A break i am forced to take

11:10 PM.

Returned from work almost an hour back.

Checked my emails, cursed my life, then checked my facebook page to get more frustrated….

then *bling*

I suddenly knew why i have been feeling sad lately, its the excessive use of facebook.

This social world has become my the driving force of my life… In my opinion, one should do something in real life too rather than boasting in front of the world how many three-legged-hens i saved or how many movies did i name correctly. Secondly, i just hate people having fun in their lives and then posting their endeavors on facebook… Grrrrrr! So, concentrating on myself was the best idea i could get.

Just like this thought came to my mind, the solution came to me as well: “I should control my facebook usage”

These social networking sites are no means an alternative to what you are in reality… if these are becoming a distraction from true life, it is time to take a break. Nothing is an alternative to a long phone chat with your most amazing pal of old times or a fun-filled night out of bowling with friends. We have gotten so dependent on social networking that we dont know if a friend’s dad died unless that friend posted it on facebook to collect sympathies. Similarly, if you disappeared from these social sites for long, initially people will show their concern whether you are alive or not, then they will forget you and move on….

So, I ‘Dictator Johnny’ hereby command my ‘man self’ to shun the usage of facebook for a week.

Sensing the end, i commented here n there to my heart’s content and then drafted a message to be posted on the wall:

a little break is all i need right now to set things straight (read: Quietly mur**r my enemies).
So no more status updates for a little while, may be for a week or maybe a little longer ….. but will surely be here to reply to your wall posts or to tagged items which i deem necessary to comment.
Catch up with me on twitter or via blog or via email if you are missing me too much
CYA!

With that, i sighed and closed my browser window.

The test of self-control begins!

 

LiveJournal Tags: Burhan,Facebook,Break from facebook

The summer of work

uff the summer has begun. In a city like Karachi the months of March and April are hotter than the peak months of June/July. Today the temperature was recorded to be around 42C which is some sort of a record in the past decade.

The electricity situation is a pain in the ass by itself. a 10 hour load-shedding on the heat stricken people seems like another curse on the people. An easy choice is to stay at office as you get saved by power outages and have ACs running in the halls to keep the temperature to a moderate level.

But office! Just the thought of this word is causing me to shiver. It has been a hectic span of two months thus far at work and my job duration has gone upto 12 hours a day. the software system that our department was implementing has reached its final stages and everybody is forced to push hard to its limits to make things work. Added work has caused added stress and yesterday was one such day when i saw two people breaking down due to stressful schedules. One was none other than my manager who kept his head buried in his palms for a few minutes then started to get up but *splat*. All i heard was the noise and then mayhem. we rushed him to a hospital but he seemed to have a black-out due to stress (no problem with cardiac system was observed).

I myself is taking the toll directly and its gonna get tougher as more and more of my modules will be tested directly. Since I have worked on a ‘make-or-break’ module of the system, i am gonna get lots of finger pointing and sarcastic laughs…. and eventually my name will be heard among the power corridors of this organization (though not in the way i want it to be heard). Just this thought make me go nervous.

This nervousness makes me do stupid things…. first thing is to show less interest in work (more worries, lesser work), and i have noticed a sense of irritation towards my own team members and an losing temper a few times… THIS IS NOT GOOD! CERTAINLY NOT GOOD AT ALL! So, what should I do? Switch jobs? they would call me coward or a quitter… but i dont give a shit about being called a coward or quitter as long as I am happy, right? but no! I dont seem to find much job openings lately and those which are open are now closed either due to my excessive demands or me fcuking up the job interviews….

ah, i gotta bear with it as long as i could! and in the mean time i should devise a way to beat this frustration by indulging in ‘healthy’ activities. and they include:

• Took membership of a local swimming pool where i will go and splash around thrice a week.
• Decided to cherish all the time i get at work and i am gonna watch a movie (or an episode of a TV show) daily.
• Will limit the time i spend on the internet and other addictive social media sites which make me go insane.
• Try out new products which are labeled ‘Ready to cook’ or ‘already cooked’.

Although i never thought i would be that easy to break, but only the time will tell….. Lets see who wins, Me or frustration. So far the game is against me.

Look who is talking about motivation!

Somebody asked me in an interview, “As a team lead, how would you motivate your team members to work? – as longer projects seem to cause a negative impact on the productivity of a team”.
”By shoving a superheated iron fist up their ass, coz they need to WORK to earn their bread”, I replied (rather, i wished i had replied this statement to put an end to the misery that interview was causing me).
However, i managed to utter these words as the answer: “By leading from the front and giving them a sense of hope when things are not going their way.. and not to keep them in darkness… <AND BLAH BLAH BLAH>… "

During that session, I was being hypocrite… I was talking of motivating a team while sitting in a job interview! – i felt disgusted. Look o people, I am at a job interview, trying to find my sweet escape from the place where I work and the team leader turning his back on his team whose example he was quoting while talking about team motivation… ugh!

Where did my motivation go?

My motivation towards this job is no-more, *thunder* *lightening*. it is deceased… it didn’t die of a heart attack but rather faded away with the passage of time… Like a cancer, my motivation was eaten up by crappy work, lack of money and the sense of inequality when i see my fellow people doing much better (and earning much better) and other reasons that i dont remember right now.

What difference did it make?

My attitude towards work changed, I now take work not so seriously as i know whatever i am doing isn’t going to make sense at the end of the day… like a broken arrow we and our work will lie and nobody will ever bother to look down at us.
Besides a non-serious attitude work, i dont think i have let my productivity go any further… Me and my team is still indulged in work and if you ask me i have been able to concentrate on my team’s work more than i concentrate on mine and that resulted in more productivity in terms of deliverables and i now respond to them on an urgent basis. Isn’t that a shocker? my lack of motivation resulted in more productivity of fellow team members… nice! In that case I should be a non-motivated CEO (and imagine the wonders i could create in that position)

So, here i am de-motivated from my current work… looking to find an exit and wishing that i find it early before my manager points me towards the exit door… Les see how it goes from here.

 

P.S: after returning from that interview, i did follow the rule of shoving the iron fist and got one of the team member into admitting that he has never done this much work for quite some time 🙂