Professionally being in Quadrant IV

In my previous blog dated 15 August 2012, Professional Life, Where do you Stand? I introduced a simple Quadrant Tool to find your position in professional life. Following was the mentioned simple Quadrant.

One needed to assess him/herself on two scales i.e. Passion about what he/she is doing and his/her ability to do that certain work.  Scoring was done with 1 as least and 5 as the highest score for each category. Based upon this scoring one would be located in one of the quadrants shown in figure.

We have already discussed Quadrant I known as quadrant of Satisfied people and Quadrant III of struggling people. Today we'll discuss the Quadrant IV which is labeled as of Incompetent. 

It is easiest to understand but very difficult to diagnose & figure out. No one would like to call him/her incompetent and that is true. No one is incompetent but the most important issue for this tool is to make assessment against the work being done at the moment. You might landed in type of work you are currently doing due to one or another reason. You might have also developed some skills and passion for it. If this passion is natural or you developed it to limits above score of 2.6 with ability still below 2.5, you'll be in Quadrant IV.

People in this quadrant might be under great stress, much more than those in quadrant I of struggling people. People in Quadrant I are struggling both with ability and passion but they have less degree of frustration because they also don't have enough passion for the said work. However those in Quadrant IV have enough of passion but can not perform the job and this creates a lot of anxiety, stress and frustration.

There are two ways to get rid of this problem. The first one is to develop passion for something you are able to do, which seems less practical. The other way is to develop the skills in the work you are doing with great passion. Now-a-days as lot and lot of skills building tools are available like online learning the two most important issues are about selection of appropriate tool and devotion of time.

You must invest a good amount of time and may be financial resources also to find the most appropriate skill building forum. There are many free but in actual there is no free lunch. Quality level training and development needs financial investment to some degree. You must also be patient while developing your skill and follow the learning curve without trying to jump over to few stairs up in one go. This seems appropriate if you are experienced in the field you are studying but it will for sure leave some connections in the chain weaker. A chain is as much strong as its weakest link is!

In summary if you have passion for the work you are doing but lack the ability then you and your work both deserves improvement. Choose from simplest doable tools like free reading stuff, listening to gurus of your profession at Youtube, reading books, attending seminars and webinars and finally attending the paid on campus or online courses. If you find a master who is willing to teach also then you can also learn a lot but don't forget no matter what you learn you have to validate it through a certificate or diploma. There are only few professional branches in which you can move up based upon your work but that movement is also limited. CEO of Yahoo,  Scott Thompson was able to move to top but his work could not keep him there as he could not validate his skills through a legitimate source.

Happy Children and Stressed Adults

Concerning happy and somewhat careless behaviour of children, it is stated that their lack of full understanding of events is behind this cheerful behaviour. Unfortunately I have to disagree with this diagnosis. Children can be considered as miniature of adults. We are still not sure if the brain usage in children is above, equal or less than that done by an adult. Children of ages less than 7 have shown remarkable achievements in many fields. Although this has happened in selected children and not all, the idea can not be generalized in both ways. We can’t say that all children can be genius and we can’t say that they are not. It all depends upon what circumstances they face during their childhood.

As children grow we see more and more stressed adults coming out of them. Has it been related to use of brain or other capacities it should be the opposite. Now able to use brain they must have been happier. Taking responsibility and need to earn the bread and butter may make the adults less happy than their counterpart children. We don’t have all the adults stressed but most of them are stressed except one category of adults mentioned by Hazret Steve Jobs. In his speech of 2005 at Stanford University he finished by quoting, stay hungry stay foolish from Whole Earth Catalogue’s last edition.

This is the key to happiness of children and selected adults. 

Children are foolish as they don’t care for norms, conditions and customs and try to behave the way they consider right. They try to learn the things their way and mostly through experiments. On the other hand among them who face strict controlling mechanisms fade out either due to restrictions or forced guidance to behave in a certain manner. A child starts learning by exploring his/her bed and its surroundings in random way. A child is asked to paint in circle and if left alone he/she would paint the whole page without caring for the border of circle. On the other hand when he/she is forced to paint within circle, he/she may learn it but for sure the child would be less happy. In addition to this when a child understands that society wants him/her to behave and learn in a certain way, the learning process becomes that of disciplined mind. The child when grown up might be successfull but it would be only a small part of the original potential, most of which is destroyed during the disciplined process of teaching rather than learning. 

Coming to the first part of the statement i.e. stay hungry is simple to understand. It means that one should always create space for new food. This new food is learning. A famous quote in this regard is, ‘children are happy as they learn’. If as an adult one wants to stay happy he/she should stay hungry for new food (for thought). 

As a result it can be stated that a simple way for adults to remain happy and less stressed is to keep on learning and especially in unconventional way. 

I want to give a tip to adults in this regard. When you  want to learn something or try to do something new, stop thinking like an adult and go ahead in the way a child would have gone. This would demolish the barriers around your thoughts restricting the way you think and act. 

Don’t forget adults learn through acting (same true for children till age of 7-10, after which they are accustomed to learning through books). Therefore take a risk and go for learning under unknown environment and new situation. 

For many of the professionals who left their schools years ago, jumping back in to a session at their or any other school may recharge their thought process in a different way.

Those who can’t dare to jump this much (after passing years in the disciplined system), I suggest to take some casual courses to lower the barriers before a revolutionary step can be taken. A course on logic is going to be offered soon through Stanford University and its free, click for details!

Dealing with Mental Stress in Professional Life

Any stress or anxiety can be grouped under two broad categories. The first one is mental stress and other is physical stress. They are interlinked in both directions. It is said that peaceful mind leads to healthy body. However equally and might be more important is fact that only stress free physical condition can help brain to function. Physical stress should not however be confused with fatigue. In case body goes under physical stress like exercise or in broader terms we say ‘physical exertion’, the mind works much more efficiently. In fact physical exertion has been considered as a way to get rid of your thoughts (stressed problematic thoughts) for a long time.

While analyzing the living pattern of people 50 years ago one can see a lot of physical movement. This actually kept their brains in better shape with depression and anxiety at low levels in spite of harsh living conditions. 

Mental stress in a professional life is due to three main reasons, lack of ability, lack of passion and procrastination. The first two have been defined in previous blogs also i.e. lack of ability or lack of passion for the work you do. In both cases you’ll be under mental stress. The way out could be to increase your ability or develop the passion for work you do. 

Ability increase would need time and financial resources. You will need to invest time and money to improve your ability. You can start with small steps like learning from someone doing the very same work better than you, studying and learning to improve and later may go for some professional courses to improve your ability.

Increasing the passion for work is much more difficult, and there is only one tool for that. It is to do very same things in a different way, the way which is interesting and enjoyable for you. Again the process should be slow and gradual. No short cut or immediate fix is possible. Passion can also be increased for work you do by adding your favorite chunks to it. 

The third important reason for mental stress is procrastination. In simple words it is lack of ability to start working on a certain task. Procrastination is sometimes taken as equivalent to day dreaming. However day dreaming till a certain limit can be considered healthy while procrastination is never an healthy approach. 

What leads to procrastination? It is either lack of interest in a certain job (lack of passion?), fear that one is not able to do it (inability?) or simply postponing it for later stages. The first two reasons are same as explained earlier in this blog. The last reason i.e. postponing to a later stage has again a very simple solution. When you have a task, divide it in to smaller chunks and   start finishing them... never start doing them... start finishing them.You’ll see that when each small chunk is finished your mental stress level will drop down.

In next blogs I may share simple formula to get rid of physical fatigue which is also very crucial for professional success.