Work Life Balance and four intelligence (IQ, PQ, EQ, SQ)

Work life balance is much debated subject. A balanced work life creates satisfaction, happiness, positive energy in life. In turn these lead to greater success. Let us take a journey using a car. For a smooth journey, a smooth uniform road is a pre-condition. One will have a bumpy ride despite having best car and excellent wheels if the road has a lot of pot holes. The selection of a job or a work helps in giving a smooth environment where one can have a better ride in a good car.

The second dimension has a good car. I am not discussing here about a very luxurious car which has excellent set of features. Let us talk about a car which has good features to feel you comfortable. What you need next is balanced four wheels. The wheels I will refer to as wheels of life. For a smooth journey balanced wheels help a lot. Let us take an analogy where two wheels represent work elements like career progression and work achievement and other two represent personal life dimensions like excellent relationships and Health. Needless to say one cannot visualize a smooth journey if one of the wheel/tyre is punctured. You need a good heath, an excellent relationships to excel in other two work related wheels.

These four personal influences can be tuned to bring about a balance in the four wheels to lead to a smooth life journey. PQ leading to discipline will help in slicing time to contribute to health, Relationships, Career development and work performance.  Vision will help in setting goals in these four areas. Passion will help in ensuring you enjoy the journey of moving towards your goal. For instance if you decided to have a daily morning walk to help you achieve the health objectives, you are enjoying the morning walk. You may develop a friend who shares your morning walk. At the end, Conscience is the super synchronizing influence which ensures that  ethical synchronization is achieved amongst the four influences.

I have learnt that these influences help you bring work life balance and teach you to remain happy in this great journey called life. It reminds me of an experiment conducted in the US. In 1957, about 1000 people were studied using a set of questionnaire to access the percentage of happy people in the society. In 1957 US was not as developed as we see today. It was found that 1/3^rd of the people studied were happy with their life. A lot of economic development happened in sixties and later. Each citizen had access to amenities for living a good life. In 1992, once again the same experiment was conducted on a similar population. The outcome of the experiment was revealing. It was found that only 1/3^rd of the population studied were happy. The economic well being has no impact on increasing percentage of happy people. The economic parameters can help improve percentage of people having access to amenities of life. But the actual happiness is a function of synchronizing these four personal influences, live a balanced work life and fill life with a great dose of happiness.

Role of Personal goal in Self Management

Targets or Goals bring meaning to an endeavor. It defines where we are going and when we would reach the destination. I have come across many such people in my life who had very clear goal and invariably they achieved it too.

Most of the people working in corporate world have goals to achieve. Depending on a situation, it may be daily, monthly or yearly targets.  I wonder how many have set similar goals for their individual life. Individual goals will be a superset of corporate goals for the individual. While interacting with many people, I have learnt from them that either they have very hazy personal goals or have no personal goals. Naturally this subject requires attention.  I have seen successful people;All of them had clearly defined goals for themselves. Their relentless pursuit made them successful in life.

I would like to share my personal experience: There have been occasions in life when I had dreamt of impossible things. I had my eyes set on the targets, persistently worked towards achieving them and was finally successful. I would like to mention my academic achievements. I remember the day when I picked up the prospectus for admission in XLRI. While going through the same, a thought crossed my mind to get all the Gold medals meant for a batch. I appeared in the test, went through the curriculum without losing focus of  thought (Goal). Needless to say, I always worked towards achieving my goal and sought God’s grace. I was lucky, God obliged me. There have been numerous occasions like this where I set up goals to achieve something. Believe me in all such cases, I always achieved what I thought. At other times, I got into activity trap, got defocused and kept moving without goal. If you don’t know where you are going, then you shall never reach your destination.. This is my personal experience and I am convinced that if you think of achieving something you will surely do it. God or your luck will take you there. I think setting goal in your life makes you different from others who move without goal or getting into the activities trap.

It is important to set a goal in our personal life as well. I would like to introduce here the concept of “Wheel of Life”. Wheel of life can be conceptualized as a wheel having various spokes like physical environment, career, relationships, romance, health, personal development etc. A typical wheel is shown below in the picture. In order to have a smooth journey, you will need to have satisfaction on all aspects (spokes) of the wheel. Just Like a flat tyre of a car leads to a bumpy journey, imbalanced satisfaction across various dimensions (spokes) leads to bumpy journey of life and leads to unhappy individual. It is impossible to have a strained life across some dimensions and a successful professional life.  I advocate others to look at the different dimensions of “wheel of life” and set goals in reach of them. Once you set goals, follow the simple steps of ASK-BELIEVE-RECEIVE as advocated in the book ‘SECRET’.You shall surely reach the target.

ASK: This is the affirmation of Goal. Keep on doing this every day. If you follow a religious faith, ask  God to help you.

Believe: Assume you have already achieved the same. Do it regularly.

Receive: Also visualize the state of happiness after achieving the goal.

Repeat this three step process relentlessly. Needless to say this has to be backed up with efforts. Saint Kabir has said-

Karat karat abhyaas ke, jadmati hot sujan.
Rasari aawat jaat te, sil par parat nisaan.

Relentless effort makes a difficult task simple like soft rope creates a deep impression on hard wall of a well made of rocks simply because the rope is used time and again to take water out from the well rubbing against the hard wall.

The last part of my discussion today is challenges associated with Goal Achievement.

1.       Not having goal: This is the main cause of lack of achievement. One needs to set balanced goals across all dimensions of “Wheel of Life”.

2.       Loss of Focus: Sometimes people set goals, but lose focus eventually.

3.       Lack of review: One needs a formal periodic review of his or her goals and fine tuning dynamically.

I am surprised if the challenges are so simple to act then why don’t we do this? The answer is the activity trap.  Friends, have faith in this simple phenomenon which will work wonders for you and will change the path of Life.

Set balanced Goals, stay focused, stay calm, you will reach the destination.

Self Discovery is the beginning of “Self-Management”

In these  competitive and turbulent times, Self-Management plays a vital role for a sustained organizational performance and Individual’s growth. Organizations expect more from employees and families in turn expect more from earning members so that they can have a peaceful life and the society also expects us to contribute back to create a better society.  All these put pressure on an individual’s time. In the process the individual gets into routine activities, making it difficult to come out of a daily routine and think creatively towards contributing to all the participants who have expectations.

Stephen Covey has nicely defined whole person paradigm as a sum total of four essential elements viz. Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit. In order to get best out of oneself one has to synchronize activities across these four dimensions and understand ones strengths and limitations across these dimensions.  One has to look at how all these elements can effectively contribute towards the expectations from stakeholders like organization, family and society.  It is about knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, weaknesses and managing these towards overall expectation. Such synchronization is not only pleasing to self but highly contributing towards others and results in stress free natural life.

I would like to bring here the famous framework for understanding self; the Johari Window. The window is shown below in the diagram:

An individual can look at personality traits, personal values, habits, needs, emotions etc. across these four quadrants. If one has the maximum awareness about self, it will help in maximizing ones effectiveness and success.

Unknown Self: This is an area which is known to others but not known to self.  Sometimes these strengths could bring enormous success to individuals.

Role of an admirer :  

Lord Ram was in search of someone who could cross the ocean and go to Lanka. It was a mammoth task. Hanuman was  unaware about his hidden super human powers. An elderly bear, Jambant from Sugriva’s army made him aware about his hidden power. He realized the same and with utmost sincerity, devotion and humility and completed the task. The role of a third person in unfolding Unknown self is huge. Everyone needs a Jambant in his\her life to make him\her successful.

Role of a critic:

Kabir, a great Hindi poet and thinker has said

निन्दक नियरे राखिये, आंगन कुटी छवाय, बिन पानी-साबुन बिना, निर्मल करे सुभाय !

It means – “Keep your critic close to you. Give him a cottage in the courtyard of your house, because he cleanses your nature without soap and water.”

One has to reach to a level of maturity to understand the role of a critic.  It plays a significant role in self discovery.  Probably critic is more important than an admirer and it requires more maturity at individual’s level to handle the critic.

Role of Introspection (Internal perception):

Introspection is the self-examination of one’s conscious thoughts and feelings. A person’s own conscious thought is the best guide for self. What he or she needs is to come out of activity trap, sit coolly and think. One should think about self across all the quadrants, looking at attributes. It helps in identifying areas of strengths, weaknesses and steer towards the future effectively. Introspection plays a vital role in optimizing private self as per Johari Window.

Role of Meditation:  Hidden self is untapped & an unknown potential of an individual. Smaller this area, better it is. It is said all human beings have tremendous power. In some cases a large portion is active while in other cases a large portion is hidden. Meditation and self concentration can help a lot to unfold some of these potentials.

I think based on foregoing discussions one will be able to paint his profile and have better understanding of self. Self discovery/ Awareness is the first milestone in the journey of “Self Management”.