Time management – exhausted or confident?

30 November 2015 is the 180th birthday of Mark Twian (1835 – 1910) the famous American writer. The following quote is widely attributed to him ‘If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if It’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first”. However the quote was said for the fist time in 1791 by French writers including Nicolas Chamfort, Émile Zola and Apocryphal a little differently.

Later when quote arrived in English speaking nations it was modified, re-quoted and so goes on the story. The quote became a global phenomenon when picked up by time management gurus. If researched in detail, the quote was not related at all to the time management concept in 1791’s France. It was an advice to people of France to be prepared for worst things happening every day. Searching at amazon.com one can find more than 1200 books dealing with frog eating issue. If you narrow down your search to exact title ‘Eat That Frog’, in Business and Money Category you’ll currently (Nov 2015) find 15 books with that exact title in English language. However, the term is widely being used and I suppose that it is certainly searched few hundred thousand times a year. Google search engine shows that average monthly search for the term ‘eat that frog’ is more than ten thousand.

The simplest explanation about the quote in this aspect is that one should handle the most difficult task as first thing every morning. As per this perception, once you complete that most difficult task i.e. “The Frog” you’ll be highly relaxed and would be ready to happily finish all remaining tasks.

Let me admit that I had been a sincere follower of this school of thought for years until it started to taste bad and started hurting my stomach. Following this very approach greatly diminished my happiness level and my analytical capacity to handle tasks and other issues. However I figured out that this eat the frog idea leads to DBFE states i.e. Depressed, Bored, Frustrated and Exhausted stages. It makes you depressed even a night before to think about the ‘hard’ task for next day for which you have limited capacity, that's why it is labeled as hard!

Therefore I decided to challenge the idea and have put forward a rival model named as hsbc i.e. Happy, Successful, Boosted and Confident stages. In this model you start the day by happily handling the tasks. The happy handling of the tasks then makes you successful that in turns boost your morale. Eating the frog simply exhaust any person while hsbc model would leave any one confident and even lead her to the Creativity stage. I suggest all people who are stressed with deadlines to manage the tasks, to give a try to this approach. I am quite sure that most of them would end up being successful, confident and more creative. Further details about hsbc model can be found at: 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B018PXIBJU?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Don’t forget to leave a review!

View other books in ‘Satisfied Careers’ series by the author: 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6005899.Azhar_Ali

Internal Perception and External Factors for Happiness

Some good 17 years ago I was reading a book on Psychology in which perception phenomenon was explained. It was explained so remarkably that I still remember it and would like to share it with all. It was like this.

You are coming back to home after a hectic day and very busy evening making you leave office at time to fetch the last metro to your home. Everyone in the compartment was tired like you, trying to rest with closed eyes. When the metro stops at a certain station, suddenly a person with two children of ages 5 and 3 enters the compartment. They sat on some vacant seats but just after a minute or so the children start playing, running and shouting in the compartment. The guy however did not take any notice and kept on sitting silently sleeping with open eyes. 

Question was asked what would be your and most of other passengers’ reaction? Most would consider the person irresponsible for not caring about other people and children as non-disciplined. Finally you stand up and ask the said person to control his children as every one was tired and upset due to the noises being made by children. 

The guy looks at you and says, ‘I am sorry, I can’t do any thing (you and all others re-assess him as irresponsible). Their mother was diagnosed with cancer some time ago and about an hour ago doctor told us that her body is not responding to any type of treatment. Tell me how I may tell this to these playing kids?’... the author of book asks about your and others’ reaction now to same event (noise making children).

This hypothetical story explains the link between our internal perception to external factors and our reaction very clearly. Students of Psychology know it very well that the cycle of behaviour runs through an event-our perception-our reaction to it. Let me try to further elaborate it with another hypothetical example.

You along with your family plan to go on a brief picnic. Packed in your car you drive towards city suburb for green fields.  Kids are happy, their mom is happy, you are happy to spend time with family. At the last traffic light you are forced to take the side lane due to rash driving of some youngsters driving their cars. They were about to hit your car, you become angry and upset. Now from here onward, it is your internal perception to this external factor shaping your reaction and life.

If you perceive that this event has ruined your mood, your reaction would be staying upset and angry resulting in a disastrous picnic for you, your kids and the partner. On the other hand if you perceive this event as one, not in your control, not due to you- you will perceive it as a non linked issue to your life and your reaction would be not caring for it and not allowing it to ruin your picnic. This can save your and yours’ day.

Now lets say that you were so upset that your reaction to the event ruined whole picnic program. Analyze what  you achieved, the event took place without your input but it destroyed your plan. So in other words you allowed an external factor to influence your own life. 

In cases where you really feel it impossible to control your mood, I suggest to do following. Try to be calm for few seconds and imagine yourself as not part of that specific situation. Tell yourself, yes this specific action has made my mood bad but if I also allow it to affect my picnic plan the situation would be much worse and not better.

One of the major issues is, if you consider yourself and your loved ones as ‘centre of gravity’ of your life or some external factor. Secondly if you allow some external event to destroy your life or any planned activity which will have double bad effect i.e. you allowed that event to make you feel bad and you missed your own planned activity and its happiness. Therefore be sure about who or what is centre of gravity for your life and never mind asking if you get stressed and mess up some planned good time, what was your gain? If you consider these two simple tips not to effect your life and its events you may feel happy under different circumstances.

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.