Hello Friends,
I am writing this story onboard a flight, altitude around 38000 feet, flying just across Iraq. As I was flying I again started to think of what I should share with my readers next. I just came after a very busy three to four weeks stay in Cochin, dealing with various things, expected and unexpected. I am now writing this story flying to New York, a place that sometimes I feel very comfortable living there as a very ordinary person. I am not saying that I am extraordinary in India, especially in Cochin, but people know me more in Cochin than in New York. Life here is absolutely different and everybody survives here. People come here anticipating opportunities and a lot of them make it here. I too have made it here. I have been working with this country for the past 27 years and here I am again on my way to the Big Apple.
Many of my friends, my colleagues and my senior employees in the organization sometimes find it difficult dealing with JT. How does he perform this way? Why does he ask these questions? What do we do? How do we face him and so on and so forth? Sitting on the other side of the table, I always used to wonder why they asked me these questions and why they can’t perform.
Recently a senior employee of mine asked me, How do you do all this JT? I said, it can be done, provided you make compromises. A compromise that leads into a vision, a vision that leads into your passion and a passion that makes things happen for you.
Why don’t the others, especially within the little life that I see every day at Cochin, the little city I live in, the employees that surround me every day, stretch themselves to their full potential? Each time I come for a meeting I try to be fresh and up to date with what’s happening the world over. I ask people, hey, did you read the newspaper today? Did you work out today? Did you have a great morning? And so on. I even ask them questions on latest topics like, what is happening to the stock market what is happening to the currency market, what is happening to the whole globe? Sometimes I find people clueless, even the people whom I expect not to be so. I have analyzed this and I know that a lot of people today forget to organize their priorities and that’s when they go wrong and start to deteriorate. This is my principle of life.
I want to do so many things. I am a person born in a Christian family. My parents are from Changanacherry in South Kerala. I have eight sisters and two brothers. Lots of weddings take place in my family. I have around 50 to 60 odd nieces and nephews. There are functions that take place. But sometimes people complain that JT does not attend any of these functions from christenings, to pre-marriage parties, post-marriage parties, house get-togethers and so on. I always thought a year has got 12 months which is approximately 3600 hours. What is it that you can achieve within this period? We do so much, we aspire so much, we have so many responsibilities. In my case, I have a lot of responsibilities 1300 employees, a little organization that I built, which according to me is slightly monstrous and I have the responsibility to execute this. When my family comes to me and says, We need to go to this function or we need to attend this function, I just say, Why don’t you go? because I have responsibilities to execute. Of late I have been trying to analyze and find an answer to these questions. How do you compromise and get to where you want to become a winner as I said earlier.
A lot of people ask me, how does JT know what is going on with the currency market, what is going on with the stock market, what is going on with the European economy, what is going on with the American economy, what is going on with inflation and the recession and so on and so forth. It is simply because I find time extra time by sometimes not doing some of the things that I love to do. It is not that I don’t like to go to weddings and parties. I like to go and hang out. I like to go and visit family, I like to go and do things that every ordinary person does, but I have no time because I have to do so many other things. I believe I have to prioritize my priorities. I prioritize where I should go, which party I should attend, which wedding I should attend and compare to the normal style of people where I live (in the State of Kerala), I think I save at least 1000 hours a year by not going to invited parties or wedding parties that I am supposed to go to. Think of the commuting time including the traffic jam, the time you attend the party and all of it finally only to see the bride and bridegroom just for a handshake. Instead of that, I always believe that it is better to pray for these people and go and see them at a later date when they are comparatively free, where I too save time.
Similarly, when I travel I tell people how to save time. When I travel, I don’t check-in bags. With my style of travel or with my lifestyle of travel, I probably can save at least 500 hours a year by not checking in bags because waiting in an airport sometimes can be very ridiculous and very frustrating. Hence I decided not to take check-in baggage to save time even when my family accompanies me. Saving time is a priority and when you find the time and space-saving those many hours that a lot of people sometimes waste (I call it a waste of time), it can be used to do something that is useful, productive and thus makes yourself a winner.
I am often misunderstood. People think I don’t show up at functions even though they have sometimes come and invited me personally. While I fully understand the importance of attending these functions, it is always my priority that drives me in making my choices. I know one thing for sure. Invitations will come to you if you are an affluent someone in society. No one would invite you to a function if you were nobody in society and that too, without money. This is the hard reality, the reality of social existence. It is like a politician in power one day and out of power the next day. This is my personal belief and I would certainly ask my readers to go by this theory. However, it is entirely up to you to make your choice to lead your life completely in contact with social commitments or to be in contact with the priorities that you should prioritize. Be a winner in life. To be a winner you need to compromise. You got to invest time in yourself and that is what I have done and I intend to continue in this path because I know I still have a journey to go on and miles to go before I retire from life.
Friends, learn to prioritize your life. You cannot make everybody happy in this world. You cannot please everybody. But at the end of the day, you got to please yourself because you became accountable when you were born.
I will be writing more about time management. A lot of people have written about time management. Even people who have seen many more summers than me. My theory of time management is: to prioritize your priorities.