Thursday, May 26, 2016

My best laid plans & moments of insanity

While i sit and write this, I look back things that have happened over the decade and how much was as per my plans when I started. The answer is surprisingly less, though I am not doing bad myself, I am trying to understand what made the difference.

In the first day in college my chairman asked me what do you want to do in life, my answer was "To start my own company"(I didn't know the word for that was 'entrepreneur'). It was during the golden days of no internet, surprisingly my first email was created during my 3rd year of college and we use to carry a pocket diary which has all the home phone numbers. Anyway, during my master's my prof asked the same question, the immediate answer was "Entrepreneur" in 5 years. It has been 8 years since i made that statement and I am still trying to change jobs. So exactly what happened, I lost myself in work and lost sight of my end objective, but does that means that am I doing bad? No, I am doing pretty good.

So examining my success it comes down to acts that I have done during my moments of insanity. First instance:

  • Doing some crap stuff on the computer, in walks the senior manager, "How is testing going on, any new defects?". Hurriedly opened the database tool and app windows and saw some errors "Sir, i am checking the loading functionality it is not working so will let you know?", just to salvage the moment. He storms out and calls the developers to check it and voila a major defect which i stumbled upon. 
Second instance:
  • Travelling in a train from Chennai to Bangalore, my boss calls and says our customer wants to come down here and do a new project, whom should I put as the lead. I volunteered to write the proposal and while doing so, realized I am sitting idle why don't I work on the new stuff. It turned to be the turning point for my entire career, both personally and professionally. 
So these random acts, defined or changed my professional career and the same thing on the personal aspect. I have done a lot of things while I am insane, due to which i have met the best peoples or my life. The plan was never to let go of them, but in the end, I lost all those best people due to acts that i did during my moments of insanity. Now whatever i do to rectify, things never change. 

People say success is due to acts of insanity, for me, I have failed as a personal due to moments of insanity. 

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