It sure is an Art..!

 Ani speaks

Every time I resolve to be a regular blogger, I am met with incidents in my life that seem to draw me away from the task at hand. No, this isn't another post on procrastination and its effects. I have already done that two times (Do check my previous posts if you have missed it). This one is something different. It's about something that's mandatory in everyday life- the exact opposite to Algebra or calculus, for which I am yet to figure out their true purpose. This is about something that quite a lot of them are devoid of and a gifted few are born with it. It's not just a talent that develops along with the embryo during pregnancy. It grows along with the person and strengthens with practice. It's what I would call, an ART.

There are general questions that are yet to be given a definitive answer that cements their actual purpose of having been asked in the first place. What makes people tick? What makes people BE the way they are? What makes them different from the second guy? Well, if you ask me, at this point in my life, I would kindly request you to discard the above mentioned questions for the time being and focus on the actual problem at hand.

What makes people to fail miserably at managing stuff, at managing the task at hand? Now this may come as a bolt out of the blue for those "gifted" few who are yet to learn much of the outside world, having grown with the mainstream thought that humans have well evolved into perfectly managing things thrown at them, irrespective the order or the priority of the task. Well guess what, this isn't entirely true. So coming back to the question, is it a sheer lack of responsibility that makes them so vulnerable to fail at task management and prioritization? Maybe. Because being responsible is no easy feat, especially at a workplace where we represent a commanding position. It is alacrity towards the problem or situation being faced that is important, rather than a bankruptcy of responsibility in actions towards clients. One irresponsible behaviour towards a major client is enough to tarnish the name of the company and bring it to a downward spiral. But then, does it only occur at work places where values are highly regarded? If so, then is irresponsibility the only factor that causes a catastrophe such as the above mentioned? I fear not. If my past experiences with prioritizing things have taught me anything, it is to never believe your heart completely. Trust me. While faced with a situation wherein you are forced to decide on which task to do first and there lies among the list of tasks in front of you, your most loved and desirable task, never pick that task as the starting point. Keep parroting this yourself till it literally gets etched in your brains. Unfortunately, I found this the hard way. Failure to do this equals the perfect recipe to become your boss's least favorite- goodbye to that idea of learning golf just so that you can partner with your boss to defeat his rival (But again, that's not how pleasing your boss works. It's a complicated answer that has stumped men since the Stone Age!). 

So, if it's not responsibility that's the only root cause, then is it a sheer lethargic attitude? Of all the possible answers that I think is true, this might be my most favorite. Being a final year engineering student in India, I have come to the point of realization of the relation between lethargy and engineering. It's (lethargy) is more like an added bonus that one gets as one proceeds through the 8 semesters of engineering, progressively getting stronger at the passing of each semester. On a rather off note, it is here where I say my obligatory apologies to those staunch engineering bigots (zealots, fanatics) with a thought that I have hurt them in some way by those lines above- albeit I cannot come up with a single reason to have hurt them. 

Lethargy is something that is dissolved in our bloods since we were apes, scratching each other’s backs for a living. I am someone who does something only when I have the mood to do so and strive as I may, I would never be able to complete, nay begin the work when not in the mood. This naturally puts me in the category of "lethargic people"- I still wonder if the person who categorized this was lethargic. But is lethargy bad? I would say no, because despite this disorder (should I say?), I manage to complete the task completely. Slowly, yes, but completely and thoroughly. I suppose the tale of the hare and tortoise did after all prove to be useful- slow and steady wins the race. But as always, lethargy isn't always the "cool guy" in the room. He's not fun at all the parties and has to be kicked out by the bouncer. Imagine a deadline looming just around the corner, ready to pounce on you the minute you come into its vicinity, then a lethargic will take you places, I can assure you of that. Not to promotion, college or success, but to the worse end of the road- and hey, that's a place. 

Then if not lethargy either that's the root cause, then is it a display of disinterest towards the work? This is another of my favorites. A simple disinterest towards anything in life is sure to put me off then and there. Believe me, I have spent countless days of my "engineering life" completely disinterested in putting my bum to the chair and begin studying for the next day's test. It's quite a late realization, agreed, but it is as they, "it's never too late". What have I gained by doing this, you ask me? Well, it's mostly loss that I encountered, but the little gains that I had faced would last me a lifetime and maybe more. The moment I realized that all I have been competing for with my classmates was for a mere fraction written on a white piece of paper that gave value to my knowledge poured onto that paper, I wanted to make up my mind that a fraction with 100 as it's denominator shouldn't tell me who I was. At the end of that day, the 3 to 6 months time you spend locked up in your room, almost bereft of entertainment from the outside world and mugging away complex theorems and technical definitions only to end up pouring all that knowledge onto sheets of paper within 3 hours of time and getting it evaluated by some person irrespective of whether they are qualified in that subject or even qualified enough to evaluate a professional paper such as an engineering paper, disinterests me- and yes, this is the situation in India, this is how poor education is here. It's not that I don't like engineering; I just dislike the way things are here. But again, here I am, almost at the end of my engineering journey. Graduation is one project away and it is now that having said all of the above, I can say that despite my irresponsibility, lethargy and disinterest exhibited in certain parts of this "massive", "spiritually enlightening" voyage (not by sea or air though) through engineering, there isn't much that we can do now that this system has become a part and parcel of everyone's lives, so much so that I fear that babies born in the future might simply evolve with superhuman abilities to withstand high stress and tension and with the excellent ability to compete with their peers on all aspects of life. So what has this got to do with prioritizing and management you ask me? Well, in my opinion, a degree in medicine and engineering are the two toughest "ways of life" that a student can live through- Of course, I am pretty sure all the other streams are equally tougher too, but then, the amount of papers and workload that we encounter, surpasses human ability. I do respect other streams too, like CA. The amount of math that they do is godly- So naturally, when someone is put through such workload, there comes a point in everyone's lives where we have to start prioritizing our works to maximize efficiency and reduce time. But then again, despite all these, there are a few who are simply not capable of categorizing things. This doesn't mean that they are different from us-I don't want to send out wrong signals. This simply means that they have to buckle up, drop the clutch and press that throttle to the maximum. No pressure.

 As a concluding statement, I simply hope that I wasn't faffing about too much on mundane things. That never was the point in the first place. God..! Prioritizing and managing things is truly an ART..!