Wednesday 23 April 2014

Shyam and his art of Time Management


If you feel, after reading the topic above, that this blog too, contains the same old ideas almost everyone knows, then you should definitely scroll down to read the difference.  

This is the story of Shyam who is an intellectual kid. His perspective towards everything was way different from those around him. If someone would tell him that 2+2 is 4, he would not accept it readily; he would try to understand why 2+2=4 is, very logical was his mind. He would never accept everything, everyone would tell him as truth, and every idea had to first pass his logical test to be accepted as truth, at least for him.

He was a good student in school, but he never realized this, in fact he was quite curious about the partiality which was done to him, the use of mugging up the question and answers, the rude behavior of his teachers and much more. 

He managed to score good marks because of his intellectual mind. Luckily, his parents always loved him for what he was and were happy with the marks that he scored. It was now time for very important SSC exams and he kept receiving tips and ideas from his seniors, colleagues & teachers about exam preparation, last day revision, time management etc, but unfortunately none worked for him. The most important advice given that time was Start with the most difficult chapter and the do the easy chapters in the end. He followed this tip and almost on every exam, he couldn’t complete his studies. He would write in his papers whatever he knew and come home disappointed for not giving his best shot.

He followed the same advice of SSC until his post-graduation. Although this advice helped him at times, his academic graph was sometimes good and sometimes satisfactory. It was never the best. 
At work he was told that the most efficient way to work is by choosing the most difficult task on the list and then moving on. He followed this, but he couldn’t complete his work on time with this advice. Being intellectual and highly intuitive, something in him kept telling him that this is not the most efficient way to work, but he would then ask himself, why was everyone following this advice? Are they wrong? Am I wrong? His confusions only increased.

In fact, in life too, he started taking the difficult path first postponing the easiest path, he would think more on what he couldn’t do than what he could, he would spend more time thinking on things which were not working. One fine day, his career came to a standstill, so depressed was he that he doubted if he is really capable of doing any good work.

He decided to find out the cause of so many failures that he was facing over so many years. He read many self help books and most of them had difficult concepts; and different books had different ideas only to add to his confusion and woes. But enough was enough, he turned away from everything that was confusing him, instead he chose the ideas which he felt were easy to understand and implement. He wanted his career & finances to recover ASAP. He sat down and wrote all the solutions that came to his mind, picked up the easiest one and started working on it, one easy solution led to another easy solution and gradually he got a good job. At job, he came across people with the old idea and many of his colleagues were considered inefficient or were not able to complete their work on time. But Shyam was determined to prove his mettle. 

In his work list he chose the easiest task first. He chose what he could do over what he couldn’t do. He chose the ideas which were clear to him when certain assignments had confusing ideas.

He chose clarity over confusion,
He chose the easy over difficult
He started with what was possible amidst the impossible
He chose easy people over difficult one
He read books with easy concepts.

When he chose the easy things first, he was able to do the most difficult task eventually.
When he chose the task that he could do, he was even able to do the task that he couldn’t,  
When he believed and implemented the clear ideas, the confusing ones became gradually clear to him.
He never ran away from the difficult tasks, the easy tasks gave him the confidence and energy to do the most difficult task with ease.



He became known for his quality and timely completion of work, calm and composed mind, intelligence, out of the box ideas and many other traits. His life was far more organized and his productivity at work only kept soaring.

Shyam’s favourite quotations are
“Like Attracts Like”
“Energy flows where attention goes”

This story is not meant to contradict anyone’s beliefs or ideas about time management but to share the inspiration I received from Shyam’s story. What according to you is the moral of the story?