What went wrong with Aditya ?

Giving a thought to this, his boss recalled that during last two years Aditya never used to do certain tasks that he feels uninterested. As he used to carry out most of difficult tasks successfully , those unfinished certain work were always given to someone else in the team. Aditya always had a freedom to choose what tasks to do first from the bunch of tasks that were assigned to him. Out of all tasks, he always used to complete 90% of tasks in less than 50% of allotted time. But he never used to do those remaining 10% tasks and those were always assigned to some other in the team.

At the client location, they used to follow strict order of doing tasks and Aditya was never allowed to choose the tasks that he wants to do. Unfortunately, he was assigned to do the tasks that he never wanted to do. The tasks, which he feels interesting, were queued after these uninterested tasks. Due to Aditya’s basic procrastinating nature, he never finished those uninterested tasks ( which client wanted to finish them first before taking rest of tasks ). Aditya failed terribly and was taken back from the client project.

How Aditya, his boss and the client could have handled this situation better?

The answer is Structured Procrastination.

What is Structured Procrastination?

Structured Procrastination is an approach / strategy discovered by John Perry. It is a way of doing everything else inorder to avoid one important task. It is a technique, if properly used, makes structured procrastinator most efficient than anyone else in his team.

How it is different from procrastination?

Normal procrastinators always avoid doing important tasks ( that are really important and urgent ) and also they don’t do other less important tasks inorder to avoid those important tasks.  They just procrastinate everything.

While structured procrastinators always avoid doing important tasks ( that are not really important and not urgent ) and they do other less important tasks ( some of these tasks are really important and most difficult ones ).

Got it? NO? Let me explain in detail.

How to become Structured Procrastinator?

The first step to be structured procrastinator is to create self-deception point.  Given a list of tasks, choose one or two tasks that you don’t like ( and are not so important or urgent ) and mark them as very important high priority tasks ( self-deception ). Mark the actual important tasks as low priority tasks. Creating self-deception for yourself, now you have to do all those low priority tasks ( which are actually important tasks ) inorder to avoid those high priority tasks ( which are less important or urgent ).

This may initially feel awkard / funny / weird. But as you go on practising it, you will achieve tremendous productivity.

How bosses should handle Structured Procrastinators?

There are many approaches:

Suppose say if there are six tasks to be done by a sub-ordinate which normally takes 18 days considering avg 3 days for each task.

1) Making him fool:  Assign all six tasks to him. Tell him that one out of six is very important task ( which is actually not an important task ). He will do rest 5 tasks in 9 days and will avoid 6th task which he don’t want to do. When he finishes 5 tasks, assign that 6th task to someone else.

2) Understanding what he likes and what he hates: A boss should always understand what his subordinate likes to do and what he hates to do. Always attach a task ( which he hates to do ) along  with other tasks. He will do rest of all tasks inorder to avoid that task which he hates. when he finishes rest of tasks, assign the remaining task to someone else.

3) Let him choose: Assign bunch of tasks and leave it to him. He will choose one task which he don’t want to do and will do rest of tasks. He will usually keep that as last task. As usual, you can always assign that last task to someone else.

Where bosses do mistake?

Structured Procrastinators are not normal workers. They need special treatment. You cannot treat them just as any other worker.

1) Assigning one task at a time instead of bunch of tasks where he will loose the freedom of doing rest of tasks and avoiding important task.

2) Enforcing to follow strict order to complete tasks such as Task A must be completed before taking Task B and Task B must be completed before taking Task C.. etc. If  Task A is the task that he hates to do, then he will never do it and thus he will not be able to do none of them.  ( This is what really happened to Aditya at client location in the above scenario ).

3) You can never ever force a structured procrastinator to do a job that he hates to do. Scold him, threat him, beg him, request him, kill him.. but he will never do that job. His boss must understand this.

Conclusion: Structured Procrastinators, if properly utilised,  take 50% of time to do 90% of tasks while normal workers take 90% of time for the same.  Structured Procrastinators are not black spots at workplace. Only their bosses should know how to handle them properly.

That is the power of words. Sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, we hurt our loved ones. Why we hurt our loved ones? Is that another form of love? Or we taken them for granted or we just not able to understand them properly. Yes, we do fail to understand our loved ones no matter how deep our relationship is..

Loving is not about finding similarities but accepting differences. Relationship starts with the process of finding similarities. It is the initial stage that make us to feel, that we are identical Gradually, we realize that, we are not identical, we too have differences just like any other person  in this world. The survival of relationship depends on this entire fact,  “Differences that make relationship and not similarities”.

In order to build a long lasting relationship, there are some responsibilities from our side irrespective of whether the person from other side does it or not.

• Never stop loving. Never stop caring. Hope for best but don’t expect anything. Love will become divine when you don’t expect anything in return. It is the form of love that a mother gives to her child. Love that hurts will turn to love that heals when it becomes divine.
• It is more important to trust your relationship than anything else. Trust gives strength.. a strength that bears the pain of wound caused by the other person in a relationship.
• Be honest. It is not necessary to share everything. But whatever you share, make sure that it is true. Being honest is very important for the survival of relationship. You spoke harsh words. You hurt the person. You spoke a lie. You cheat the person. Love can heal the wound made by hurting, but it cannot heal the wound that caused due to cheating.
• Understand the situation. Everyone has their own duties. All are busy in their own lives. Still, they try to get the time for their loved ones infact they try their best.  Most important is understanding the person in a relationship. We do everything for that person but we actually fail to understand him/her. Thorough understanding adds another 100 years to the life span of your relationship. “I can’t cry.. that doesn’t mean I am heartless”
• Forgive and apologize.  We need to learn to forgive when others make mistake and we need to learn to apologize when we make mistake.

Love heals everything. Hmmm… That’s a secret for long lasting relationship.

Have you ever thought of what is the role of a friend in our life? How can a friend change our life? The role of a friend in our life is as that of air we breathe, it is as that of water, as that of food and as that of our basic needs.

As the time goes on and on, as the frequency of meets and talks decreases, due some unavoidable reasons, you may start to feel like your best friend, who was almost everything to you, is now not really important as he/she was earlier. But no matter what, you need a friend through out your life. It is even good if he/she is same old best friend.

We face many situations in our life which can only be shared or seek help to a friend. You turn to your friend when you breakup with your lover or when you face issues with him/her. You turn to your friend when you get hurt by someone be it by other friend or your lover or someone from your family. You need your friend in every difficult situation you face in your life. It may be simple as of silly fallacy fought to complex as of conceive case.

If you try to find the reasons for gradual decrease in friendship, you will get many. First one, as I already said, decrease in frequency of meets and talks. Second one will mostly be misunderstandings between friends which remain either untold or unresolved. Third one, change in position or environment might also decrease friendship. You studied in your place and now have come to entirely new place to do job. Your position changes now, your surrounding environment changes, even there will be a change in your behavior also. You will be unaware, rather ignorant, of your behavioral changes; but your friend notices every change in you. Either you start to feel you don’t need him/her or your friend starts to feel that now no there is no need of him/her to you based on your response. This will always remain untold or unheard resulting into a gradual decrease of friendship.

The other reasons include like entry of new person between you and your friend. This new might be your friend’s lover or husband or another friend who tries to snatch your friend from you. Earlier your friend used to share everything with you, spend most of time with you, always ask advice or help to you no matter how silly it is. Now for all these, another person is taking a share and you start to feel that there is no need of you to your friend now. It becomes responsibility of your friend to manage between two and to prevent imbalance of importance. However everyone doesn’t do this and this ultimately leads again to the gradual decrease of friendship.

Friendship mainly includes four stages. In first stage, everything looks and feels sweet and nice. In initial stage of friendship, you won’t object to his/her views or talks. You feel, yours and your friend’s views are similar. This is a ‘heaven on earth’ stage.

In second stage, as the friendship grows, gradually you will get to know that your friend is not exactly as you thought earlier. You will start to find to more differences in opinions between you. But however at this stage of friendship you won’t express any uncomfartability in front of your friend. You will keep mum thinking he/she will improve further in future.

You enter third stage when this uncomfartability reaches its peak. You open your mouth at this stage and actually start complaining or even start quarrelling with your friend. Arguments, misunderstandings, foughts..etc everything comes under this stage. This is very crucial stage and the future of your relationship depends on how well you handle this stage, how you solve these misunderstandings. Most of relationships or friendships break at this stage only. It is very important to clear misunderstandings in your relationship. Misunderstandings that untold are like a poison in your heart which uproots your relationship. It is better to talk openly and sort out the issues before grows to oak. If your friend hurts you knowingly or unknowingly by his words or by his acts, tell him/her openly. By doing this, you will help yourself as well as your friend. First benefit is you cleared your misunderstanding at a seed stage and you helped your friend to improve himself/herself by telling his mistake. It will prevent him/her to do the same mistake again in future. Friendship nurtures in this way only.

You will be in the fourth stage of friendship when you successfully cross the third stage. You know your friend’s good and bad things. At this stage, you actually respect the differences between you and your friend. Friendship that reached this stage will not break through out the life no matter how serious the issue goes between. We should learn to bring our every friendship, we make, to this stage. It will be again a ‘heaven on earth’.

]]> http://harshah.com/blog/2007/10/10/the-role-of-a-friend-in-life/feed/ 0 http://harshah.com/blog/2007/09/19/laziness/ http://harshah.com/blog/2007/09/19/laziness/#comments Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:57:00 +0000 harsha http://yourharsha.com/?p=10 Laziness is the word that describes me most and sleeping the 2nd in hit list. About sleeping, I will write about that some other day, some other time.Wiki defines laziness as the lack of desire to perform work or expend effort.

I think thats not really so right definition. One day, some one may come with better definition for laziness, the definition that it really deserves.

Whatever, as far my opinion, laziness is really good thing and it saves your lot of time, energy,…etc etc

If you think laziness is bad thing, check this and this.

Here is one more sibling of laziness, procrastination. More here on effective procrastination.

For tech-hungry people, here is some food to whet your appetite.

And for bookies, bookworms…. you may find these useful and also this.

Special note: To all those who have worked too much without knowing where they are heading or where they have landed (like d*nkey.. I should not say that) and also to all who think life has become quite boring, try to be little lazy. I am sure you will enjoy it. And thats thought for today… see the happiness in laziness.