The other day I was
trying to persuade my son to restart his writing hobby and his response was ‘No
time,Appa!’ Though he is very good at writing tongue-in-cheek, humorous
articles,and holds a record of sorts as all thirteen articles that he has
written were published in two leading
English dailies of Chennai.Yet he stopped writing four years ago. I think it is
because of laziness and not because of lack
of time!
Lack of time is an
excuse which many people who have plenty of time give; for not doing a job or not
doing the mandatory exercises or even pursuing a hobby. It is just a mindset
problem. I have found that the busiest people I know always find time to do
what they want!
My friend Sam
Balsara, the legendary adman, Chairman of the Madison Group, is one such
person. Apart from his personal involvement in the thirty odd companies he has a
stake in; he is also very active in many industry bodies. His day starts at
9.00 am when he leaves for his office and ends only when he returns home after
10 or 11 pm invariably after attending some function or the other. Though an
extremely busy man, he always finds time to do a great job of whatever
responsibility he takes on. He is also very prompt in responding to any
communication sent to him by anyone through email, SMS or even a simple
telephone call. It may be just a two word ‘Yes Rajan’, ‘No Rajan’ or a line
giving his response to a problem or a request posed to him. When a journalist
once asked him “You are always so busy. How do you find time for everything? Don’t
you ever relax?” He said, “Since I am thoroughly enjoying whatever I am doing,
I relax on the job” He is really amazing!
At the height of my
career I was also involved with a few industry bodies and NGOs. If I had willingly
committed to do a job, I would just do it, I would never say; “Sorry I did not have the time, so I could not do the job”. Only acts of God and nature would prevent me
from keeping up my promise.
After analyzing the
success stories of many successful and accomplished people, I have concluded that the secret lies
in ‘Time Management’ and prioritizing the jobs at hand. If you plan your
activities for the day, for the week or even for a month ahead, you can by and
large achieve whatever you set out to do – barring when your routine is affected
by totally unexpected events happening in the family or when your health is
badly affected.
I am a great
believer in preparing check lists for every activity I am involved in, so much
so, in some circles I am even known as ‘Check list Rajan’. I have found from
experience that when you list down everything in writing, instead of depending
on your memory (which in any case is poor in my case) and meticulously follow up on the list you
can achieve a lot. You will never give lack of time or poor memory as an excuse
for not doing a job. It is another matter, if you prepare the check list but
forget to review it regularly.
I remember, in the
good old days my weekly job list covering various organizations I was involved
with (including a section covering the jobs connected with my household ) used
to run into several pages and the daily list used to be at least two pages. But
these days, post retirement my check list of jobs to be done for a whole month
can be fitted into a single page and the check list of jobs for the day is only
a couple of lines,consisting mainly of the things I have to do for running my
home in my new role as a ‘House Holder’.
The sense of
achievement you get when you are able to do a job well even when you have time constraints
is something which you have to experience to realize it. “Great, I have done
the job, what next?” should be the attitude
in life. Never ever say “No time Yaar!” when you can actually find the time to
do whatever you want to do, if you will it.
