The winning combination

At any workplace, there are two extreme types of working persons-

Action oriented - One who works on already decided jobs or policies. Work is mostly done on physical level. His/her decision making powers are very limited. He /she are generally referred as worker.

Thought oriented- He/she is the one who takes decision about what is to be done. The work is mostly done on mental level. He /she is generally also labeled as manager /officer / director /commander / leader etc.

Mostly our role is a hybrid of above two extremes. At each point of time, we operate from a role or position which is mixture of these two extremes. Depending upon the ‘task in hand’ we decide what is to be done and what is to be thought (for actions by self or others).

Making a perfect blend of action and thought dynamically (a perfect blend for every situation we encounter in life) is an art. Nature has provided us powers to make perfect combination of action and thought for each unique situation. We can ‘tuning up’ ourselves for all situations in life. But many times our tuning gets disturbed in this regard. And the effect is that we get distorted results, as you get blurry/out of focus pictures from a TV set which is out of tune. Don’t loose heart. It is a common occurrence of human machines. It can be attended and corrected just like you correct your ‘out of tune gadget’ (TV/computer/mobile etc).

In the tuning up process, we realize our true position which is between one of these extremes-
• The top position in our dream organization, it means that you just decide everything and do not do anything.
• Best worker in your dream organization. Ideally it is a robot, not human. Employer chooses human because they cannot afford costly robots or machines.

Do you feel the need of this ‘tune up’ process? A 4 step process is suggested here-

Step-1 Identify the problem areas- The first stage of the process is to check that everything is working satisfactorily or not. You identify the problem areas in this process. There are no universal standards. You are the best judge of your capability and situations. So list out the problem areas where mismatch of action and thoughts is noticed in your life.
Two common type of problems are-
Confusion - act or think? You think where action is required and/or act where thinking is required. You tend to forget our and selects a wrong role
Delay in changing role Doing/thinking things to somebody which was meant for someone else .A common example of this may be that ‘your boss has insulted you’. Since you can not reciprocate to your boss you pass on that insult to your subordinates (doing the same mistake for which you are criticizing you boss?).

Step 2 –Find out root cause- After the problem(s) are identified, try to go to the root cause(s) behind each problem. Analyze all aspects of the problem cool mindedly. Answer to following questions may help you in this process-

Is this problem happening to me or many other people of my class/type?
Does this problem happen in some special set of circumstances only?
How real/critical is the problem?
Who is responsible for this problem?

Step 3 –Find your bottom-line – After you are aware of the problems and causes behind those, think of actions you can take if the similar problem happens again in future. Be very practical and realistic in your thinking. Find out what factors are in your control and what are outside your ‘area of influence’. Can you somehow increase your ‘area of influence’? (be prepared for additional responsibilities also). If you are unable to answer any question, take the help of experts’.
Be aware at this point that mind works very fast. It generates about 60000 thoughts in a day. Unless you have very effective and efficient body and support system, it is very difficult to act on all of those thoughts. This situation is a common situation which most of us face. There are two ways to handle this situation-
(a) Prioritize your thoughts according to importance in your life and focus on high priority and critical thoughts first.
(b) Calm down - You can calm down your mind through meditation.

Step4-Accept or reject totally- This is the final but most critical step. Most of the time, we are able to identify the problem, analyze it properly but fail to honor our analysis. Accepting reality is not very easy, especially if it not of our liking. So even after a healthy analysis, mostly we neither accept it nor able to dismiss it completely. This hanged state is very damaging. In this situation, we work like a government, who has got the recommendation of some ‘enquiry commission’ but it is neither willing to work on those recommendations not discard completely. The inaction prevails, report is not made public. It finds dust with other similar reports and next time another commission is set up to find facts. And the government thinks it had acted in best manner.

You have to carry each one of your decision to one of these final destination-
• Accept in totality and do best possible in that regard
• Reject in totality and forget about it.

Keeping tuned up- The job does not ends after tuning up. It is better to keep tuning up periodically (or when required).The real life situations are never as perfect as designed environment in our minds. After knowing our true positions we have to constantly improve from there.
Some tips in this regard are-

More focus on thoughts which lead to workable solution.
Act promptly on your own thoughts, else someone else may do the same.
Have more human angle in work rather working like machines.
Be cost effective.
Try doing more efficiency each ‘next time’.