This is Abraham Maslow and this is the triangle most referred to in most people's conversation as Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.
He believed and most people believe that we satisfy our needs one by one from bottom to top and you have a mall like sticker on your back saying "you are here" at the triangle.
Do you believe this?
If so read on..if not read on..
Here is a very famous quote from victor frankr from the book "Man’s Search for Meaning" (He didn't write Woman's search for meaning. I wonder why? )
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
This contradicts Maslow.
Humans are not mere ladder climber who go from step 1 to step 2.
As a race, we are as unpredictable as nature itself.
Message : Don't believe Maslow other than the fact that he can draw a good triangle!
Let us now talk about Meeting rituals.
Most of us spend our time in corporate world in meetings
Remember fire,wheel,gravity and anything worthwhile was not created as a result of any meeting known to humankind.
If you are in a meeting and it has no agenda and you are presented the agenda in the first 5minutes stop and ask for one.
Yes. It is a crime against humanity to get people to go under the influence of anesthesia without consent.
If after the meeting everyone is smiling and there is not a single person with an action item then the meeting is like a B rated movie which you watched for no reason and wasted your time on. You didn't like it ,they didn't produce it well and everyone is unhappy .
Every meeting must impact at least one person an he/she must act on something because of this meeting
Agenda and action items - Remember them in your next meeting because meetings make us look busy not productive. If we attend meeting it makes us feel as though we are doing something useful. It is not. Unless you have something to act on based on the meeting and at any cost keep the meeting to not more than 45 minutes. Yes Outlook has an option to increment of 15 minutes.
Being busy with meeting is not being productive
Now to 80/20 -
- The term "Pareto principle" can also refer to Pareto efficiency. (From Wikipedia)
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[1][2] Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.[2]
It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients". Mathematically, the 80-20 rule is roughly followed by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters, and many natural phenomena have been shown empirically to exhibit such a distribution.[3]
To make us realize 20% of daily work will produce 80% output and
80% of our daily work will produce 20% output
and since you are reading this blog you know what to do.
Check at the start and during the course of the day what is the most critical work for the day and invest just 20% of your time.
Simple!
Now to the last part TGIF
If your attitude is "Thank God its a Friday". Don't forget "Oh My God it's a Monday" is just around the corner!
Yes.
Let us first think about Gregory.
The calendar we use today in most part of the world is called Gregorian Calendar.
The Pope hired a mathematician to design a calendar which will help all Christians to celebrate Easter on same day.
Remember Easter is a critical day than Christmas. Easter represents resurrection.. we will talk about it during Christmas.
There is a tamil calendar and islamic calendar.
Yes Mayan calendar has now crossed 12/12 proving itself to be cyclic and not linear! Hindus and Mayans believe in cyclic calendar.
Back to Gregory.
Since we are not in middle east Friday is not a holiday . But on Friday most folks feel as though we have come to end of the journey.
We forget life is the journey and not at a destination.
There is nothing special on weekends except that we don't have to earn our living. (Maslow - welcome back!)
Now to the book "Happiness at Work" Professor Srikumar Rao asks the following questions
to practice in your work
What are you doing in your office that helps fellow humans?
If you answered meetings you are right but those fellow humans were your colleges.
We are talking about non "me" centric world where during the work day if you can find how your company makes money and how your non meeting work is related to actualization of benefits to humanity you will not have the attitude of TGIF. In fact , you will be saddened by the fact that you are not able to work one more day to benefit humanity. We are not talking Not profit. Even For Profit companies help fellow humans by providing something of value to them and makes their life better..(think laptops, APIs,restaurants, anything)
Happy Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran
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