Achieve your big dreams by taking small actions

Few years back, the editor of one of the dailies called me and requested to write the weekly column for their supplement. The column was supposed to be published weekly for a year. When I visualize the year, I thought, how I would do that. Further I had to commit to writing and sending articles every week. Writing seldom is very easy without any commitment. There were challenges of taking time out for this task and then having consistency in writing. Readers also should feel engaged. For me it was a mammoth task. I requested some time to think. Finally, I decided to give it a try. I thought I would write one article a week and then decide depending upon the mood of my mind. 

I started writing and then it became fun. Initially I write one article once in a week but then in a flow, I used to write 3-4 articles in one sitting and used to mail regularly. The task which I thought was a mammoth task, became simple for me. Topics were challenging but interesting; readers appreciated it. I was able to engage them. Secondly, I started enjoying writing regularly. It formed a habit. The column was popular among youth and students. After that I am writing many columns for magazines and dailies. I created the habit of writing regularly. 

(Image: Internet)

Sometimes, we feel the task is very large, and we get scared. Take an example of driving to another city at night which is almost 250 km from your city. What do you look outside while driving? You can see only a few meters in the headlights of the car. So, in those headlights, you drive mile by mile and reach your destination. Life is like that. Most of the time, we don’t know how we will achieve our task, how we will reach the destination, but then there are some guiding principles to reach there. 

Find out your headlight: What is that guiding light which will help you to see a few meters away, you don’t need always to see beyond the vision. Starting the journey and taking small steps help you to reach your goals. 

Break the task in smaller tasks: This is not a new technique, but we don’t follow it. Most of the time, we are desperate to complete it in one stretch, which may result in failure.    

Author Dan Richards quotes about solving the problem “Break down the problem into smaller pieces and start dealing with them one at a time, piece by piece. The smaller the piece, the easier it will be to evaluate it individually and come up with the solution. You can also try solving one problem for one day.”    

It applies to your goals, tasks, dreams etc. Whatever you wish to achieve, break down that task into a smaller task or think about milestones. While writing a column, I started with one article, and I wrote many. 

We all have some dreams and wishes, unless we don’t convert them into goals that remain dreams and wishes. Don’t get scared by big tasks and goals. Find out the right headlights to reach those goals and break the goals into smaller achievable tasks. You will achieve what you wish.  

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga 

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Ambition

Company hired the Mckinsey & Company to benchmark and design the strategy for the expansion plans. It was expected that this exercise will result in some new ideas and businesses where company can further explore. I was one of the project team members along with other cross functional members from editorial, marketing, circulation etc. fifty percent members were from the company and fifty percent from Mckinsey. It was a great development experience where we learnt the thought process, platforms etc on which the Mckinsey works. It was a great learning about the way of working and identifying the core issue and proposing solutions.

There were a lot of initiatives parallelly going on like SAP implementation, new design of newspapers which company are publishing, lean six sigma roll out and convergence project (Convergence in media is linking one media platform to different platforms and design the content as per the platform and consumer behaviours.) Global top consultants were advising the company on those projects also.  

While we were discussing the progress of one of the projects, our Managing Director told me to leverage the learning from those consultants, develop the internal talent with those learning. In short, working on such projects was a great development opportunity for us. He also mentioned that consultants are good, and they have the huge data and we should use that data to improve the business, learn the way they approach the solution and their approach toward the design thinking. Personally, I gained a lot while working on those projects.

It was mid-summer in 2006. We all were in the final workshop with the management team and few cross functional senior members. Different workstreams presented their story. Finally, there was a presentation from the consultant on the recommendations. Every member in the boardroom was given voting pads.

Data was presented. The government was planning auctions of licences for radio frequencies. Members were asked to vote if the company should invest in FM, Events, Televisions Channel- entertainment or news or info-entertainment etc. Based on the presentation 90% participants voted for FM radio Channel. Finally, the consultant put the final slide on the screen with his recommendations to invest in FM Radio frequency. For other ventures like television etc we had a gap in capabilities. The workshop concluded with a lot of deliberations.

Next day, the Managing Director invited the meeting of the management team where I was also a part. He asked for feedback about the workshop and views of the participants. After listening all, he declared, “We will not go for the radio licence, we will invest in television channel.”

There was a pin drop silence, “We have a good benchmark, the team has done a wonderful job and our strategy is in place, but I believe that we should have ambitions. Unless you don’t have dreams, we will not be successful. We should take decisions considering our ambition. I believe that we understand our business and we should go for television channel. We need to discuss whether it is entertainment, info-entertainment or only news channel.”  He broke the silence. He explained the logic behind his decision, risk involved but he also explained why we should think big. He pushed the boundaries of the team to think big. 

After a lot of discussion, finally the project started and after 1 years the television channel started. Initially it was info-entertainment but later on converted fully into a news channel. Today the said channel is number 1 in TRP in regional language (Marathi). It is known as Saam TV.

We make decisions based on the data, however sometimes it is intuition and ambition which takes you toward success. Such decisions may be risky. But confidence, courage, conviction and calculated risk and trust on self and team are keys to success.  

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart and BookGanga 

(Income from books is donated to the NGO which works for orphans, street children & abandoned elders)

Chase the dream...

“Chase the dream, they will realized.” This is the reaction of master blaster Sachin Tendular after he scored his 100^th century against Bangladesh. Sachin Tendular is a very positive person; I have never heard him speaking anything negative. There are lots of people in the world who dream and they succeed. There are also lots of people who also dream and never succeed. The irony is they see the dream and they don’t believe on their own dream.

Everybody has dreams regarding work, relationships, health and personal development. The million dollar question is what takes them to realize their dream. The problem is that they don’t chase their dream. They see the dream and they forget the dream. And they sigh “Kash….(perhaps…)”

Sachin Tendular saw the dream; he chased it till he realized it. Do we chase our dream? Do we consider, what takes to chase the dream? What are the secrets? The person who is strong against all the odds makes the difference. When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them. It is not only dreaming, but doing something to chase the dream. Expanding outside the boundaries is critical, but needed to be successful. Sachin was never the part of boundaries. His balls were out of the boundaries.  

How dream Works

Prominent psychologists stated in most of their research that the majority of our behavior comes about unconsciously and automatically. An estimate of the proportions: 5 percent conscious, planned behavior opposite 95 percent unconscious, automatic behavior. This does not only count for “simple” automatic behavior but also for complex, intelligent proceedings.

We read automatically, we respond to e-mails and phone calls automatically, we think automatically and we even learn new automatisms automatically. You have no idea whether you stopped for red lights, gave right of way or overtook other cars. Everything happened automatically. If we conditioned our dreams in right way, they work automatically. The part of the brain does not recognize the difference between reality and dream and it assumes that dream is a reality. The mind acts accordingly.  

Every action of Sachin Tendular was automatics. You just see his actions on playing ground. Many times, he went back in pavilion, with poor score. It was the natural phenomenon and any common person would have been done the same thing. He never carried the status of his image and he was always automatic and natural.

And it worked most of the time, during critical matches and when he scored 100^th century.

We “condition” ourselves, as it were, to be successful. A bear in the road is no longer a disaster; it becomes a trigger to automatically produce the solutions we came up with ahead of time.