Time@Work Counts - Study

We all know the eternal conflict of quality vs quantity @work ! It is  obvious more working hours do not usually translate to improved output. But we conveniently ignore the truth. 

This trend is rampant in India. I hear so many managers who prefer to work late and 'end up in office just because the system/boss believes'! 
Of course, we tend to flow with it and not pause to think the impact it has on everything - time/energy/family/wellness. It impacts not only on our work-life balance, critical to our productivity at work, but also on environment (energy, water, etc.)

Coffee/smoking breaks, apart from 'social-media breaks' take bulk of our precious time at work. 

Everything finally boils down to our personal choice! Let us not blame the system. We have a choice for everything. Whether we believe in Doctrine of Karma or Newton's 3rd Law.

If at all we needed statistical evidence of the malaise, check out this report in ET :
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Five Secrets To Life From The People Who Have Lived The Longest - Business Insider

No surprises here, at all. But useful reminder for us !
Also, backed by some good research : a piece in Harvard Gazette/ Karl Pillemer of Cornell University learned/ studying nearly 1500 people age 70 to 100+

Key Lessons highlighted in the article:

1. Life is Short: We would have heard this so many times... but we live as though we are immortal !
2. Career: Do something you enjoy... Had heard & shared recently, 'the biggest Maya'!
3. Healthy Living: Often we treat our physical body like our slaves.  I liked the new perspective... 'Treat the body as though we will live for 100 years, to avoid 20/30/40 years of chronic illness'. This is surely very powerful.
4. Avoid 'Pointless Worrying'! Most often worrying is sheer waste... 90% of it being misplaced! 
5. Happiness - Don't make it dependent externally... true happiness is within ! That is essence of Spirituality, is n't ?

Five Secrets To Life From The People Who Have Lived The Longest - Business Insider

And... I Danced With My Client

The coaching journey, over the last few months, has been a beautiful experience!

• First it was blissful ignorance of the art of coaching :)
• Then it was the thinking 'I knew it, having done it all along', during my corporate journey. (If all of us genuinely practiced coaching at work, corporate world would have been very different!)
• Later, the awareness of the level of knowledge, or lack of it! The only silver-lining was 'it was after all the beginning of wisdom' :)
• Intense learning at the next phase: Face-to-Face (F2F or classroom) sessions, tele-classes, assignments, reflections and a lot of extra-reading. 
• Along the way started trying out the process, with a lot of humility and self-awareness. The beauty of the process was all we need to do was to stick to it, as we always knew, with any process! Mentor-Coach would emphasise. But he kept adding new 'twists' to the process, as we learnt. The learning was intense and very powerful. 
• Active listening, Powerful Questions, Coaching tools/models, etc became integral part of the armour. 
• The learning was tested at every phase through actual coaching, monitored, and otherwise, as few friends signed up for coaching (big thanks to all of them). 
• Somewhere the expressions, 'Be with the client', 'jugalbandhi', 'Dance with the Client' became the   aspirational coaching-goals. 
• The final round of coaching practices also were not reaching the levels of Enchantment for Client. I was experimenting, thus not on target! (Chk out earlier post: Push Boundaries)
• Then the final round, with external evaluator and the increased pressure, not to miss the target in the final 'test'. Self-imposed pressure for high performance :)
• I had tried to focus on the 'impending' evaluation, from the previous evening! 
• Then it happened. The session......
• I stayed with the client... tried a couple of relevant tools. Tested my model. Stuck to the process and the learning. 

Outcome: It turned out to be one great coaching experience for the client, and hence, for yours truly. And... I danced with the client!

Blissfully :)