Tag: HR

Align Your Actions to How the World Works…

….and the world will do the work for you!

Question! What is that one tiny but major, basic but elusive secret to being a happy, successful, level-headed professional and human being?

Answer: According to research and this article by Farnam Street, it’s by working with keeping the basic principles of how the world functions in mind, and aligning one’s actions in that direction. Now that might sound confusing, generic and somewhat vague. Let us delve deeper into this.

Universal Principles:

 We will start by taking a very general example. We have all heard truisms like ‘health is wealth’ since ages. We know being healthy is a basic step to living a good life- everything else comes secondary. We know that without good health, we can’t enjoy the fruits of our labour. And yet, if we were to be honest with ourselves, how many times do we neglect our health in the day-to-day life? We forgo little chances of leading a healthy life. We scroll endlessly on our phones late into the night, or decide to keep the homecooked lunch on the side and opt for that vadapav.

Or consider waiting. Investments, be it financial or personal, take time to show results. We must wait a bit. We know this. But do we have the patience or willingness to wait?

Or how kindness leads to kindness, and fire leads to more fire.

Do you find yourself thinking of similar universal principles? Think principles around return of investments, savings, compounding, effort-reward, reciprocity of actions and so on.

Our peculiarity as human beings is that we tend to ignore these basic universal principles a lot of times. We know that we are ignoring, but we continue to ignore, and sometimes only follow them when we are forced to.

No one is an exception to these rules. Everyone needs to put in effort to live a healthy life. Everyone needs to wait for their investments to come to fruition. Everyone needs to put in effort to maintain and improve the status quo, whether we are talking about our professional or personal life. There are no exceptions to these universal principles of effort and returns.

Instead of aligning our actions to these universal principles, we tend to steer away from them, even when we know it’s not a good idea.

Where the Magic Lies:

The magic of universal principles and sticking to them is that once we start aligning our actions to them, the world will do the work for you.

All you need to do is align your actions to these universal principles. Nothing complicated. Whenever confusion arises, all we need to do is remind ourselves of these universal principles and align our actions to those, the rest would just be noise.

Nervous about an interview? Just think about the universal principle of effort and returns, and work on it accordingly. The rest will fall into place.

Confused how to approach a supposedly difficult client? Just think about the universal principle of reciprocity of behaviour, and approach them with a behaviour that you’d want them to reciprocate. The rest will figure itself out.

Wondering why a project seems stuck? Just think if you have waited long enough for the investment to show, and if you have waited long enough, think about the alignment that we talked about in our older article about working hard easily.  

One could also think about this in micro terms. Consider your office or field of work as a world. How does this world work? What are some ‘principles’ that seem to be embedded in its functioning? Find those out, and align your actions to those principles, and chances are, you will be pleasantly surprised by how perfectly and easily it all fits.

‘Alignment’ is the word to keep in mind. As we align our actions to how the world (and the multiple ‘worlds’ we inhabit) works, and stay true to ourselves, the world will do its magic for you.

Tips to Manage Work Related Anxiety

Anxiety is normal, and isn’t something to be ashamed about. Anxiety calls for us to tweak how we function and look after ourselves.

Have you ever felt a sense of dread or panic flow through you as you think about work? Have you felt a sense that you are constantly being judged by your colleagues and employers to the extent that you are conscious about every little mistake you make? Chances are, you have work related anxiety.

Being stressed about workload is normal. Caring about your work, and thus making sure you give your best is a good thing. But on an extreme end of this spectrum lies work related or workplace anxiety where the extreme worry manifests in symptoms such as:

  • Inability to concentrate, difficulty in breathing, tightness of chest, overwhelm
  • Extreme nervousness or persistent nervousness
  • A need for perfection and hyper-focusing on mistakes, feeling like one slip-up will cause a massive downfall. In other words, engaging in catastrophic thinking

The good news is that anxiety can be managed and one can even channelise it in a different, healthier direction. (Shoutout to an article by Manah Wellness for inspiring us to have this conversation!)

Here are some tips to manage work related/workplace related anxiety.

Create your boundaries:

Boundaries are your best friend. Creating boundaries enables you to only take up that which you can and are willing to, and ensuring you remain in your own energetic space. Creating physical boundaries looks like owning up your space:

  • Decorate your cubicle in ways that make you feel comfortable.
  • Little post-it notes of affirmations, pictures and small objects on your desk that give you emotional support- these are all ways one can ensure one’s space remains one’s own.
  • It also involves not compromising on your health and nutrition; taking breaks as and when needed, and not forgetting to eat well and drink water.

Creating emotional and psychological boundaries can look like:

  • Politely declining to talk about one’s personal life, or using tact to make sure you don’t divulge too many personal details.
  • Finding other ways to ‘participate’, when conventional ways to socialise feel too overwhelming.
  • Declining, delegating or asking for more time if you have reached your limit and you cannot take up extra work. Work-life balance is not just a buzzword to use!

Boundaries aren’t ways to be cold to people, or to push people away. Boundaries in fact can act as our own fuel which enable us to provide the best version of ourselves.

Speaking of best version…

Understand that anyone can make honest mistakes:

Being your best version isn’t about taking extra stress to be the best! Many of us put so much pressure on ourselves to be the perfect colleague, or the star performer, or just to make sure we are hustling to the best of our abilities, that we forget that mistakes are a part and parcel of life. We think a slip-up from us will be remembered forever, and its impact would be irreversible. Tell your anxiety, that the world isn’t waiting to see you slip up!

The thing is, it’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s okay to not be perfect and be on a learning curve. People, groups or organisations will find ways to figure things out even if a big mistake has been made.

Catastrophic thinking and fear about making mistakes and slip-ups only prevents us from living a fuller life and reaching our potential.

Ask for help, accept the good:

An attitude of seeing the positive in everything can go a long way in helping us cope with anxiety. It’s a blessing that as the world is changing, many organisations these days provide counselling services, and other resources to work with. As awareness about mental health increases, many bosses and colleagues are also willing to offer support and destigmatise in whatever they can. All you have to do is look around and ask.

There are multiple mental health well-being apps, digital well-being features on phones that are here to help in managing our anxiety.  

Anxiety about work is not something to be swept under the carpet, and it’s not something to be ashamed about. It’s a sign of our mind and body’s innate wisdom. Anxiety is a signal from our mind and body to pause, and reevaluate our approach to our well-being.

A Little Stress can make you More Productive

Most of the times we are told about stress and its downfalls. By now we know the kind of risks and diseases that a chronically stressed lifestyle can lead to, thanks to the tons of coverage about how stress is bad. But what if stress could be used in a good way? What if we told you that there’s a good kind of stress too. Read on.

Psychology calls it the ‘eustress’. Eustress is the kind of a positive stress one feels and something that can propel us to do a job well. How does the good kind of stress help us?

Gives the Push:

The good kind of stress can push us out of procrastination. Often, we do really good work around deadlines because the push of the stress makes us come up with really good workable ideas. We may wonder why we do our best work when there’s an outside pressure and the reason is that the outside pressure works as the ‘good stress’ that makes us get up and do the work needed. Say for example, a little nervousness, just a little, can lead to a good meeting as the nervousness will ensure we try our best, instead of taking it lightly and not giving our best. 

Being stress-free all the time can lead to stagnation:

While we are encouraged to live in a stress-free state and chronic stress should definitely be avoided, living on the other spectrum of absolutely no stress is not only unrealistic but also not very feasible. Some ‘tension’ is a good thing. Feeling a sense of lack, or feeling a sense that there is more to be achieved is a good thing. It ensures we don’t remain stagnant and continue to find ways to move forward. Or think of it this way: things that are just lying around, not looked after, not stressed after gather up dust. That little stress is needed to brush up the dust.

The little inkling of stress that we are not living up to certain expectations, whether our own or someone else’s ensures we assess our situation and options. If the little stress compels us to invest in a side business, or that little tension that we may fall behind lets us undertake upskilling tasks, then that little stress, the little tension is a good thing, isn’t it?

Being stressed means that we care:

And caring about something is a great quality to have. Again, only if we care about something, whether it is our finances, our career, our family or our personal growth, will we be stressed out about it, and we will take steps to make things better. Or else, it leads to, as we mentioned before, stagnation. The opposite of care is apathy, and apathy not only leads to insensitivity towards our fellow human beings but also a sense of pessimism. ‘Why bother about things, they have always been like this’ isn’t an attitude that can lead to progress, industriousness and the urge to make things better in our own way.

Being stressed is a sign that we care, and instead of running away from the stress, or sweeping it under the carpet all the time, it might lead to something good. Whether it’s a push to come up with great ideas, or the push to change one’s life for the better, one step at a time.

Don’t give up just yet!

If you grew up in a world that didn’t have computers and much modern technology all the time, you probably found many different ways to pass time. One of those would be solving a Rubik’s cube. Solving a Rubik’s Cube can be frustrating, before it gets rewarding. It can test your patience before it can give you a reason to rejoice.

A similar thing can happen beyond a simple game of Rubik’s cube. Things can get worse before they get better. We are often very close to giving up on something and then suddenly, just as we loosen the grip, it all falls into place. Before giving up on anything, it might do us good to keep this in mind: we might be very close to a breakthrough without realising it, even though nothing seems to be working in our favour in that moment.

In addition to the situations when we have been persistently trying hard at something for some time, things can also feel like they are going worse before they get better in scenarios such as changes in operations, management, strategies, and anything new that is implemented. We might feel like the change is not working so far, and hence it must be time to give up on the change and call it a failure.

What can we do to ensure we don’t give up too early?

Be okay with the discomfort of the process: Many of us give up on projects and things when we encounter the discomfort or perception of failure. We might see no results as we pitch in to that client day after day, or we see no results as we continue on a new project, and that absence of an external cue of success can be uncomfortable. The lesson here is to remember that process takes time. We might not realise it, but that client might get impressed by our persistence, and finally agree to our request. Or it takes one tiny breakthrough, built upon the foundations of our earlier hard work on a project, to turn things around. The key is to embrace the discomfort that comes with the process of doing something and not seeing immediate results.

Embrace the journey: It is often an overwhelming focus on the end result that makes us impatient and oversensitive to setbacks. Solving a Rubik’s cube might not be as frustrating if we actually focus on solving it, instead of thinking what a great achievement it would be if we solved it. Embracing the chaos that comes with starting anything new will make us more prepared to deal with the chaos, instead of focusing on negative thinking patterns such as ‘I should never have started this/we should never have decided to introduce this xyz strategy’. Taking it one step at a time, learning from each step, and being curious where our next step takes us and teaches us would be a better mindset to have than being in a rush to get to the end of the task.

Whether ongoing or new tasks or ideas, things might get worse before they get better, because it is after all a process. Processes are rarely smooth, and processes are often rollercoasters with their thrills, drops and highs, disappointments, lessons and tiny achievements before we can end up on the finish line, and look back at the wonderful journey we have had. Don’t give up just yet!

Is passion the only right reason that should drive you to work?

We all must have heard, and used phrases such as:
‘I love what I do.’
‘I love my job.’
‘My work is like worship to me.’
‘I am passionate about this field.’
Or maybe we are looking for something that enables us to use these phrases.
In any case, being passionate about one’s job, loving what one does is considered the ideal to reach.
It is the ultimate catchphrase for freshers, and a constant source of aspiration for any professional. Is
it though? And is it okay if being passionate about one’s job isn’t the primary source of motivation?


A study by Harvard Business Review found that some employees may feel alienated by colleagues
whose primary motivation is their passion for their jobs. Plus, the research also found that the
people passionate about their jobs may actually develop a judgmental and unhelpful attitude
towards those who they imagine do not have passion as their primary motivation.


Imagine a scenario: Mr. B and Mr. A are both passionate about their jobs. While having a little
chitchat with Mr. C, the former duo discovered that Mr. C is primarily working because he needs the
stability of a 9 to 5 corporate job, after having worked freelance for many years. Mr. B and Mr. A feel
like they cannot take Mr. C seriously, because they think passion should be the primary driving force
for doing one’s job, and nothing else. They eventually become cold, lose respect for Mr. C and do not
extend much help to him, because they don’t think he values the job as much as they do. They think
Mr. C is working for the ‘wrong reasons.’ Who seems to be in the wrong here, actually?


In psychological terms, the research shows that ‘intrinsic’ motivation is seen as the ideal and the
morally right thing to have, and anyone working for a perceived ‘external reward’ such as financial
stability is considered to be in a not so morally superior place. That they are working for the ‘wrong
reasons.’
Now that sounds judgmental, doesn’t it?
The bottom line here for managers and employees in this is a simple, obvious and yet a poignant
truth: some people may have motivations that are more external and less intrinsic.
 Some people might be working at a job because it offers them financial stability.
 Some people might be working at a job because they have some family obligations to fulfil
and this is the best possible course of action for them.
 Some people might be working at a job because they want the flexibility and free time the
job offers.
 Some people might be working at a job because they are still exploring what genuinely
drives them and they are still learning about themselves.

And so on. In other words, some people might be working at a job because that is the best
alternative for them at the moment. And they are just fine with it, even thriving in it. And it may
or may not be the job that they are passionate about.
It is okay to be working at a job when your primary motivation isn’t passion for the job. Of course, a
certain skill-level, interest and competence are necessary, and there’s no denying that passion and
drive can increase those aspects manifold. But so can the other external motivations in their own
way.


Now some might ask- wouldn’t it help an organisation better if everyone was passionate about their
work, rather than only some employees doing the work in a more driven manner?
Firstly, one can be great at their job, and still not have passion as their driving force. That doesn’t
mean that passion is entirely absent. The primary motivation could be say, financial stability and
the structure that job offers, which can still enable one to give their best.
Secondly, diversity in thought, motivations, perspectives and values is necessary. Employees with
varying driving forces, with variety in life experiences and calling make an organisation complete.
Such a diversity is needed for the organisation to run smoothly, as different times, different projects,
different situations call for these different and diverse ways to handle them.


It is this diversity where everyone learns from each other, and complements each other. When
employees are accepted for who they are, without being judgmental about their choices, it is then
that they can truly develop a healthy level of motivation for their job.