Yesterday one of my mentors (whom I really respect a lot) sent a very flattering email and asked me to be a guest speaker in one of the cohorts he leads - topic was work-life integration. I was not very sure what to say, so we discussed it last night and he told me a few things I do that I can talk about. So, I was feeling really nice in the morning planning out what to say and the works.
The son wakes up pretty late these days and I dont try to force him out of his sleep either since anyways these are his last golden days, once in school he will have to wake up like clockwork. So, to induce him to wake up early today so that I could reach work on time, I devised a brilliant plan of drawing back the curtains at around 7 so he would wake up at the ideal 7.15 to 7.30 which would let us get out of the house on time. (he wakes up almost immediately when light hits his face)
Everything was going well and like I planned. He woke up at 6.45 itself, without me having to do anything and then he got ready to eat in good time and everything seemed to be going rather well when my domestic help decided to start being cranky and complain about too much clothes put for wash and how she is working way too much etc and then started the downward swing. She also forgot to clean his bottles, so I had to spend an extra few minutes doing that and all in all only got out of the house 10 minutes later than planned. Only to find a huge bore digging truck block the entire road without letting me get out of our colony. Luckily that beast moved faster than I feared.
Then all through the road, the folks just decided to drive slower - tailgate huge trucks without even attempting to pass, be extra gentle to their shock absorbers by maneuvering ditches at 0 KMPH etc - you get the drift. Somehow I managed to get to work just in time for the session. But then I did not exactly pull it off like I had hoped to. I did manage to go over all the notes I made but in a piecemeal style - not sure if the other managers in the cohort really got any take-aways from it at all :P
Then I came home, mentally preparing on how to deal with the household help. I had given her a raise not very many months ago and carefully I thought over what to say and said it like I hoped to. From the looks of it (or at least till the next argument), I think I won this round. Ironically just last night I was planning to finish a long pending blog on how life learns from work and how work learns from life - and cite this particular example. Last time she did this, I managed to wade through it very well and was particularly proud of it since I was certain that the same situation would have ended with me changing the help if it was a couple of years ago, simply because I was too .. hmm .. whaddayacallit .. unpolished, maybe? Definitely all credit to Subhash and my learning on the job. One of the main reasons why I chose this career path in the first place. It was the perfect opportunity to get over the handicap I had in dealing with all kinds of people. Of course it is still a long way to go, but I can clearly see my own improvement in the past few years! Thanks to some honest and relentless mentors at home (read Subhash) and at work.
Olympics is definitely heartening to watch this time around. Whatever we win is all credit to the athletes, since they definitely did not have it easy going all the way there. All power to Mary Kom and hope she brings in the Gold. We as a nation do not deserve to tag it on ourselves saying "India" won the gold - but hopefully it changes a little bit of our attitude of neglect towards the seven sisters :) (There are a lot of articles being flung around on this one so I wont write anything more for fear of having nothing new to say)
So back to the day, all is well that ends well :)
The son wakes up pretty late these days and I dont try to force him out of his sleep either since anyways these are his last golden days, once in school he will have to wake up like clockwork. So, to induce him to wake up early today so that I could reach work on time, I devised a brilliant plan of drawing back the curtains at around 7 so he would wake up at the ideal 7.15 to 7.30 which would let us get out of the house on time. (he wakes up almost immediately when light hits his face)
Everything was going well and like I planned. He woke up at 6.45 itself, without me having to do anything and then he got ready to eat in good time and everything seemed to be going rather well when my domestic help decided to start being cranky and complain about too much clothes put for wash and how she is working way too much etc and then started the downward swing. She also forgot to clean his bottles, so I had to spend an extra few minutes doing that and all in all only got out of the house 10 minutes later than planned. Only to find a huge bore digging truck block the entire road without letting me get out of our colony. Luckily that beast moved faster than I feared.
Then all through the road, the folks just decided to drive slower - tailgate huge trucks without even attempting to pass, be extra gentle to their shock absorbers by maneuvering ditches at 0 KMPH etc - you get the drift. Somehow I managed to get to work just in time for the session. But then I did not exactly pull it off like I had hoped to. I did manage to go over all the notes I made but in a piecemeal style - not sure if the other managers in the cohort really got any take-aways from it at all :P
Then I came home, mentally preparing on how to deal with the household help. I had given her a raise not very many months ago and carefully I thought over what to say and said it like I hoped to. From the looks of it (or at least till the next argument), I think I won this round. Ironically just last night I was planning to finish a long pending blog on how life learns from work and how work learns from life - and cite this particular example. Last time she did this, I managed to wade through it very well and was particularly proud of it since I was certain that the same situation would have ended with me changing the help if it was a couple of years ago, simply because I was too .. hmm .. whaddayacallit .. unpolished, maybe? Definitely all credit to Subhash and my learning on the job. One of the main reasons why I chose this career path in the first place. It was the perfect opportunity to get over the handicap I had in dealing with all kinds of people. Of course it is still a long way to go, but I can clearly see my own improvement in the past few years! Thanks to some honest and relentless mentors at home (read Subhash) and at work.
Olympics is definitely heartening to watch this time around. Whatever we win is all credit to the athletes, since they definitely did not have it easy going all the way there. All power to Mary Kom and hope she brings in the Gold. We as a nation do not deserve to tag it on ourselves saying "India" won the gold - but hopefully it changes a little bit of our attitude of neglect towards the seven sisters :) (There are a lot of articles being flung around on this one so I wont write anything more for fear of having nothing new to say)
So back to the day, all is well that ends well :)
3 comments:
Div ! I was supposed to have been responsible for Rohan getting out of bed earlier than usual because I was shouting at the newspaper delivery boy for having dropped The Hindu at our doors without being asked to. It was the decibels of my shouting which casued the consternation and your son got out of the bed crying 'no brushing teeth amma...'. I should get some credit out of the discredit !!!
wow you going from strengths to strengths. Kudos.what did you tell the maid and what did you present at work. Your organisation really recognizes "other than work aspects" from what I concur ..
@Dad - yeah, of course ;)
@Anonymous - I think it is not so much what you say but how you say it and always recognizing a mistake made by oneself if there is one and apologizing for it. In this case I was half at fault too, so I accepted it and worked out a mutually agreeable solution. And yeah, my work place is as awesome as work places get :)
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