Three roads to nirvana

While working on my blog-post for yesterday, as I was typing out a list of situations that you would rather not find yourself in, I realized that they could be categorized rather neatly into three categories. We usually find ourselves resentful of what is, when we are either short on money, short on time or short on energy.

1. Short on money.
They say money cant buy happiness, but surely a lack of the stuff can easily cause some stress. An obvious manifestation of this is a situation where someone has a payment due and is struggling to put the funds together. The stress would be palpable. More insidious are situations where we find ourselves pushing out gratification by an indefinite amount of time due to other priorities on funds. This can be especially stressful in a young marriage where there are sometimes conflicting priorities. She wanted to buy jewellery but I really needed a new car. I wanted a new LCD TV but she thought we should travel. If in a marriage, one person consistently takes the fall or even feels that he or she is always making compromises, we have the seeds sown for stress. I am not for a moment suggesting that an abundance of money will solve all marital problems, nor am I suggesting that lack of money is the root of all marital evil. It might be worth considering however, if some of the misery that we have felt at some points in life could have been alleviated by have the green stuff in sufficient quantities at those times. Those of us with a middle class upbringing who have been upwardly mobile still sometimes carry a hangover from a more constrained past. It might be an interesting thought exercise to see how often our older habits or thought processes have been the source of stress.



2. Short of time.
Getting stressed while stuck in traffic, getting late for a meeting is a perfect example. "Just leave home a little earlier then," I hear you think. But as one of the readers of this blog pointed out in the comments yesterday, some places, India being a prime example, provide enough and more external stimuli to run us into trouble with time. How long does it take you for your daily commute? Human minds naturally gravitate to thinking about averages. But averages can be misleading. If leave home at T minus average travel time we can hope to reach on time only about half of the times.

Two of my biggest learning's from the first week of B-School were,
1. Never make decisions by relying on judgement - always run the numbers, and
2. When analyzing the numbers, do not rely on averages alone. Always read the average together with the standard deviation.

Standard deviation of travel time in India is notoriously high. Come to think of it, standard deviation of getting anything done in India is very high. We have started some re-decoration work at home and the plumber was supposed to arrive at 10 am. Guess what time he came in. Guess if he had all the required tools to finish the job the first time. Guess if he finished what he had promised to do by end of day. And no, I am not paying him by the hour, am paying him for the job lump-sum.

A more apt example of stress caused by shortage of time is the kind you experience with a deliverable coming up and you find yourself working weekends and sacrificing family time. And if you have a wedding to attend on the wife's side of the family, good luck choosing between your career and your wife.


3. Short on energy.
Simpler instances of stress caused by shortage of energy would be when you get back home from the weekly grocery shopping only to find you have forgotten to pick up the bread or sugar or cornflakes that you really really need tomorrow. Now you realize you need to get dressed again, bundle up, shovel the snow in your driveway, fumble with the car keys with your frost bitten fingers, struggle to find parking space near the convenience store, lock yourself out of your car, call a cab, find out after the cab has dropped you off that your house keys are in the car. I know, I know this does not happen often, and it is so amusing reading about it when it is happening to someone else. But imagine yourself in this situation in sub freezing temperatures. I am willing to bet odds that you are not going to be very cheerful.

In our professional lives, shortage of energy is often predicated on a lack of ability or lack of skill. Exasperation sets in rapidly after we make hopeful but futile attempts when our abilities are woefully short of the required skills.

Unfortunately, however, we have not been raised to accept inability. We think Jugaad will come to our rescue and sometimes it works. As Indians we even glorify Jugaad. But who are we kidding?
I once read a funny poster that proclaimed, "When you try to make up for lack of ability by doubling your effort, there is no end to what you cannot do."