Productivity and Managing Your Time

Some things can't be rushed. A baby has to be nurtured/incubated for around nine months in the womb. But most other things can take different amounts of time. One way to do it is to practice until you are good at something, so it takes less time. The other major thing one can try is to avoid (big) time-wasters- I mean, pick a few, if you cannot avaoid all of them, but pick those which take relatively less time.

This post is actually triggered by a question from Writabrita Ray, my recent student. She asked me how I manage to pack in so many things in my day. One way might be to sleep four hours a day (like Mr. Modi?), but I can't do that. I need my quota. But the waking hours can be distributed according to what you like to do plus what you have to.

Travel is sometimes optional, but I like to travel because it is always a new experience. I do look for opportunities to meet people during travel (again, that is optional). I have met several ex-students, colleagues and friends/relatives in my travels- in the U.S, too, and in Indian cities, and in Singapore (there's nothing like a real meeting!). It also gives me a chance to take pictures, and pick up books- I am a book store addict! For some of my own books (like Marketing Research), I have made students work-I use their cases, with credit to them. That saves me time, and gets the work done. So share the work load- in legit ways- and be more productive.

Writing, I have been doing since I was an editor of a wall magazine during my MBA, and I started off with reports on campus events ( I still have the originals, ink on paper) and reviewing films. We also wrote small pieces about our classmates for the Year Book. Blogging came naturally, and book-writing, not so naturally, as it is hard work. Hearing someone say they read it, is priceless though.

Ok, so the point is, I guess, you do more of what you like, some of what you have to, and avoid time-wasters. I control my TV time (almost nil these days), phone time (likewise), and find that I have plenty of time left to do what I really like doing! Karaoke partying is one of those. I also find social media, with its 2-way communication, more energising than TV-watching. It's also a great source of ideas, like the one for this post-and fun!

Traffic Jams- How to Utilise Them

The country's competitiveness and GDP can grow if we do the following (choose any two) during a traffic jam.

Invent a new product. Who says you have to be sitting on the "think tank" in order to think? You can use a traffic jam.

Think of 5 ways to kill your boss-he's the one hampering your productivity, right? (We didn't promise that it would be good for you-only for the country)

Throw apples at the passersby..the demand for apples will directly go up..you can also choose tomatoes, if they are selling at 100 bucks a kilo.

Honk until your battery goes dead..demand for car towing services will increase, and therefore,....

Order a takeaway pizza and desrcibe your location as the ---- jam..he'll understand, he'll deliver..you have managed to contribute your mite to mitigate the unemployment problem.

Write a resume/autobiography/poem/..circulate them to the other people in the jam.you may get lucky and find a publisher among them..or an employer..

Festivities and Productivity

Festivals we celebrate in a multicultural society such as ours are numerous. A rough calculation from my limited knowledge of festivals we celebrate shows that we have around 15-20 festivals of Hindu denomination or tradition, around 4-5 Muslim, around 2-3 Christian, and maybe 1-2 each of Sikh, Parsi, Jain or other faiths.

This totals up to around 2 months of festivities if you include the number of days we choose to celebrate each one, even if you don't celebrate each one fully. The consequences of this on national productivity may be negative, even though there are some positives that are intangible, like the joy of meeting family and friends with whom we celebrate, building up a community feeling, and so forth.

But if we have to improve our own productivity, we may need to choose a few to celebrate and choose not to celebrate others. Of course, that is a choice that we may have to make individually, in order to raise the national standard of living and remain globally competitive.

There are of course, other ways to improve productivity such as better time management. But this is not about those.

Happiness and Productivity- What is the Correlation?

I am into correlations for the moment. Commonly accepted wisdom in Human Resources Management says that a happy employee performs better, is more productive, etc..

Is that necessarily true? I was unhappy and good at my studies in school. Many sales managers (and other managers) increasingly ill-treat, mistreat, and abuse their subordinates into performing or being more productive. Usually, they succeed.

The contingency theory of leadership claims that leadership style should change according to the type of subordinates and the context. China today produces goods at a lower cost than mot people in the world. Are their workers happier? I don't know, because I never heard of worker satisfaction surveys in China. Not sure if these are permitted under their system.

The question simply is this- is happiness of the employee at work over-rated? Now that I have provoked you, let us hear from you readers.