of my plans.

One of these excellent books instructed me that it is because of a bad sleeping pattern that had accumulated over several years that my sleep was putting off my insomnia and preventing me from picking up on strategic mistakes in my planning. Therefore, my bad planning was hijacking my strategies and time management and preventing me from doing any good work. So, I had to develop a strategy of my sleepless hours, and I had to prepare a strategy for my good sleep hours. Of course, some wise people had told me to do good reading during my sleepless hours, so I have an excellent collection of books and magazines, newspapers and web printouts to read up and catch up on whenever I cannot sleep. But, I seem to be always on the internet or watching news channels on the TV when I am awake, so I am not able to pick up my exact sleepless hours.

But the plan that seems to really work is when I am actually sleeping. The book advised me that our mind is the bestest when we are sleeping, and that since there are no distractions, and before we pass on to deep sleep, we are able to plan our next day in a most effective manner. So, I keep a diary, some pens and pencils, a couple of torches and candles and matches to be ready when the idea strikes. Of course, I can easily switch on the lights in the room and make decent notes, or not switch off the lights through the night, and be able to write down the thoughts whenever they come. But then, I would not be sleeping, would I?

I wait until I am fast asleep and I have begun to delve deeply into my dreams. And, suddenly I wake up. It’s usually because of a mosquito or a humid draft or just an unpleasant dream, or most usually, it is due to hearing my own loud snoring. I switch on the torch, pick up the diary and start writing down a list of to-do items that I should work on, immediately on waking up, or for the morrow. This list gets my mind to work on various other related actions, and I keep waking up again and again to keep writing and writing and writing. Finally I am happy that I have washed off all the points of distraction within my mind and I have written them away. Now, I can actually get to sleep well. Almost, of course!

There is also another strategy. It is popularly known as ‘minimalism’. This strategy is actually quite silly. The idea is that one should make small lists – about 3 or 5 or 10 items only in the morning or noon or evening or night, and as far as I am concerned, about 2 similar stages during the night after midnight. Start with these small lists, and try to do the first one on each list. Once you have ticked off the first item, go to an absolutely different list of entirely opposite themes. Take up a very different task and complete that one. Jump off to another thematic area, and complete another task. This helps you complete about 5-7-10 tasks in a day. This is quite silly, believe me. Who benefits by completing their work without a plan?

The entire idea is to plan your work properly with a very efficient strategy, after learning how to do it by reading it up on the best books that you should take all the time you have in selecting very carefully before you decide the best time of the day to do some good thinking about it all. Its very simple, really. Mind it!

Published at - http://intellectualpost.com/mind-it-a-diary-of-vagrant-journeys-within-the-mind-2/

Do administrators use 'delay' as a means of exhibiting power? - 14 June 2009

Do administrators use 'delay' as a means of exhibiting power? Is 'delay' a deliberate process? 
Bharat Bhushan - 14 June 2009

During 1982 to 1992, when I was working with the Bombay Natural History Society, one of the most famous maxims about Dr. Salim Ali, the bird man of India, was, as he would say, one could always expect the BNHS representative to be never on time for a meeting or an appointment. As he would add, with a mischievous smile and after thought, that, the BNHS representative would always be before time for any meeting or an appointment. He would say that if one would look outside the meeting room, the BNHS person would be seated somewhere, doing some work, in those days, without cell phones or laptops.

This was known to one of the most famous Union Ministers of State for Environment who had come in from New Delhi to Mumbai to meet the BNHS before deciding on the final approval for establishment of the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology. She was at the Raj Bhavan, Mumbai, with her son, who was 11-12 years old probably, at that time. I was sent to meet her and accompany her to Hornbill House. I was running late for a deadline to complete some documents and therefore, carried Dr. Salim Ali's portable typewriter with me, to work at the Raj Bhavan until the Hon. Minister would be ready to journey to Hornbill House. There I was, typing away, chatting with her son about bird-stamps, when the Hon. Minister came out of her room and smiled and said - there, you have proved what Dr. Salim Ali said about a BNHS person always being before time.

However, in the public sector, having met with several officers in their 'kingdoms', I have come to understand and recognise a very different paradigm. They seem to think that 'delay' is an obvious display of power and authority. If one would be 'on-time' or, 'before time', the ordinary janata would assume that the officer is of no importance, and has no work at all. Therefore, 'delay' is used as a weapon to assume a mythical position of being important and busy.

I have taught many sessions on 'time management' to the very same officers and clerks over the past many years, but I am yet to see any spark of acceptance or understanding in their eyes during a classroom lecture. Any emphasis on time management, on-time work output or before time and pro-active planning gets absolutely zero response. They listen to the lecture, waiting for my time to run out, and exhibit that total self-arrogance and disdain, that 'time management' is never for them. This seems to be a widespread perspective, amongst village-level, mofussil and urban and secretariat level officers, clerks and typists.

Of course, there are rare examples of non-conformists. But, they are totally dependent on those who would be working with them or delegating to. Thus, they are also  trapped. I had a brilliant boss who would always work as if his feet were on fire, and he had to absolutely rush across to the point of outcome. He would plan backwards from the eventual result, and he had invented a term for it - reverse time plan or, as he would usually refer to as - reverse action. He would set up action points from the point of output, and work backwards with time deadlines and expect his team and colleagues to work with him within that framework.

I have come to the conclusion that the public sector is not inefficient or less capable or less punctual. They simply do not want to be efficient, capable or punctual, for fear of being exposed as officers without enough work, or officers without power or authority. This can be in various ways. One of my senior officers would hold several meetings to plan a particular activity. He would call all officers, HoDs and functionaries and conduct all-day or half-day review and planning meetings. Circulars would be sent and compliance would be expected. Disciplinary action warnings would be conveyed.

My colleagues would pontificate or express their true perceptions during these meetings. My senior officer would ask for the minutes to be made, and he would take up 7-10 days to correct and re-correct and re-correct the draft documents of the minutes. Later, the minutes would be issued, and a follow-up meeting would be called. Action points would be reviewed and my colleagues would be asked to submit deliverables and proposals for expenditure based on such decisions. Finally, the senior officer would write deliberately on the file that such and such expenditure is illogical or beyond any reasonable scope and therefore the activity would not be taken forward.

This is 'delay' of the highest form. It is an actual art form. Everyone is convinced that they are working. Everyone is put to work. Actual deliverables are placed aside, and new deliverables are discovered or invented. And when permissions are asked for, the path is diverted. This requires considerable skill, persistent display of authority and repeated expressions of management abilities. This delay is not mere jargon. This is indeed a mode of deliberate demonstration of retaining status quo on the mythical aspect of being a senior officer.

In actual fact, this is debased intelligence and should be exposed as such.