Tag: productivity

Don’t Forget to Enjoy the Game While Scoring Goals!

image of a goal and a clock representing living in the moment while setting goals

What is common between someone waiting for their promotion and a grumpy toddler in the car asking every five minutes ‘are we there yet’?

They both keep waiting for a destination, and they ignore the wonderful present.

We have all been there. We wait for the perfect moment, the perfect reward to find happiness and purpose. Once xyz happens, I will be/do abc. We can use this template for any number of instances:

  • Once I get that promotion, I will be happy.
  • Once I get that job, I will be happy.
  • Once I get happy, I will be able to engage with my job in a better way.
  • Once I land that job, I will start living a healthier lifestyle.
  • Once I finish this task, I will give more time to my family.
  • Once I achieve my goal…then…

A cycle of promises that might never end.

Go back to maybe ten-fifteen years ago. Did you have the same goals? And did you make some of these conditional promises to yourself at that time as well? For some of us, this thought experiment may lead to a sense of accomplishment- that we were able to indeed fulfil some of those promises. You may have promised yourself that you will learn time-management better once you finish your exams and have more mental space to make priorities, and you did manage to learn that. You may have promised yourself that once you reach a certain post, you will buy your first car, and you did manage to buy it. You may have promised yourself that once that goal has been achieved, you will become happier and life will become better. Life may have become happier and better for a while.

Did that last? 

Look at us now, using the same template of making promises to ourselves, delaying our happiness. Delaying our sense of gratitude.  Living in stress, and waiting for goal to be fulfilled. Waiting to arrive at the destination, ignoring the journey.

The goalposts of life are forever moving, forever in making. Once we achieve a goal, we build a new goalpost. The significance of the old goal and the goalpost slowly starts to wane.

Once we achieve a goal, we often forget to look around and instead keep looking straight ahead.

Of course, it is good to plan things ahead and think long-term. It is great to have foresight. But it is also necessary to remember Life is always moving ahead, it always goes on. And it WILL bring new aspirations, new landmarks, new promises, new conditions.

And one must not forget to enjoy the process, enjoy the present. Doing so lets us:

  • Enjoy the results of that thing one worked really hard for.
  • Pause and notice what is around us, that may help us to actually work on our processes for our goals in a more precise manner. Imagine worrying so much about who to network with once we get that promotion, and forgetting to network with our present colleagues and seniors who may have a lot to offer!
  • Be happy in the present moment.
  • Find meaning in the present moment and find meaning when life goes in flux. Take the very unfortunate scenario of not being able to achieve the goal for some reason, despite the hard work. Having enjoyed the process, one would have garnered many life lessons, professional and personal development and insights about what could have been done better. One would be developing a healthy respect for their present situation, while looking forward to what lies ahead. Not having enjoyed the process? One would go into an existential crisis of sorts- one might feel that now that the goal hasn’t been achieved, everything that gave meaning to your life may feel like it’s lost. Why? Because the goal had become everything.

So, as we set goals, let us enjoy the process of reaching that goal. The goalposts will keep shifting, and the game shall go on. And the point is to enjoy the game nevertheless.

Transitioning from 2024 to 2025

As the new year sets in, the transition from 2024 to 2025 might feel…surprisingly underwhelming. After the parties and celebrations, we go back to work. The festive season, which kicks off in many places worldwide October onwards, now comes to an end, and motivation levels might be hard to maintain.

In fact, the pressure to make resolutions and start the new year with a bang might work with a reverse psychology- this pressure making it difficult to start doing anything, forget new year resolutions.

Amidst this, how can one make the transition from 2024 to 2025 smoothly, in a productive manner?

Keep Up the Momentum

Most workplaces globally had holidays and out-of-office days. Many workplaces though may not have had that long break, and enjoyment of festivities may have been done vicariously, or/and along with the rhythm of the work already going. In fact, many professionals and workers may have been working harder during the festive season. If generally speaking, there is no burnout and you have actually enjoyed this momentum, why break that rhythm now?

This is a great time to actually keep that rhythm going, stick to that work ethic. Keep the normalcy in your work routine intact, and keep up the momentum. This is a great way to ensure a smooth productive transition to the year.

However, if you are still someone who’d like to start things afresh or at least with a sense of something ‘new’, the next point might work out for you.

Set Your Priorities

Make a realistic to-do list. Something concrete. Sort out the tasks that are urgent, tasks that can wait, and tasks that need a change of direction. After all, just because the date changed, doesn’t mean old tasks have disappeared with the calendar flip as well!

If you are someone who feels life is going to feel mundane and boring now that the festivities are over, the next point comes to the rescue!

The Festivities of Daily Life

Why wait for special occasions to enjoy? Enjoyment at a big scale is fun and something we all must indulge in, but enjoyment through the little things in life can bring as much joy. In fact, this is a joy that can sustain. Festivals will come and go, but you can still try to see your loved ones more often. You can keep your workspace beautiful and decorative without a big reason. You can still do things like taking a different route to and from work once in a while to break the monotony of daily life. You can wear a different colour than what you usually wear. Celebrating life and our small triumphs is always an option, regardless of the calendar.

You can still give yourself the gift of optimism and abundance. Life is here to be experienced in all its shades and forms, and it is indeed this dance between the routine and the festive. Be it routine or festive, life is still a dance that can be enjoyed in countless ways. So let 2025 be the year when the version of you that you knew is now looking into a new sunrise, a new attitude to the shades of life and perhaps, you might become someone that inspires someone around you.

Team UHR wishes everyone a very happy and successful new year!

Yoga Day Special: Understanding Our Worries

This Yoga Day, let us expand our understanding of ourselves, including what worries us, and how we can manage those worries.

yoga day image, guy meditating in worry to show ways to do focused yoga

Two friends, Anita and Esha were having a conversation over coffee. Anita looked worried. When asked what was wrong, she said what many of us must have felt at one point. Some of us may also be feeling this way as we read this.

‘Everything worries me. Every decision I make, I overanalyse. I worry about everything. It’s as if the overthinking will never ever stop. I feel anxious all the time, and I haven’t been able to get anything done on time. It’s really affecting me.’

Esha listened, and gently comforted Anita, saying, ‘We all are consumed by the overthinking monster every once in a while. It’s okay, you can manage this. Trust me.’

‘How? I have tried relaxation techniques. It helps a bit, but only temporarily. Yoga usually helps me but these days, even that is not helping.’

Esha went in further and said, ‘How about you try this yoga to control the mind, and manage? Yoga won’t help much unless you know what you wish to manage through the Yoga practice. Whenever you find yourself on one of your overthinking sprees, see which one type seems to be bothering you:

Anita listened with curiosity and nodded. Esha continued:

‘If you constantly find yourself ruminating over past decisions, past mistakes and bad feedback, you are most likely a past analyser.

‘If you constantly find yourself worrying about the future, and anticipating problems which don’t really exist at present, you are most likely a future analyser.

‘If you constantly find yourself over analysing any decision, and find yourself unable to actually make a decision, getting in a state of analysis paralysis, you are most likely an over-analyser. ‘

Anita seemed to have found her problem as a gleam of recognition came into her eyes. ‘What to do when I find myself into one of these states?’

Esha went on,

‘For the past analyser, scheduling a ‘worry time’ during the day might help, where one sits with these feelings of worry, and find out which of these worries can be solved, and which can be left in the past. The ones which can be solved can be dealt in a head on way.

‘For the future analyser, visualisation exercises might help, where you imagine yourself overcoming these anticipated hurdles. This small perspective shift can help a lot.

‘For the over analyser, understand that perfection is a myth, and that mistakes are part and parcel of life. Any path we take, we can always course correct. There is no need to analyse each and every detail- trust that you can figure things out as they come.’

As Anita listened to this, she felt her anxiety ease up a little. The knots in her mind slowly started to loosen up.

We all must have been in Anita’s state of mind. Overthinking.

Wondering why our relaxation techniques, and a disciplined practice of yoga isn’t helping.

Wondering when will this overthinking monster leave us.

The key to make the best use of our abilities is to understand what kind of worries consume us, and our minds, and finding ways to manage those. Yoga isn’t just about asanas and postures- it is an active practice of understanding ourselves, and finding the best possible way to make the best use of that understanding of ourselves. Yoga encapsulates practices of introspection, and practices to make that introspection meaningful, such as meditation, visualisations, and countless such centring practices.

This Yoga day, let us remind ourselves that we have an incredible ability to manage our minds. Yoga when done with a sense of purpose, and with the right focus and with the right technique, can help us become calmer and more centred individuals. In turn, we can become individuals who are in tune with our inner and the outer world, leading to professional and personal success, peace and prosperity. What’s more, now we can Overcome the Overthinking Monster.

You Need to Take Break even from the Work you Love

image about low battery

Have you ever had a very frustrating day where whatever you tried just never gave results?

Well, Sunny was having one such day.

He looked tired and frustrated as he was working on a coding project. Raj noticed it, and asked if everything was alright.

‘Oh no. I have been stuck on this since hours. Coding is supposed to be my passion. How would it all work if I cannot work on my passion endlessly. Turning your passion into a profession is supposed to be easy, isn’t it?

‘No, my friend.’ Raj began to explain:

‘Somehow the popular culture makes us believe that if we choose a profession we love, that is, something we have a passion for, we would enjoy it so much that we would feel we need not work a day in our lives. That is a wrong belief. No matter how much we love what we do, there will be times when we need a break, when our job will put some pressure on us. We will feel tired while working on it. We shouldn’t feel guilty about it. It is natural to feel overwhelmed and pressured with our work at times. You can choose to either let it push you forward or backward.’

There was some relief but also some guilt in Sunny’s eyes. ‘I did indeed feel overwhelmed. Been feeling so since a couple of days. So much so that I took a little smoke after years yesterday…’

‘Oh my, don’t do this to yourself!’ Raj exclaimed. He went onto explain again,

‘Don’t you remember how it used to be when we were children? Even with the games we loved to play, we would sometimes win, and sometimes lose. Sometimes we would be out of form. It is completely normal to not be our hundred percent from time to time. Don’t let the fixation to be perfect consume you and don’t take up unhealthy habits to reach an unrealistic goal.’

Finally, it all made sense to Sunny, and he said to Raj, ‘You are right. I have been too fixated on this problem, and I am letting it consume me. I think I should step back, and take a break. I will start working on this tomorrow again, anew. Care to join me for a walk to the riverfront today evening?‘

‘Of course!’ And the two friends wrapped up their work for the day and left to go for a walk in the cool evening breeze.

The anecdote above gives us some crucial lessons. Let us have a quick look at these:

  • No matter how much you love your work and your field, there will be times when you will feel tired and overwhelmed from it. You might even dislike your choice of career for those few moments or even hours! The popular saying that do what you love and you won’t have to work a day in your life is not always true.
  • That being said, one shouldn’t have extreme responses to this. Getting frustrated at a job you love doesn’t mean you should quit it, or resort to unhealthy habits or think that you made a mistake in choosing your career. Remember that the pressure, the frustration, the overwhelm are all temporary and more or less fleeting. Usually, each one of us goes through phases of easily doable assignments as well as the trickier ones.

This finally leads to the last point to keep in mind.

  • Just as a symphony of music has high and low notes, similarly, the work we do, our professional targets and aims, our working also goes through high and low notes, and all other notes in between. As the anecdote suggests, sometimes, we are in great form, and sometimes, it takes time to get on track. That doesn’t mean we are worthless entirely. Or that our love for our work is gone. Or that we will never be able to do great work again. We must remember that it is the variety of notes that makes a piece of music worth listening to- otherwise it would all be unpleasantly stuck on one note.

Understand the music that the work we love doing is, and we would be able to learn more, do better work, and have a great time working!

The Potential of Bad Days

Good days may not always provide the opportunity to show how good you are at your job. It is a well-handled bad day that could show your full potential and value.

We all have bad days. Horrible days when nothing goes as planned, and every worst-case scenario seems to be happening at the same time. As lyrics to a popular song by John Mayer goes, ‘bad news never has good timing’.

While all that is true, what is also worth thinking about is the bad days are also wonderful opportunities.

Bad days have the potential to be turned into a very good day.

Opportunities? Bad to good? How?

What is so opportunistic about that sale going to the rival company? What is so good about multiple clients giving ultimatums? What is so good about all tech glitches during important presentations? What is so great about multiple crises happening on the same day?

As a blogpost by Farnam Street points out- you are only as good as your worst day.

It is very easy to be calm, collected and feel like you have made it in life when things are going well. It is only during the times of crises, big or small that you truly get to display your skills, competence and experience. It is only during one of those days when you truly learn how much you can handle, how much pressure you can take and the incredible potential you have to overcome any obstacle.

Those bad days are the days when all the skills and wisdom you have developed over the years come in handy. On smooth sailing days, we are mostly on the autopilot mode, and in a way end up doing very monotonous and ordinary work. The bad days shake things up and force us to up the game.

Take for example this article by a writer on Medium. She was in the middle of an important presentation when the projector decided to give up. Technical glitches are out of our control at times, and can bog and demoralise even the most prepared speakers. What did this person do? She had to show some charts and graphs about quarterly profits. So, while she did the talking and added some humour in the situation by simply acknowledging the bane of a technology-dependent existence, she passed on her laptop to everyone, and by the end of her ‘presentation’, everyone had a personal view of the profits ‘thanks’ to the glitch.

It was the glitch that enabled her to be resourceful, use her wit and deliver. A smooth sailing presentation would have enabled her to simply show the quarterly profits and how good she was at her job. The glitch enabled her to show how she is not only good at her job, but how she is also good at handling unpredictable situations, how resourceful she can be and how quick-thinking she is. All those soft skills that must have been listed on the resume got their live demonstration and justification, right there.

Horrible days are not only great opportunities to showcase your true full potential and find lessons for ourselves, but also times when a shared humanity is on display, leading to lessons for others as well.   

Take for example someone, say, a fresher who may have been sitting in the audience of this person who handled the projector issue well. By acknowledging and overcoming the issue, the presenter not only showed her skills, but also showed that it is very human to encounter these issues, and there is nothing that can’t be figured out. This must have been an important lesson for the fresher, and the presenter must have proven to be a good role model. As we say, the best way to teach someone something is to model that behaviour ourselves.

It is also the worst days that enable us to value ourselves more. When we end up being productive on a day when we thought it would be impossible for us to be productive, we gain a new sense of self-respect anda rise in self-esteem. We realise what we are capable of.

So, the next time you realise that you are having one of those days, instead of getting bogged down in a pit of resentment and frustration, consider it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Consider it as an opportunity to explore the depths of your potential, resilience, and resourcefulness. Consider it as an opportunity to renew your self-belief. You might be pleasantly surprised.