Face the worst first and get rid of it asap.

This is yet another discussion with Doddappa (Uncle). It’s a pretty simple thing yet a lot of us do not seem to remember it and practice it. I do not remember how this one came up, but its here. This is one of his philosophies which have been appreciated by others. The idea is about prioritizing the things/to-dos of the day. There will be a lot of days in every person’s life when there will a few “good” to-dos and a probably a couple of “not so good” or “difficult” to-dos also. And these difficult ones will generally be such that we will be hesitating to carry out them. And, as a result we generally keep postponing them as we would be afraid to face them. Also nobody would like to start the day with something bad, because of a strange belief that the rest of the day would also be bad. But what most of us forget is that these unwanted responsibilities keep eating our resources – time, thought and energy, until we get rid of them. This directly results in a reduction in our efficiency even when we are doing something that we love the most, because the fear of having to do the unwanted will always be eating us from the inside. We do not get rid of the unwanted even when we know that it is something that we ultimately will have to face. So to avoid all the losses or resources the best thing would be to finish of the most unwanted and most feared task of the day as soon as possible in the early hours of the day. This will ensure us a successful and more productive day ahead of us. So just get rid of the unwanted and feared things first and that will allow us to enjoy the things we actually like to do.

Basic Planning Gyaan

I recently completed my graduation in Computer Science and Engineering and started my career at National Instruments R&D as a Software Engineer. There are a lot of things that I learnt here in first few days. Of course I cannot put all of that here. But I can indeed put some most generic things, things mostly known to all or at least a lot of people. This post has something like that. The freshers here (one of whom was me) had a meeting with our manager for a particular thing. We discussed a lot of things out which I found few interesting and have put them here. These are mainly management related stuff like how a professional should lead his/her professional life. Pretty simple but very important things. These things are very essential for any organization to be successful.

Don't push things , rather take things on. Take Responsibilities .
-- This is the good old thing which told us not to put the blame on someone else when we do not succeed. Its just put in a different way. Whenever we have task facing us we should always go for it rather than shun it away waiting for someone else to take it. We should realize that the more we work the more we grow. Its always a +ve things to take up responsibility than to drop them or avoid them.

Always Under Commit , Over Deliver .
-- The previous point tells us to take up work. But what it does not speak about is that whatever is taken up must be completed in time. When accepting a job, when committing for something we should make sure we got enough room for this new thing and it is not going to affect our previous schedules and commitments. And also when finalizing deadline we should think of unforeseen situations and obstacles and plan accordingly. Have some buffer time reserved. Hence we should always under commit and try and work hard to over deliver. This point might seem contradicting to the previous one but both are to be balanced well to go up the ladder.

Don't randomly oscillate on days . Divide your day properly.
-- This is the discipline part. Every day has to be productive. At the end of each day when you ask yourself about that day's outcome you must have a valid answer. And this can happen only when we properly plan the day. Planning plays a crucial role even in a day's work. So instead of spending the day trying to do a lot things, we better plan the day. Tools like post-it reminers, or an online dairy or a calendar or some other form of To-Do list will come a long way in making the day fruitful. So the first thing you got to do when you move in daily is to list down the tasks you plan to do that day. Something like 5 to 10 minutes should be sufficient for this. Be sure to note these things so as to verify later. Start work as per plan. Note down any new thing that you come across in the middle of the day. Then close to the end of the day, say around an hour before you leave verify whether you accomplished all the listed tasks. If some critical things were left out then complete them before you leave. Or may be you can postpone the less important ones to a further date.
What is more important to a plan to work is that it should be followed. So once you have a plan for the day follow it. And follow it as closely as possible. Do not oscillate between multiple things at a time. For example - if you are focussing on something very seriously, just don't start browsing. That will put you out of the frame(of course unless you have some real good control over thoughts and mind).

Plan everything well for the time you spend out of the office as well.
-- Our personal life affects our professional life almost in every aspect and the converse is also true. If we can't get things done on time in office we end up staying late and that annoys people at home. They start cribbing, telling us why we are late daily and all that stuff. That obviously makes us angry and we lose the mental balance. And when we are in office with such a mind we do things in a much worse way and the cycle goes on. So we better plan things for our personal life also. Just to make sure that we are successful everywhere.

These are a sort of Golden Rules for anyone who aspires to be successful. At least that is what I feel. I of course have started following these and it has helped me a lot.