holdyourthoughts

The trick to working better and improving work productivity is not to work harder and burn the midnight oil as some would think. It's to take a break and also to do less! This has been something I have been trying to tell all the people who work with me. It's important to do LESS and do it better than to take on too many things on hand and then deliver poorly. And now, Harvard Business Review has a research report out that confirms this view. You can find the link to a detailed report here on the Wall Street Journal So, focus on quality of delivery. Do less. Learn to say NO to tasks building up to overwhelm you.

A very interesting event is on these days. Professors of India ’s elite institutes IITs and IIMs are protesting in unique ways like day long fasting to protest what they are calling an injury to their autonomy of recruiting good teachers and pay scales. I think this is a farce. This is just a way to arm twist the HRD ministry to increase their salaries. I have nothing against the IITs, IIMs. In fact, I have had the opportunity to study in one of them. But, what make those institutes great are its students and not so much its faculty. If you gather together some of the best academic brains in the country in one place, you don’t really need excellent teachers to produce great results. In fact, excluding very few of the faculty most others are of very ordinary standard. But then again, that’s true of every university, college in the country. That is one of the main reasons why we have not seen any great research work come out of the IIT/IIM system. Whatever good comes out the institutes...

Today, for I had the "fortune" of visiting the largest and supposedly the best government hospital in Kolkata. I had gone there with my wife to visit one of lab assistant's who works in her college. While she went to meet and enquire about the condition of this person, I was walking about on the ground floor emergency ward. What I saw shocked me. This was the first time that I actually have been to a government hospital and the condition was simply deplorable. It was dirty, with paan stains all over the place, overcrowded with people, with patients lying on stretchers on the floor, and with a disgusting and nauseating smell emanating from every corner. If this is the condition of the "best" hospital then I shudder to think what is the state of the other more ignominious ones! This got me thinking about the concept of a welfare state - a haloed concept popularized in India by the founding fathers of our country. The problem I, and a lot of pragmatists like me, h...

Recently, Idea Cellular has been running an advertisement starring Abhishek Bachchan as a doctor who suddenly with an idea of asking people to walk and down. At the end of this rather humorous ad, Abhishek Bachchan is seen swatting flies as he has no patients anymore. Everybody has become "fit" after walking and talking!! I liked this ad for its humor quotient. Then one day, when I was struggling to find time for my daily walks, I realized that I could implement this in my life. I have a few hours of conference calls in the evening every weekday. So, I had a great opportunity of utilizing some of this time for my daily dose of walking. And that is exactly what I am doing now. Last couple of days, I have been doing 40-45 mins of walking during my calls (ones where I am there more as an FYI and not an active participant). I really think its a great way to utilize the time and stay fit at the same time.