An interesting (and somewhat funny) thing happened
this morning. I usually listen to AIR FM Gold 106.4 on the way to office,
mainly for its old songs but also for its good mix of entertainment, news &
newsy programs (e.g. 'Market Mantra'). Well, I was listening to this usual
songs program & the topic on which the host was inviting listener views
today was something like 'one decision in your life which, if you could have taken differently,
may have resulted in something quite different'.
Now, I'm hardly an avid texter but (maybe because the topic touched me somewhere), on an impulse, I sent in my response by SMS. To be honest, I probably did this only to relieve my own feelings, not believing for a moment that it would be read out, what with probably hundreds (or at least scores) of texts being received by the host. Then I forgot all about it for sometime in office work.
Suddently, after some time, a family friend who was also apparently listening to the same FM channel at that time en route to his office, called me to ask if I had sent in a response. Surprised as I was, I said yes I had. Amused, he told me that my response had actually been read out on radio. Pity I was not on hand to listen the first time ever - and probably the last? - that my name was broadcast live!!. At least the fella could've recorded it on his mobile (just joking).
Brings me to the topic itself. What I had sent in was that probably if I had taken a particular career decision at the very beginning of my career, I could've been something else today. But when I started thinking deeply on the issue, at least two points emerged. First, is it always right (from whatever perspective) to go with the herd & get on to the corporate rat race (there, the word again!), suppressing your entrepreneurial(!) yearnings. After all, my decision at that time, while it may have set me back on the ladder by a few years, did provide me with immense professional satisfaction then. And I can legitimately take professional pride for my work, in my own very small (and maybe largely unknown!) way. And also, may I add, working with computers at a time when it was not really the 'in thing' for non-technical people (the only meaningful - and non programming - computer course that I could go in for that time was Cobol, and I did that!) was something.
The added advantage is that while most people who got on to computers in the Windows era feel helpless when their GUI (Graphical User Interface) doesn't respond the way it should, I am probably one of the oldies who can go behind (with the 'Run' or 'Command prompt' option) and work in a DOS environment (as if that's the end of the world, some sceptics may say!), for whatever it's worth. I actually did a funny thing at one of my former cos., where a Visual FoxPro-based software couldn't take off in the local office in the absence of technical help from H.O. I actually opened the databases in the backend, using whatever grasp I had of dBase III+ (yesssss... that old & arcane stuff!)/dB-IV/FoxPro, got it running. Also, in the same co., when the only programmer at the local office left for greener pastures (those being the days when the likes of Infosys were coming up), I took charge of the payroll package (again on good ol' FoxPro) and kept it going (they actually contacted me a year after I had left, to make some changes to the package - apparently the newer programmers at H.O. refused to support such an old utility!). And to add, I handled smooth transition of our systems to the 21st century through the Y2K conundrum (ask oldies about that)!
I realise I'm starting to be boring for all but those with a technical bent of mind. So, much as computers happen to be my secret love, let's move on. The second point I want to make is - who really knows what his or her decisions are going to lead to. The world is so dynamic and the multiple factors at play are changing so rapidly all the time (more so in the last twenty years than probably the fifty before that, and these 20 years happen to be my career), that I believe no one, but no one, can predict the result of any particular decision twenty years down the line. Because by that time the world itself would have changed beyond recognition, to a totally different paradigm.
The bottomline is, don't cry on spilt milk and move one. Actually, that very spilt milk has a good probability of leading to unintended and sometimes pleasant consequences, if only for the cat!(:-). For more on the unpredictability of destiny, read War and Peace (if not Bhagvad Gita) where the recurrent theme is that conscious actions of men (alas, hardly any women fought in those days) hardly lead to victories or defeats in battles. Likewise, in life (or career).
So the point I want to make is: the conventional wisdom about career progression, and the desirability of certain career goals, is just that - conventional. Who can say that my goal of having sufficient time & energy at the end of a working day to read an engaging book (fiction or non-fiction) is decidedly inferior to the goal of some other hard-driving executive who may want to fill up all his waking hours with things which would have a clear connection to his professional progress. And levels of ambition differ widely person to person, though it is true that (unfortunately, or so I believe) lack of ambition is maligned to no end these days as lack of drive or energy or innovativeness. Not so, it may just be that many of us have been stuck in a rut - not of our own choosing - due to constraints and demands of life, and may consciously chose not to waste any more energy on keeping on doing the same thing, even if in marginally different ways, or at different - read higher - levels of responsibility.
And while on responsibility levels, the Peter principle remains one of my favourites - every person in an organisation eventually rises to his level of incompetence. I have seen live evidence of technically competent people pushed to 'higher' managerial roles (due to demands of professional life - read "the rat race") and losing their spark.
I believe this is the origin of all the fashionable talk these days of 'early retirement'. It's a smart choice no doubt - do all the gruntwork (even if unpleasant) till you are in your 40s and earn enough moolah to last the rest of your lifetime (even if you choose to do nothing thereafter). The point is - isn't it somewhat manifest that many of the people who look for such early retirement are not really enjoying what they do, but have to keep doing it with the primary goal of earning money (nothing wrong in that - no judgemental views, to each his own). And many of them would like to take up, once they 'retire early', their real passion - painting? hiking? world tour? whatever. As for me, if I'm in a profession which I totally enjoy, (like reading books? a reviewer? a wine-taster?), I could probably do it lifelong, without retirement - wouldn't you?
As for me, I have virtually no hope of ever being able to retire peacefully (early or not!), having begun to accumulate my retirement egg much later than what conventional (there, that word again) wisdom says! :-( But conventiontional wisdom also says that you should have insurance coverage 40-times your annual income, even if you cannot probably afford the premium!
Keep smelling the flowers as you go. Who knows, tomorrow there may be no flowers when you find the time to smell them.
Now, I'm hardly an avid texter but (maybe because the topic touched me somewhere), on an impulse, I sent in my response by SMS. To be honest, I probably did this only to relieve my own feelings, not believing for a moment that it would be read out, what with probably hundreds (or at least scores) of texts being received by the host. Then I forgot all about it for sometime in office work.
Suddently, after some time, a family friend who was also apparently listening to the same FM channel at that time en route to his office, called me to ask if I had sent in a response. Surprised as I was, I said yes I had. Amused, he told me that my response had actually been read out on radio. Pity I was not on hand to listen the first time ever - and probably the last? - that my name was broadcast live!!. At least the fella could've recorded it on his mobile (just joking).
Brings me to the topic itself. What I had sent in was that probably if I had taken a particular career decision at the very beginning of my career, I could've been something else today. But when I started thinking deeply on the issue, at least two points emerged. First, is it always right (from whatever perspective) to go with the herd & get on to the corporate rat race (there, the word again!), suppressing your entrepreneurial(!) yearnings. After all, my decision at that time, while it may have set me back on the ladder by a few years, did provide me with immense professional satisfaction then. And I can legitimately take professional pride for my work, in my own very small (and maybe largely unknown!) way. And also, may I add, working with computers at a time when it was not really the 'in thing' for non-technical people (the only meaningful - and non programming - computer course that I could go in for that time was Cobol, and I did that!) was something.
The added advantage is that while most people who got on to computers in the Windows era feel helpless when their GUI (Graphical User Interface) doesn't respond the way it should, I am probably one of the oldies who can go behind (with the 'Run' or 'Command prompt' option) and work in a DOS environment (as if that's the end of the world, some sceptics may say!), for whatever it's worth. I actually did a funny thing at one of my former cos., where a Visual FoxPro-based software couldn't take off in the local office in the absence of technical help from H.O. I actually opened the databases in the backend, using whatever grasp I had of dBase III+ (yesssss... that old & arcane stuff!)/dB-IV/FoxPro, got it running. Also, in the same co., when the only programmer at the local office left for greener pastures (those being the days when the likes of Infosys were coming up), I took charge of the payroll package (again on good ol' FoxPro) and kept it going (they actually contacted me a year after I had left, to make some changes to the package - apparently the newer programmers at H.O. refused to support such an old utility!). And to add, I handled smooth transition of our systems to the 21st century through the Y2K conundrum (ask oldies about that)!
I realise I'm starting to be boring for all but those with a technical bent of mind. So, much as computers happen to be my secret love, let's move on. The second point I want to make is - who really knows what his or her decisions are going to lead to. The world is so dynamic and the multiple factors at play are changing so rapidly all the time (more so in the last twenty years than probably the fifty before that, and these 20 years happen to be my career), that I believe no one, but no one, can predict the result of any particular decision twenty years down the line. Because by that time the world itself would have changed beyond recognition, to a totally different paradigm.
The bottomline is, don't cry on spilt milk and move one. Actually, that very spilt milk has a good probability of leading to unintended and sometimes pleasant consequences, if only for the cat!(:-). For more on the unpredictability of destiny, read War and Peace (if not Bhagvad Gita) where the recurrent theme is that conscious actions of men (alas, hardly any women fought in those days) hardly lead to victories or defeats in battles. Likewise, in life (or career).
So the point I want to make is: the conventional wisdom about career progression, and the desirability of certain career goals, is just that - conventional. Who can say that my goal of having sufficient time & energy at the end of a working day to read an engaging book (fiction or non-fiction) is decidedly inferior to the goal of some other hard-driving executive who may want to fill up all his waking hours with things which would have a clear connection to his professional progress. And levels of ambition differ widely person to person, though it is true that (unfortunately, or so I believe) lack of ambition is maligned to no end these days as lack of drive or energy or innovativeness. Not so, it may just be that many of us have been stuck in a rut - not of our own choosing - due to constraints and demands of life, and may consciously chose not to waste any more energy on keeping on doing the same thing, even if in marginally different ways, or at different - read higher - levels of responsibility.
And while on responsibility levels, the Peter principle remains one of my favourites - every person in an organisation eventually rises to his level of incompetence. I have seen live evidence of technically competent people pushed to 'higher' managerial roles (due to demands of professional life - read "the rat race") and losing their spark.
I believe this is the origin of all the fashionable talk these days of 'early retirement'. It's a smart choice no doubt - do all the gruntwork (even if unpleasant) till you are in your 40s and earn enough moolah to last the rest of your lifetime (even if you choose to do nothing thereafter). The point is - isn't it somewhat manifest that many of the people who look for such early retirement are not really enjoying what they do, but have to keep doing it with the primary goal of earning money (nothing wrong in that - no judgemental views, to each his own). And many of them would like to take up, once they 'retire early', their real passion - painting? hiking? world tour? whatever. As for me, if I'm in a profession which I totally enjoy, (like reading books? a reviewer? a wine-taster?), I could probably do it lifelong, without retirement - wouldn't you?
As for me, I have virtually no hope of ever being able to retire peacefully (early or not!), having begun to accumulate my retirement egg much later than what conventional (there, that word again) wisdom says! :-( But conventiontional wisdom also says that you should have insurance coverage 40-times your annual income, even if you cannot probably afford the premium!
Keep smelling the flowers as you go. Who knows, tomorrow there may be no flowers when you find the time to smell them.
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