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Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts

Thursday, May 2, 2013

How do you know you love your job?

Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, a marketing software company based in the U.S., has put up a post that has already garnered 2,000 "likes" on Facebook. Some 500 people have tweeted about it and it has been shared almost 9,000 times on LinkedIn.

That's not at all surprising considering Shah (pictured) has addressed a topic that is top-of-mind for all of us: How do we know we love what we do?

Shah has helpfully given us what he says are 14 telling signs that you love your job. These range from "You don’t talk about other people; you talk about the cool things other people are doing" to "You don’t think about surviving. You think about winning" and "You view success in terms of fulfillment and gratification — not just promotions and money".

Check out the list here and then take the mini-quiz at the end of Shah's post (read the hundreds of comments, too) to figure out if you need to register on Naukri.com — or stay put where you are.
  • VARUN CHHABRIA (Class of 2012), associate editor of Books & More magazine, commented via e-mail: "How true! Answered yes to all 14 statements. :)"
  • DIYOTIMA SINHA ROY (Class of 2014), currently an intern with JWT in Bangalore, commented via e-mail: "Well, my score is 10/14. :)"
  • NIRANJANA MURALEEDHARAN (Class of 2014), currently an intern with R Square Consulting in Bangalore, commented via e-mail: "I have always had this question in mind. The moment I saw the subject of your e-mail, I opened it :) I scored just 7, maybe because I am an intern. Haha!"

Friday, May 18, 2012

"We are educating people out of their creativity"

I am mighty obliged to Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014) for introducing me to Ken Robinson's concept-shattering talks at TED.

In an e-mail she wrote to me yesterday — we had been discussing careers and the importance of being passionate about work — Natasha brought up Ken Robinson and told me that one of her favourite parts of the speech Sir Ken gave in February 2010 concerned his reference to people who love what they do. Here is what he said:

I meet all kinds of people who don't enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives getting on with it. They get no great pleasure from what they do. They endure it rather than enjoy it and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do and couldn't imagine doing anything else. If you said to them, "Don't do this anymore," they'd wonder what you were talking about. Because it isn't what they do, it's who they are.

Two years ago, I had published a post on this very subject: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?". As you can imagine, I am thrilled to learn that a sentiment I have been expressing for years now is shared by a man considered by many to be one of the world's foremost experts on creativity.


Sir Ken is also of the view that the approach to educating children is all wrong. He argues we're educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatised, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. (Check out his TED profile — there are more quotes as well as links to his talks.)

I have an issue with the education system, too, though my problem is more to do with the decline in standards of the English language used by youngsters. And I have given vent to my feelings in a post I published in October 2010: "What's the point of an education if you remain illiterate?"

Be that as it may, in the TED talk Natasha has referred to, Sir Ken makes many valid points — intelligently, wittily — about the urgent need to reform the education system. Watch him deliver his brilliant speech here: "Bring on the learning revolution!"