A Fine Balance

"Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." - Confucius. The Chinese philosopher was way ahead of his time to have opined on the dilemma that faces most youth today. There are very two clear divides. One which actually proves the adage to be true. These are the startup heroes, the entrepreneurs, the renegades, and the rebels. The ones who are lucky to have chosen a metier which they love, which in turn gives them a financial return. The second are those who are trying to find something they love or love something they have found. These are the professionals, the ones who work because they have a degree, because they do not have a risk appetite and because they want to be part of the crowd and not stand out. So which one of the above categories do you fall in? Have you asked your parents about whether they loved what they did? Do all entrepreneurs love what they do and do all professionals only work 9 to 5?

"Ikigai" - a Japanese word that denotes a reason to live or a reason to jump out of bed in the morning. It is the intersection of your needs, desires, ambitions, and satisfaction. Those who can find their Ikigai, their raison d'etre, can lead longer and happier lives. Recently Aditya Puri retired after over 26 years of service with HDFC Bank. Would you consider him to be happy? Would you say that because he was happy he was successful and provided his stakeholders' multifold returns or would you say that because he became successful he was happy? Let us look at SRK. Do you think that SRK has found his Ikigai in the entertainment industry and hence he is happy and going to live to be an octagenarian? Or do you think the inverse, that success is keeping him happy? Let us delve a bit deeper into each man's work ethic and as the millennials call it, "Work-Life Balance (WLB)". Articles regaled us with stories on how Mr. Puri would leave work by 5 pm on most days to spend time with his family and would be very disciplined with his time to be able to get the most of his day. On the other hand, SRKs media exploits are quite the rage with him staying up late, getting up early, smoking non-stop, jet setting from one corner of the world to the other, till the point where we all question, how many hours in a year does he spend with his family?

I grew up barely seeing my father on weekdays. We would leave for school by 8 am and he would come home by 8:30 pm. Saturdays were mostly working for him. He had a commute of more than an hour each way and that too by the Mumbai local. I admire him for his work ethic. He was working for himself. He did not report to anyone. There were times during our summer break that we would ask him to stay back home but not once did he skip his workday just for spending time with his family. However, every morning he would wait with us till the school bus arrived and every evening we would have dinner together. Post dinner he would be sitting at our bedside asking us about our day in general. If he missed most of our important school days, he made it up plenty on those dinner table conversations and those Sunday morning breakfasts. As I entered the MNC workforce with Puma, we had 5 days a week working. We had flexible timings and a cool office to work from. We began with a silver spoon as we were funded by the head office. As I had kids, it was great to come home by 7 pm, not have a long commute and even have two full days a week with them. My father loved what he did and he was good at it. I began loving my job at Puma because I was a success at it. But did I work less or did my father work more?

The 60s American actor, Bette Davis said that there is only one way to work, like hell. I will agree. There is work and then there is work which gives you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Forget the mumbo-jumbo about loving what you do. There are very few people who end up finding their Ikigai in their lifetimes. The rest of us only work for money. I tell people that if you cannot work for 8 hours a day, you will neither be satisfied nor happy nor rich. Some work for more than 8 hours a day and then complain about WLB. But if they stop wiling away their time during those working hours, then they won't have to work for more than 8 hours. Most Westerners, the Chinese, and the Japanese will come in by 8 am and leave by 5 pm and yet they all have progressed faster than India in the past few decades. Corruption and political landscape aside, they have been able to because of working harder than ever. For most Indians, time being fluid, they will get in late, spend several hours over coffee breaks and smoke breaks, and take leisurely lunch breaks as well. Then to finish their work, stay back late, get home late, and start the day late again. There is no time for work, family, or self. Then we long for a WLB. Ironic isn't it? Anyone who cannot finish their daily work in 8 hours is working inefficiently and needs to learn to become efficient. If you can do it, then you will be in WLB heaven.

Running your own startup does not mean sleepless nights or ignoring your family. There are several horror stories about entrepreneurs going through messy divorces, getting burnt out, and even going through depression. But the working principle is the same. Apply yourself 100% in those 8 hours or even 10 hours and then take the rest of the time to spend it with your trusted circle. Every entrepreneur I have met has been in a hurry to make his first 100 Cr revenue and then make his company a unicorn but not at all worried about the time he is losing with his family. Why are we all in this race? Life is a marathon and not a sprint. In a marathon, you are only competing with a previous version of yourself and not with anyone else. Building a company too is a marathon, so take a pause, a break, and watch your kids' play at school. Rome was not built in a day and nor will it be gone forever. So don't tighten your innerspring so much that it is strained and will snap one day, but be gentle and flow like the spring, never thrashing, but always around the obstacles in its path.

Let me leave you with the yin and the yang. Let us all find our yang to our yin and hang in balance. Let us not forget the good in the bad and the bad in the good. Our karma is to work with fervor and devotion and our dharma is to love with the same fervor and devotion. Let us not deprive our work because we want to love more and let us not ignore our love because we want to work more. Life is neither without work and nor is work without life. They are both always in balance but we forget to see it and tend to mix the two.

“...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”

― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance