bad, good, great

I was wondering while watching the movie 'The pursuit of happyness' - why do we always hear only the stories of heroes who transform themselves from a bad to a great situation. What about so many people who are comfortably placed in good situations through out their lives - we don't hear any stories of such people transforming from good to great - do we?

May be because there aren't any such stories - the one that comes close is the book: "Good to Great!" So, why don't we have such instances where people who are leading comfortable life-styles transforming themselves to great folks?

There is a story which probably might explain this phenomenon - there are two birds sitting on a perch near a military airport; The younger bird, seeing a jet fly high, asks her mother why they can't fly like that BIG BIRD? Mother bird replies - "do you see the fire coming at its back? if we have such fire in our belly, we will fly such heights :)" So, the answer is "fire in the belly"

Dire circumstance naturally ignites that fire in most people, some of them never extinguish it and reach great heights. It might be difficult to ignite such fire in our belly, if we are a couch potato or indisciplined brat or dream-less/hope-less saint! I somehow believe that its your dream which ignites that fire called 'Passion' irrespective of your situation.

au revoir...Satish

What the heck is productivity?

You hear the terms such as productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, overhead etc, etc quite often from people who've no idea or several ideas of what they are talking about! Ever wondered what they mean to you? Any individual performs several roles in life - engineer/manager, husband/wife, son/daughter,mother/father, friend/foe, superior/subordinate, individual/team-member etc, etc Asking oneself what their productivity in each of the roles they perform could be a true barometer for one's realization of true potential! Because - it is a well known fact that you can't control/improve something you don't measure. But, how the heck do we measure productivity?

Productivity in its basic definition means output/input - contribution vs consumption, price vs performance. So, the first step is to define what are you important outputs and inputs in a certain role. For instance, one's output as a friend is to see how many times you've helped your mate without being approached or otherwise. Input could be time spent in cultivating that friendship or no. of quarrels between each other etc, etc - You get the idea! It is up to you to see what are important inputs and outputs for you in your role.

Next step is to see if you can quantitatively measure the output and input to arrive at a metric that can be tracked over a period to gauge the trend of how you are doing as a friend :) You need to have a value measure and observe the trend to see how you can improve! In addition, you can set the goals and peform against such expectations as you go along.

My first impression to this thought of applying productivity to all the roles we play seemed absolutely absurd and ridiculous- because there is so much subjectivity and emotional quotient associated with certain roles that it is almost impossible to put a number. As they say, some relationships are invaluable that you can't put a value to it. Agreed!

However, how do you know that you are becoming a better father as years pass by? Should subjective comments or visceral impressions guide you in that crucial role? Many of the roles are the new roles we start in with zero experience - father, husband etc, etc We've no clue of how to treat a new-born infant and be the best father on this planet. So, what I believe and propose is to have a quantitative measure of your performance without ignoring the fact that these roles/relationships are invaluable.

I know it is a very, very tough exercise - but the hard part is only finding the magic formula of your own productivity. But, once you find it, it is easy to implement and follow the routine!

Tata...Satish