Month: January 2025

 

Busyness isn’t importance. And turmoil isn’t progress.

 

And contrary to what we are hardwired to believe, burnout is NOT a badge of honour.  We are willing(or unwilling) victims of the stories we have been told and the narrative that we have been storing in our heads. We all have stories we live by that aren’t fixed truths. They’re just old scripts we’ve been following without realizing it.

 

Getting off the hustle treadmill isn’t easy. The treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face. Burnout is when you are all the time overstimulated. Our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self worth and that does not help in any way. The implicit message is that if we are not perpetually exhausted, we are not doing enough. As if the great things are reserved for those who bleed. For those who almost break.

 

Introspect and ask your self ‘ how complicit or a willing ally are you in creating the conditions(and preserving that status quo) that are causing you stress and overwhelm’ ? Is your GPS calibrated right? Does it have to guide you only towards Destination Struggle?  You don’t have to Google to find better Wayz!

 

Does your To-Do task list for the day occupy all of the entire A4 page?  And To-Do as a term itself sounds so intimidating and an admonishment, clearly that you are not going to enjoy.

 

The continuous talk of self-optimisation. BS- humans are not search engines.

For all those who flaunt their workaholic badges of honor and condescendingly accept the various neurotic flavors that comes with it, let’s come to terms with the fact that we have been conditioned to think that work in the laissez faire zeitgeist is about hyper vigilance. It’s about what happens to people when they are trapped in abusive circumstances and cannot escape. Psychologist Judith Herman observed that “the ultimate effect of [psychological domination] is to convince the victim that the perpetrator is omnipotent, that resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning his indulgence through absolute compliance.” We haven’t been able to shrug off the mega legacy of the Industrial Age: Compliance. Phew!

 

And since we are all birds of the same feather, we fall for the narrative that romanticizes struggle and that assumes only grueling work can produce worthy results.

 

The good thing is that you have a choice. Like nature, fly with the wind. Go with the flow, like water. Take the path of least resistance.

 

Because, clearly Working is NOT Productivity. RIP Productivity!

 

A couple of years back I was visiting England with family. And since renting a car was the best option to go around the south central, west Midlands, we did the obvious. The booking was done 25 days prior to our dates of travel and the car rental brand is perceived to be the best and the largest in the world. But, what we experienced was shoddy, sub-standard and far from even remotely enterprising. You get the drift by now.

 

There was an appointment made over a call(after holding on for a good 20 minutes listening to mindless, tasteless music on the IVR, dodging the robots to eventually get a human on the line) and me and family reached the car rental office at the appointed time. There were several customers waiting in that small office and all seeming more restless than the next. The wait was getting to them clearly.

 

What I notice about these car rental brands is that there is never enough to go around. Even though what they ALWAYS claim is their intent to go the ‘ extra mile ‘ (never mind the spiralling fuel costs)- I mean if the staff required to handle traffic at a certain time(where appointments have been given) is 3 or 4, there is barely one. And that individual is supposed to be, being honest and fair Hercules and Machiavelli combined. Checking the booking, handling telephone calls, collecting payment, driving the car to the delivery area, taking pictures of the vehicle before handing over the keys and briefing( in a well-trained cut and dry hard to understand manner) the customer on the do’s and don’ts. Not to mention looking askance at you based on the colour of your skin.

 

Since it didn’t seem like that I would be getting my car anytime soon, I decided to look around the dingy office (armed with dirty carpet, poor lighting, an unwelcome vibe) and what caught my attention was a well framed poster on the wall which screamed ‘ Mission Statement ‘. Without exaggerating any bit, here it is verbatim:

 

” Our mission is to fulfill the automotive and commercial truck rental, leasing, car rental and related needs of our customers and, in doing so, exceed their expectations for service, quality and value.

We will strive to earn our customers’ long-term loyalty by working to deliver more than promised, being honest and fair and ” going the extra mile ” to provide exceptional personalized service that creates a pleasing business experience.

We must motivate our employees to provide exceptional service to our customers by supporting their development, providing opportunities for their personal growth and fairly compensating them for their success and achievements..”

 

And it drones on..and you are there in full protein form and reading all this crap and wondering, ” what kind of idiot do they take me for?” The words on the paper are clearly disconnected from the reality of the experience. And this coming from one of the top global car rental brands in the world, at least perceivably. So much for mission statements!

 

After almost an hour of waiting the counter customer disservice executive comes up to me and barks ” sir the SUV that you booked is not available- you will have to make do with a scaled down version as that is the only one available “. With no hint of an apology or anything even resembling that remotely. And since the demand was more than supply, there was no discount or any other entitlement offered.

There was nothing that we could do at that stage since the motivation of getting to Oxford and also to see Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon was far more over-powering, we took the compromise choice.

 

Sum summarum, for all those brands who continue to behave like this, here’s a simple message: standing for something isn’t just about writing something down. It is about believing and living it. Unless the mission is to con and massively under-deliver.