In my 26 (almost 27 years) of life, I’ve always done what was told to me to do. Very rarely did I think about what I wanted to do. From simple things like extracurricular activities like sports (tennis, swimming and basketball) to artistic pursuits (drawing and singing), I’ve swung from one activity to another blindly, just following my mother’s wishes. To be very honest, I didn’t hate even one of these activities. I was terrified of swimming I’ll admit (I still am), but I didn’t hate it! In fact, I loved tennis, I loved basketball, I loved drawing and most certainly enjoyed singing. But the problem was that I hated working hard. I hated the regular regimen. I hated the hours of practice. In short, I was lazy. In time, I gave up all of these. And now, when I think about it, I’m left without a hobby. If anyone asks me, I have no idea what I like doing in my spare time. I look forward to some spare time of course, but when i do have it, I have no idea what to do with it! I am a very private person, so “hanging out with friends” is not an option. Reading a good book or writing are some of the “constructive” ways of spending said time. And conversely, the “not so constructive” way, and by now you would have guessed, the most common way is watching TV or the numerous streaming websites like Hulu and Netflix.
I just started with what a friend of mine calls “the beginning of an almost 40-year career”. For those of you who failed to grasp the gravity of this statement, it means I’ve just joined the bandwagon of people who slog their whole lives to earn money, support a family and a few who “save for retirement”. Being the daughter of a core banker, the last bit is probably the most important! I often joke that if my father saw a Rs 50 note in my hand he would immediately order me to deposit it to my account! My mother, a homemaker, also kept emphasizing how important it is to save money and all this while I was still in school and the only money that I could call my own was pocket money that I got every month. It started with Rs 25, which increased to Rs 50 and then finally landed at Rs 100, which was when I started my undergrad studies and the pocket money just stopped! By then, I didn’t feel the need to ask my parents for any more. The money that I had saved, helped me get through the four years, 4 years of just “hanging out with friends”!
Even when it came to studies, I didn’t really work hard. In India, with the competition rising and the number of school seats and jobs not increasing at the same rate, it was getting harder to get into a good school. That would mean not getting a good campus placement. That in turn would mean a low paying job which would ultimately result in little or no savings! See how everything is connected to the root, “hard work”? For a person who considers herself as pretty low on God’s priority list when distributing their fair share of luck, I seem to have struck gold at every stage of my life barring a very few. I messed up the first ever crucial exam of my study life, the 10th boards. But for a person who hardly worked towards it, I managed a good enough score. It wasn’t dismal but it wasn’t great. Similarly, I jacked up my next crucial exam, the 12th boards. Here again, miraculously I didn’t go below 80! In the engineering JEE exams, I always scored in the 80s. They weren’t enough for the good schools of course but they weren’t third class either! But the scores did indicate that the top tier was out of question. Who was to blame? Me of course! I didn’t work hard. During my engineering, (I did manage to get into a good enough school. I say it is a good enough one because it gave me a placement at the end of 4 years into a pretty reputable company!) once again I continued tradition and didn’t really work extremely hard (or what I know I probably could have done). I just did whatever was required of me. No more. No less. I graduated with a good enough score. Yes, I wasn’t the topper and no, I didn’t even want to be.
Then came my chance to finally do something! I decided that it was high time I start working hard. At my first job out of college, we had a 4-month training where I really worked hard. After all the tests, I got dismal scores. And I would run crying to my mother that even after I work so hard, it doesn’t show. What’s the point? Being a loving mother, all she could do was console me over the phone and keep reassuring me that it would off someday. To look on the bright side, at least I wasn’t being failing! Had I not worked hard maybe I would have failed! That didn’t really help, but I took her word for it! That job, though it didn’t really teach me anything productive, it did teach me a lot in terms of what I don’t see myself doing anymore! My sheer unhappiness and the indirect push of my peers quitting and going for better opportunities, pushed me to take the next step and quit. Here too, I should have worked hard but “good luck” struck again and with mediocre effort I was able to secure a very good school. Sure, had I worked really hard, I know I could have gotten a better school. I almost did too but at the last minute, that didn’t work out. But I was grateful for the opportunity and once again, as luck would have it, without too much of hard work, I managed to get a good enough final grade and once again, secure a job with a big company!
Having earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and changed two jobs, I have accomplished a lot of things in life which I am thoroughly grateful for. Throughout my education, I had always heard of an inspirational quote doing the rounds – “Don’t work hard, work smart”! Coming to the US has been a huge advantage for me because it has opened up my horizon to encompass the whole world. I read so much about famous and successful people and the so called management gurus who all say that you don’t need to work hard, you need to work smart, indicating there are only two kinds of workers – the hard worker and the smart worker! But I guess, even after all these years, I haven’t really grasped the concept! From all that I just told everyone, it’s clear I’m not a hard worker! But I can clearly tell, I’m not a smart worker either! Then what am I?
After struggling to answer that for all these years, today finally, it’s clear to me. Do you know how? From an article I read about something Mark Cuban had said. I am neither! And yes, such a class does exist. Not wanting to be a smart worker, I always thought I have to be a hard worker! But even though I knew that somewhere deep down, I could never muster the courage to actually get up and do something about it. According to Mark, even successful people have slogged for hours to become successful. No smart worker has reached the top. But if my aim isn’t to reach the top, if my aim is just to be satisfied with what I have, can I get away with being neither a smart worker now a hard worker? This thought alone will disturb my father who always said I never had the pride in myself to be the best in whatever I do and aim higher. He always said I have a clerk mentality meaning I just do what is asked and never take that extra step. But what if I believe that’s circumstantial? I wasn’t happy in my previous job so I quit! I was lucky that I got the opportunity to quit. Had I not, I’d still be stuck there, cribbing. Maybe if that happens again (god forbid) I’d aim higher once again! For now, I’m still figuring my way out! Maybe I need some inspiration! A positive influence might just give me that extra push that I’ve been looking for all this while!
All this reading of success stories and listening to famous speeches takes me back to what my mother said! There’s no substitute to hard work! The whole purpose of this article was to remember and acknowledge that “Mother Knows best” and the person I must thank for inspiring me to write today is Mark Cuban!
Musings of a confused nut! 