Handling difficult times - 2

Though I am continuing the series, I have decided not to force myself to maintain any continuity, which means you can expect these posts to be random and readers will have to make the connection.

One very important skill necessary to handle difficult times is planning. We are experts in corporate planning and very easily make assumptions about different variables but when it comes to planning in personal life, we act in a completely different way.

We don't want to take any risk in personal life and can only visualize a straight path almost all the time. There is no contingency planning, which means even a small unforeseen event can throw us into a negative spiral. Instead if we assess the bottom of a downfall (even the stock market can't go negative) and then be prepared for it, I think the shock will be minimal and we can fight the negative spiral.

Like in corporate planning, we need to make assumptions in our personal life and should weight the probability of different outcomes and come up with the expected outcome. If we are either too optimistic or too pessimistic, then we are in for some kind of trouble.

That's all for today. Meanwhile I am back in Delhi after a whirlwind sleepless four day trip to Hyderabad. I have done some very interesting things during this trip apart from meeting my classmates at Solstice 2008 that included giving a treat to my friends by getting them all together for the first time.

Solstice 2008

My trip to ISB for Solstice has been in doldrums till yesterday but all of a sudden I have decided to go.

This would be a great opportunity to meet with all my classmates,few current batch students and few alums. I will also be meeting my friends, those who know me from my school days.

I am planning to visit my native place and my grandfather. I shall continue the "Handling Difficult Times" series once I am back from this trip.

Handling difficult times - 1

It was not the best of times when I was looking out for a job for the first time in 1994. I was searching for a technical job and all the job openings were in sales. I never thought twice as my objective was simple - start earning before the 100 bucks I got from my grandfather exhausted. I took up a Jr. Sales Officer job at a start up that was to publish a telugu socio-political magazine by name "Sravanthi." I had no chance to think about "how my job was related to what I studied" neither did I mull over "what's in that job that I enjoy." I just needed to get started and I did. From then my career took so many twists and turns, some driven by me and some driven by situations, in fact I never thought about going back to college till 2006 (which is 11 years after I started working).

These surely are difficult times and it is more probable that even at the top B-schools, one may not be in a position to choose but one would be in a situation to be chosen by someone. However there is no need to despair, one would not be in a position to influence the situation at all times; you will have to accept the fact and the situation and act accordingly.

This is not the end of this post, I am going to discuss how I handled difficult times and hope that the readers would benefit from this.