Time travails!

So we each run around talking about how we don’t have time. we don’t have time for this or that….and that we wish we had more hours in a day….but do we actually make PRODUCTIVE use of that time…???

an actor with a day job i was speaking to once told me after a rehearsal that his job with a well known tv channel was really not that challenging… he came in by 10. 10- 10:30 he had breakfast with a co-worked either at his desk or at the co-workers desk. and then he went back to work, where he logs in to gmail chat…finishes his work in an hour and chats online the rest of the time or better still facebook’s! then it’s lunch and he and his group usually take a long lunch from 1- 2:30, after which it’s an hours work and then off to tea from 3:30-4:30 and they pack up by about 5:30 ish…

Productively he has 2 hrs of work…the rest of the day the company seems to just want seat-warmers!

that’s the one thing i learnt at stanford…it didn’t matter how much time u spent at the books…what mattered was what you gave in….results mattered….it didn’t matter whether you could absorb what you read in an hour and party the entire weekend , starting friday morning…it mattered what you gave in at the next class.

companies lay too much importance on desk sitting and less importance on actual competence! my friend at stanford finished his entire under-graduation a year early–where did he find time, with his excess partying and trillion extra-curricular activities…i don’t know…but i do know that he was valued on his work and results an not how much time he sat looking at books! sitting for 8 hrs at your desk does not make you productive, finishing deadlines, completing tasks- that does!

google and so many other software companies in palo alto have chilling rooms where employees can play ps3 , bounce basket balls ..even go for a swim-DURING THE WORK DAY to INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY!!! there is even a software giant who has a sleep room for a quick afternoon siesta!

PRODUCTIVITY is about making optimal use of your energies …

think about it….

walk into an office and you’ll see 9/10 employees on social networking sites. that’s great- they need the downtime! but wouldn’t it be better if you worked with them basis deadlines and not basis 9-5 p.m.!that way maybe you’ll even end up saving on electricity bills and have a happier group of co-workers….

so today….just start setting personal deadlines for you and those in your team (WORKABLE personal deadlines) and then let them be adults and make them deliver on their deadline… surprisingly ,like what happens in palo alto software companies a lot of employees because of the time freedom they get end up working a lot later and a lot harder….so its win-win!

Dealing with that MONDAY morning!

so you’ve got the monday morning blues….which becomes the monday afternoon blues and sure enough makes for an exhausted monday    evening where you’re almost too tired to get home and crawl into bed….each week you think monday’s are going to get easier …Each week they  don’t! Each week you hate monday mornings and each weekend you dread the onset of this awful day!

Let’s change that! Well you’re having a bad monday. You take it out on assistant. Now assistant has a bad monday. He takes it on peon. Peon    takes it out on the next in his food chain and soon before you know it..everyone is snappy, everyone fed up and everyone exhausted!

What we do wrong I believe…is kind of the vacation syndrome. Like after a vacation you need another one just to get over how exhausted you  are….on mondays we put all our plans for the week and try to accomplish them all in ONE day! it’s impossible. it’s ridiculous. and it most  definitely will kill you! so let’s try  a more structured approach to the week…on monday start your days a bit slower and more organised. figure out  what you have to do and how you are going to achieve it. try and schedule weekly meetings on a tuesday where people can tell you what they can  realistically achieve by the end of the week and not over-promise and under-deliver. start the week differently. do a coffee session. say hi to fellow workers without snapping at them…work your way in to the day…so mid way thru the day it already feels like a thursday-more relaxed, more focussed..less frantic.

by the end of the day start focussing on what the week’s goals look like for you and therefore on a tuesday morning you’d have thought them out…got rid of the weekend’s excesses, tackled the monday morning blues, worked thru it systematically and without any mania figured out how this week plays out for you!

i’m not saying do nothing on a monday. i’m saying use monday to put your week in order and make it more productive for you. planned & productive monday. planned & productive week!

don’t let monday crush you! CRUSH MONDAY INSTEAD!

starting over again…and the other things fun in my life!

It amazes me…the resilience of people or may be it’s just my resilience to keep starting over …I mean you’d think it gets old after a while! You start a blog and then it’s wiped out, start a new one, then you find that one doesn’t work – the marvel of computing and human error and then you start a new web site and start all over again! I mean that’s NOT FUN!

BUT IT IS!

Every time I start over , I get the chance to do it right this time… to make it good, to correct it, to make promises I can keep, to write more regularly and better, to BE BETTER!

That’s kind of my life too…. I realise.

I have started from scratch so many times, I can’t remember how many times I’ve hit the floor. So many times, that I have become a very experience ‘faller’ as someone once told me! I’ve fallen hard, but I’ve managed to stand up and as I have also been told (yes these are real comments) ‘ I’m the neatest faller someone had ever seen! 😉 ‘

I mean …let’s look at this I started  out with theatre, moved to films, found that films was more about the sleeping around and the sleeping with whom and realised that this was not a place for me ( a 17 year old)…. went back to theatre and started Balancing Act Productions. Needed to do more than just act , so started producing and directing…learnt the ropes, fell on my face and learnt to roll, crawl  and walk again! All was going perfectly when bang I fall and get ADEM (Acute Disseminated Encyphomyelitis)-  a single attack of multiple sclerosis and am left side paralyzed, lose my ability to speak, swallow, see and hear on one side and I start over. 37 kgs extra in one month (thanks to steroids fed to me via a tube up my face) and after being in coma for 2 days; I start again…sitting, teaching, creating and working!

And now as Balancing Act Productions moves from stage to television and even to film…it’s like I’m back on the floor learning how to put the bricks up, watching people try and push me down, hurt me, will me to fail , will me to fall down and to them I say-   I’ve fallen down so many times, it’s not starting over any more…it’s RE-INVENTING!

And God! That is FUN! 😉

So…to new beginnings…to joyful first steps and to great successes!

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