365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 107. Time, technology & money connection

Time, technology & money connection

 There are no speed limits on the road to excellence.

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Time is not everything and money is not everything. But the combination of time and money makes many things! We are judged by our performance and performance has to be a time bound result. Since time is a scarce resource, anything that saves time will be a marketable commodity. If we understand this simple common sense point, we would have understood a universal marketing strategy – convince your client that your product or service will save his time and you will have his order!

If you think for a while why do we need technology, you will realise that technology saves time. That is the difference between an automobile and a bullock cart. A product or service is judged how they enrich the quality of your time and thus your life style. The more a product improves the quality of your life, the more the product is valued. That's why we pay more for an air ticket than a bus ticket!

The other day, I was in a road side car mechanic shed and I was thinking about the mechanics that form the pit crew in a Formula One or Indy Car race.

I have something to share with you on this. Wait…

(From my book '365 Exciting Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 108. Seconds count when it comes to international sports!

Seconds count when it comes to international sports!

But to be fair, if you take players from my era to now, the game has changed and the players have many more shots. They use them differently than we did.

The speed of the game has changed.
- Ivan Lendl

Speed is the cutting edge for succeeding globally.

In car racing, a car may meet with some problem like a flat tyre. Depending on the type of racing, the size of the pit crew will differ.  In Formula One Series, 19 trained mechanics will make the pit crew working as a team with perfect delegation of responsibilities.

Each tyre will be attended by three mechanics – one to use the pneumatic wrench to remove the wheel's lug; one to take off the used tyre; and the third to reinstall the new tyre. Two mechanics will be lifting the car, one in the front and the other at the rear. One mechanic will function as the starter man and another as the fuel man. While these mechanics are allotted specific and precise jobs, a `lollipop man' will be guiding the driver to slow down, to brake, to stop etc. The balance mechanics will be deployed with very specific responsibilities to save every millisecond of the tyre changing and the refueling process!

You've heard the proverb `too many cooks spoil the broth'? Not when they are trained well as to what and how to do their jobs!

(From my book '365 Exciting Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 251: Shed Emotional Blindness!

‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart’ – Helen Keller

We all know what blindness means. We cannot see what is in front of us. Have you thought about what it means to be 'emotionally blind'? You will not be able to 'see' and notice the emotions and feelings of people! 

NCS

www.thetimefoundation.com

365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 109. You decide if you are fast enough!

 You decide if you are fast enough!

Time is more valuable than money, you can get more money,

but you cannot get more time

- Jim Rohn

We have our own internal standards to judge our performance and until we decide, we will not speed up.

I recall an old story which I read somewhere. There was a tortoise at the backyard of an old dilapidated house. It took three weeks to move from the garden to reach the rear room. It continued to move and in two more weeks reached the kitchen. From there it took another ten days to reach the hall. From there it reached the frontage of the house in two weeks time. It continued to move and in another ten days, it stepped out of the house and reached the portico. At that time, the old house collapsed. The shocked tortoise said `thank God, I moved out of the house quickly! What would have happened if I had not acted this fast!

The future belongs to those, who are conscious and sensitive to time and deadline. If you have been working in organisations, you would have noticed that the time to manufacture a product is drastically slashed down; the response time to redress customer grievance has come down; the travel time is coming down.

Over this weekend you may like to explore yourself and ask the question: `Am I fast enough? How is my speed compared to my competitors? Can I be faster without sacrificing the quality of my work life?'

(From my book '365 Exciting Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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365 Excitement Ways to Live: Excitement # 105. Focus on: Attitude, Lack of Time, Effort, Speed!

Focus on: Attitude, Lack of Time, Effort, Speed

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self respect leads to self discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

Clint Eastwood

If you want to be fast, you have to be brisk in mind. Your behaviour is only external. What causes your behaviour is your attitude. Without changing your attitude, you cannot change your pace of work. In order to change your attitude, from slow to fast, you have to move with people who share that attitude. You should have people who are brisk and fast as your role model.

Lack of training is another reason for a slow pace of work. Do you remember when you first learnt how to type `a s d f g h l k j h j'?  Were you not struggling to locate where those letters are on the keyboard? But, did you not pick up the speed due to continuous training and practice? Now you can type a whole page without looking at the keyboard. The secret to speed is: practice, practice, practice!

Without effort you cannot improve your speed of work. It is not merely a good intention to improve your productivity. Your good intention should be combined with adequate effort level.

If you are in competition with someone, who is more effective than you, should you not be faster? You should keep your ears and eyes open to know how others are performing in your field. If you don't know, that is what I mean by ignorance, which is the fifth reason why you are not fast enough.

I heard a story of a rabbit and a cheetah to explain these five factors standing in our way to speedy work. Do you want to know?  Read on!

(From my book '365 Excitement Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 104. Life is a gift of God! Enjoy it!

 Life is a gift of God! Enjoy it!

"There is more to life than simply increasing its speed."
-  Mahatma Gandhi

We have to understand the above quotation in the right perspective. Life is not to be lived with a stop clock in hand. We have to enjoy life in all its dimensions. But, at the same time, we need to deliver the results expected from us in time.

In the highly competitive world, people are hard pressed for their valuable time. These days we have more things to do than our grand fathers had. They did not have to travel this much; they did not have so many entertainment channels to watch etc.  In short, they lived a simple life style. But, most of us like a fast life and we need to speed up.

If we have to enjoy life, we have to complete many activities in time and in the shortest period of time.  We have to be much faster and quicker. Our output per unit of time has to be much more than in the past. This is called the personal productivity factor.

When you manage the demands on your time tactfully, you will have more quality time to enjoy!

(From my book '365 Excitement Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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365 Exciting Ways to Live: Excitement # 103. You May be Fast, But Are You Fast Enough?

You May be Fast, But Are You Fast Enough?

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.
- Edward Young

Curious to know why Dinosaurs became an extinct species?

I read somewhere that the reflex mechanism in Dinosaurs was very slow. I read that if a Dinosaur is bitten by a snake in the leg, it will take three to four months by the time the information reaches the brain! We all know that the brain should send commands to secrete hormones and chemicals to fight against poison and bacterial infection.  

This is what happens, if we are not fast enough to take corrective actions to improve our life. Supposing you come to know that recession is around the corner and you have to take steps to insulate you from the consequences of recession, the speed with which you act will decide your survival.

Even if you have the rarest of the rare skills, you should know when the skill will become redundant. Take the simple skill like stenography. There was a time, when every manager in an organization will be given a stenographer to help him to type the various correspondences and there was a very big demand for qualified stenographers. But today, every executive types his own notes.  So the knowledge of stenography has become redundant in today’s context.

You have to change very fast.  You have to audit your skill inventory.  Life is nothing but a race against time.

(From my book '365 Exciting Ways to Live')

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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