Are you an institution or a victim?

Back story: Sameer (name changed), one of our participants called me up before the start of our monthly accountability program, and told me that he won’t be able to attend the 10 minute creation and completion call since it’s in his office hours.

I said ok.

For Sameer, me and even for 99.99% of the people it’s a hard reality that we don’t have a say, a flexibility on doing something else in the timing of our workplace. That’s the occurrence that we have of how things are for most of us.

But what got me into deep thinking was that there are few names, and their occurrence of time for them was very different.

#1. Mohandas Gandhi

#2. Bal Gangadhar Tilak

#3. Rabindranath Tagore

When Gandhiji used to write a letter — The letter was said to be from the desk of ‘so and so’. Does your letter or email also have the same kind of listening?

Tagore was so revered that he was said to be an institution in himself. Shantiniketan wasn’t any place on earth, instead he was a walking-talking shantiniketan. What made him an institution is that his values, philosophy and life purpose emanated from him so much that it unabashedly showed up in his paintings, poems, stories, speeches and conversions.

Tilak spent half of this life travelling and meeting people. Andolan wasn’t an event happening on so and so date at such and such time, he was not going to any andolan, rather he was an andolan. At many places he used to speak directly to gatherings even if there was no mic or speaker. His philosophy wasn’t a lengthy paragraph or zen statement, it was just one word ‘Swaraj’. But he was so consumed by it that no matter how many people came to meet him, he would talk to everyone and would usually be the last to leave meetings, which meant many times he was standing for 10 hours and more at a stretch, sometimes even forgetting about his meals.

Is it possible that like these extraordinary people, Sameer ‘an institution’ can also bend time, space, events and expectations such that his request to have a 10 minute non-office call occurs to his office people as an opportunity for them and that they felt obliged to have to come to his use.

And say yes.

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Arun Kumar V वाघचौरे

Teacher + Trainer + Entrepreneur (Visiting Faculty at Welingkar + Getting Things Done Trainer + Edupreneur at http://Classesnotes.com),Productivity enthusiast