ALL ABOUT HARD WORK By Muyiwa Afolabi Lately Ive been thinking, and Ive been trying to see how I can enjoy my life better. I began to look at my schedules, my programs, commitment and the very numerous tasks waiting for my attention daily and I worry if Id ever have enough time and chance for the fun things Id want to do at my age. I considered the number of calls and mails, appointments, classes, and training schedules and wonder if 24 hours can ever be enough for me. I also look at the personal time I require to develop myself, train myself, practice and study and I began to realize with growth comes more responsibility and scarcity of time for fun and exciting ventures because of all the travels, all the meetings and the responsibility of running and managing several businesses effectively to deliver profit. Success I continue to admit is not actually a piece of cake; not a walk in the park. The first thought that came to my mind is, Muyiwa, you just need to be more hard working, you need to work harder; just then I paused to think, and I began to really reconsider what hard work is within the context of my predicament. I dont think Im a lazy person, I said to myself, so why is my first inclination in solving my pressure challenge working harder? I sat down and began to think about all these and slowly but clearly it began to dawn on me. Hard work in reality has little to do with the volume of work that need be done; hard work in effect is actually the volume of work that need be done within a specified period of time. Hard work is really not about work volume, is really about the availability of time. Work pressure mounts when you have so much to do within very little time. Pressure mounts when time is not on your side, so if you really want results sufficient time is a critical factor to great results. I continued to think and it again dawned on me that the reason why Im under pressure is not really the volume of work but the shortage and constraint of time frame. The pressure is actually the deadlines. Almost everything I do is tied to deadlines, if I can manage my time better I wouldnt be under pressure and I may really not have to work so hard to achieve great and timely results. Work need not be always hard to get great results. Work can be easy and youd still deliver fantastic results, its all about time management, discipline and habits. May I say to you this morning that most of the time you found yourself buried in so much work was because you needed to do so much within very little time? Its a challenge of when and how that brings the pressure. Truth is, hard work is the accumulation of easy things you didnt do when you should have. Work hardly comes heavy, hard and huge; work mostly come in piece meals. You see, instead of doing the little and easy things as they come, we set them aside because we see them as easy and simple. What we hardly consider is every work is usually set against time. The pressure of work no matter how much, how little, how complex, how easy, how complicated or simple they come, is always about deadline. Many times, when we are given responsibilities and assignments to carryout, we see the task as simple and we leave it till latter. We keep procrastinating not just one, but two, three, four, then five, to six, seven and eight, then it becomes fifteen, little tasks then suddenly we just realize we have less than 24 hours to deliver on all. Then the day you know you have to do it all, you start off on the first and realize the information on it isnt complete, you need further details from your boss, you look at the second and realize there is an error from the person who passed the job to you, you look at the third and realize it would require a bit of field work or research, you look at the fourth and realize you need input from someone in another department who incidentally proceeded on leave just the previous day, You look at the next file and realize you need an updated version of an app on your system to do it and youre yet to obtain it from IT. You want to start working on the sixth and your laptop begins to malfunction; it wouldnt stop hanging. Youre about to work on the seventh and suddenly your boss, calls you to quickly come to his office for an important meeting with some external people that concerns your role. Its supposed to be a short 15 minutes meeting but two hours later youre still in that meeting. After that meeting youre getting upset and the pressure is setting in, then someone comes to announce to everyone on the floor that the send forth party for a member of staff would kick off in 30 minutes and every member of staff must attend. After the send forth party you get a call from home from your spouse about something requiring your urgent and immediate attention, hence you cant afford to work late that day. Then you begin to panic, youre frustrated and upset, youre tensed up and cranky, everything and everyone is upsetting you, your laptop is still hanging, your mails wouldnt come in, your colleagues you hope would assist you are all leaving early and youre stuck with so much and the way it seems, you cant deliver on all the numerous little tasks because you left all too late. The next day, the deadline day, everyone looks at you as incompetent, not because you dont know the job or cant do it, its simply because you took the little and easy things for granted and they all grew on you and you consequently failed. Then your boss is upset and you hear statements like ‘just a two page report, five days you cant deliver it, what have you been doing?’ Good question, what have you been doing? Getting trapped in huge volume of work is most times not due to the nature of what you do but a consequence of your habit, your discipline and time management. You see, many of us approach life with the strategy of pleasure, then pressure, pleasure again then pressure. Dear friend, its a dangerous way to live. A good life is not a clear separating of work and play but a perfect mix or blend of work and play. You must learn to work while you play and play while you work. Its the best way to get results and avoiding unnecessary pressure and hypertension. A happy, successful and productive life is such that is disciplined enough to do the right things at the right time. You must learn to work daily not when there is work and you must learn to play daily not when you think there is nothing to do. I do not believe its ever possible to have nothing to do; its just that you decide to do nothing at that point in time. You must cultivate a daily habit of work with play. You must do what needs to be done as soon as the need to do it arises without considering the time of deadline. For every task, let the deadline be immediate. What youll suddenly discover is youre making a choice to do the small right things and the little work little by little all at the right time so there is no accumulation of any sort and at the end of a season, maybe a week or a month youll see youve actually done so much without pressure or stress. You credited with better output, neater work, error free, with an injection of creativity because you didnt do it under pressure. To enjoy your work life and enjoy a balance and even have time for pleasurable exciting things; you must work every day and play every day. Plan your day with work and play in them. Dont put work away till latter and dont play whilst you should be working. Play is not fully gratifying if somewhere in your mind you know theres work waiting for you somewhere. Work as it comes to you daily in piece meals; dont stack it all up till later. Enjoy your life of work, make hard work look easy. Its the secret of charismatic leaders. Start today. Plan your fun and work today.Enjoy your day.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 05:22:07 +0000
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