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Recently I watched a very old TV serial
–‘Fauji’ starring Shahrukh Khan. A lot of you perhaps wont even know
that Shahrukh Khan started his career acting in TV serials and then went
to the Bollywood. This serial was based on the training of an Indian
Army commando and how they learn to be so disciplined in their work. It
was awesome to watch that serial again.
Some of my distant family members are
also in Army and whilst I was watching the serial, I could feel how they
are actually like the TV characters shown in the serial, highly
disciplined, highly respectful to their seniors and people who can
create anything out of nowhere, only because of the training they
undergo and their grit and determination.
Watching them get trained made my
thought of getting a solid training all the more important, be it army
or chartered accountancy and how a good training can provide you a sense
of purpose in life. With that sense of purpose gets combined their
“grit, determination and passion” which leads to exemplary results.
Remember – “The purpose of life should be a life of purpose”.
If there is no purpose of your life, there is no life for you because
behaving and acting aimlessly is a punishment to yourself and to your
large untapped potential that can create wonders.
I have talked in my previous articles
the importance of articleship for a chartered accountancy student and
how a good articleship exposure can lead to great results for your
career. The Army people are trained to be obedient to their senior,
they are trained to follow the rules no matter what, they are trained to
be disciplined in life, they are trained to work in teams and
ultimately they are trained to enjoy their life in whatever conditions
of life they are in. And this training goes a long way in shaping their
future career and life as a whole.
Similarly, the training opportunity
given by our Institute to young aspiring chartered accountancy students
by way of articleship should be taken as an opportunity to learn, work
hard and grow in your profession. Army teaches us a lot of things. It
teaches how to work hard, it teaches us how to work in teams, it teaches
us how to respect your seniors, it teaches us the importance of team
building and respect of co-workers. As young aspiring chartered
accountants, we should learn these tactics well and implement them with
true spirit, because these habits and virtues would go a long way in
shaping your career.
Be disciplined by reaching office or
client’s place on time, be extremely hard working by taking up
assignments from your seniors proactively and working hard to finish
them, be resilient in your approach by taking up challenging jobs that
tests your gut and intellect, be a great team worker by respecting your
seniors and peers at work, be highly respectful to your seniors because
ultimately they are helping you learn and grow, be a smart worker by
doing jobs in the most effective manner, be proactive in your approach
and at the end, be the best person in your field. Let no other person
you know be better than you and that’s precisely what the army also
teaches their officers. Be so good that the enemy is unable to defeat
you. Similarly, we as chartered accountants should be so good in our
work that no other professional should be able to match our
professionalism, work ethics and caliber.
The other thing that was shown in the serial about the Army jawaans and officers is the habit of time management. And the only reason why everyone in the Army is able to manage their time well is because they don’t procrastinate. Procrastination,
or the habit of delaying things to the future is a very common
phenomenon and majority of us believe in procrastinating things to the
future. This actually starts as a casual habit and ultimately leads to a
disease. Once we develop this habit, it becomes very difficult to get
over it.
The Army officers and jawaans right on
the word ‘GO’ immediately launch themselves into action and make it a
point to finish the work and report the status of the work to their
seniors. There would never be a situation when an officer or a jawaan
would procrastinate the job assigned to him. I think, this is all
because of the training they get which ultimately becomes a habit.
Good habits are seldom achieved quickly
and majority of us picks up bad ones swiftly. Why is it that the people
in defence don’t pick up habits that one ideally shouldn’t? Is it
because they are on the borders trying to protect the country from any
invasion and therefore, discipline and non-procrastination are a must
for them. Why can’t we as civilians pick up such good habits and tattoo
them in our brain so deeply that they are hard-wired in our neuro
system and then they would never leave us.
On the issue of handling
procrastination, I wanted to give some practical tips that I have used
myself and they are extremely useful both, to students as well as to
qualified professionals. For some more insights on procrastination, you
can also read my article "Kabhi To Hoga Matlab Kabhi Nahin…”
These tips are highly practical and simple to use and implement:
Write your Daily 5
This is one of my favorite things that
work wonderfully in your life. Every morning when you get up (make it a
habit to get up at 5AM everyday - You can read my article – Why I joined the 5AM Club)
take a piece of paper and write down 5 things that you would want to
finish that day, for that day to be your best day. These 5 things can
be related to studies, career, personal life, social life and spiritual
life (if you are spiritual J).
Make it a point to write very clearly
what should be finished. Your daily goals should be specific and
measurable, don’t write anything that is not clear and which can’t be
measured. For example if you want to finish drafting a letter to a
client you should write – “I will finish drafting the letter to Client
XX and get it approved from my senior and then email it to the client
XX”. The other way, which is not the right way could have been –
“Client XX” on the assumption that you would finish drafting the letter
to that client.
By writing very specific and measurable output, you are able to accurately judge your results and outcomes.
Identify 3 most important goals by applying 80:20 Rule
One of the widely used rules which is
applicable to any situation in life, whether personal or professional.
This rule says in our life only 20% of the activities constitute 80% of
the outcomes or income or results and 80% of the activities that we do
constitute only 20% of the results. A very powerful thought.
If you analyse you would agree that
actually the above principle is true and therefore, it is very important
that we spend majority of our time on those 20% of the activities that
are most critical and significant. Once we start to spend major time on
the significant activities that are just 20%, our life would start to
shift from a feeling of scarcity to a feeling of abundance. That’s
because you would be able to achieve more out of the time spent.
Identify your three most important goals
in each area of your life. Organise them in priority. Make plans for
their accomplishment and work on your plans every single day. You will
be amazed at what you achieve in the months and years ahead.
Follow ABCDE Formula
I learnt this formula from my coach and
use it in my daily life, whilst writing my goals. Once you have written
your daily goals, it is important that those goals are prioritized
according to their importance and consequences each one of them would
have on your career.
Mark those activities “A” that are of
high importance and have serious consequences positive or negative if
they are done or if they are not done. These are the activities that
are critical and should be finished at any cost. These include things
like replying to client’s email, filing an important letter with a
Government department, attending important client meeting etc.
“B” activities are those that are important but do not carry a ‘critical’ tag with them. These are jobs that should be
picked up only when you ‘A’ activities are finished. “C” activities
are the ones which are nice to finish but do not have any consequence.
Things like talking to a friend, lunch with co-workers are these kinds
of activities. “D” jobs are those that can be delegated and shouldn’t
be done by you. “E” jobs are the ones that are absolutely un-important
and therefore, should be eliminated.
Start to practice ABCDE principle and
you would find yourself doing only those things that have real
consequence in your life and those that would make you super
performers.
Conscious positive affirmations
Constantly talking to yourself through
positive affirmations is another way to make sure you don’t
procrastinate things that are important. You can read a book “200
powerful positive affirmations” written by Andy Grant that perhaps would
help you decide which affirmations to use and when.
Affirmations start to affect our subconscious mind and it starts to drive our performance in the right direction. By
continuously speaking to yourself in a positive manner, such as –
“Every day I am working towards achieving my goals and I would achieve
them positively” or “Every day and in every way God is helping me win
every race where I am participating, be it life or profession”. You can
also say – “Every day I am working hard to ensure that I don’t
procrastinate”. By continuously using such positive affirmations you
would direct your subconscious mind to achieve those goals.
I hope this article is of some help to
you. All of us should strive to reach our pinnacle and that is only
possible when we are highly disciplined, meticulous in our work and
approach and behave in our life as the soldiers/jawaans of the army.
I would like to end this article by saying that:
“Do It Now. Sometimes ‘later’ becomes ‘never’.
Authored by Nimish Goel (www.nimishgoel.com),
a qualified chartered accountant who’s passion is to coach young
chartered accountants and aspiring students achieve the best in their
life. Nimish used to work with EY and PwC in India and has also worked
with KPMG in Europe. He now runs his own consulting company and runs a
blog www.nimishgoel.com. He can be reached for any queries and issues on his blog.
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