February 14 - The day I completely lost my love for my job (and rekindle my passion for life)

Of all days, it has to be that day - February 14th, Valentine's Day. It was a poignant day. What was meant to be a day of celebration of all things fuzzy and loving turned out to be a heartaching, heart-breaking moment for me. I knew that my relationship with this company had come to an end, right on Valentine's Day. 

If you have been following my blog posts, you probably would have realized that I'm a hapless citizen of this world. Try as I might, at a mature age of 37 (going on 38), I really don't have anything to my name. Have I started a company? No. Am I married? No. Do I have a happy family? No. Do I have savings? Not much. Am I saddled with debt? Yes, and 63,000 USD of it. While I am cognizant of the need to constantly be appreciative and thankful for what I have, such as a relatively healthy body, a job that pays average salary and some awesome colleagues, I really don't think I have anything that's noteworthy or something that I'd look back ten years later with a smile of pride. Pretty pathetic you might say -- and that is the story of my life. I actually am worried if I would have enough for when I am old and haggard. If you're like me, I certainly hope that my story makes you realize that you're not alone; that no matter what you did or tried, success just evades you and you only. Luck is rarely on my side (and yours too if you were nodding your head earlier). 

Anyways, back to my career situation, which is seriously in dire straits no matter how you look at it. I am getting about 5,000 USD a month -- and I got an MBA. I did a reflection post on why I should leave my job and as I reviewed that article, I was struck by how every single point still resonates deeply within me today. Truth be told, I actually bore some hope that things would change for the better after I put out that article -- alas, my wish did not come true. My manager is still the same -- defensive, weak, inarticulate, inept and dumb. These are qualities that can't be changed overnight and it was indeed wishful thinking on my part that things would even improve! 

So here I am, contemplating a job switch. Over the past few weeks, I saw a few jobs that I liked, but at the same time, I was not quite sure if I were up to it. It was at this point that I came across a video of Marissa Mayer (the current CEO of Yahoo!) who, in a Stanford Graduate Business school interview, exhorted the audience to always look for the smartest folks to work with and be in something that makes us feel a little comfortable (in business world parlance, step outside our comfort zone). This quickly made me cotton on to the fact that I should summon my courage and apply to jobs that are a few grades above my current payscale. Do I have the experience? Perhaps. Will the company want me? Perhaps. Will I be successful? Perhaps. And is there a chance that I might fail? Maybe! Life is really meant to be lived taking chances and a sum of our success net our failures. If I don't embrace the probability of failure, then I will never be able to bask in the probable success either. Such is life and its peculiarities. 

I never like to end my blog post on a negative tone, and I really like how I am able - through writing - sort out my thoughts and all of the ostensibly confusing mind meandering...the "what-if"s, "should-if"s and "could-if"s. That's just the dark side of the mind, or the defensive nature of self, to discourage us from jumping into the unknown or leaping into untested waters. As Liz Gilbert so aptly said in her book, Big Magic, we could let fear join us in our life's journey but we should never fear be the driver. How true. 

Extremely dejected that my career has not quite panned out the way it should and I don't see it changing the way I would like it to. Valentine's Day marks the end of my time with this unicorn startup - and the beginning of bigger, better things to come. Let there be light in our lives and let us promise ourselves to live a life larger than our fears and build dreams and not nightmares. 

Please leave me a note at the end of my blog post if you like what I wrote or have suggestions and comments. Thank you! 

Happy birthday...and my purpose in life

August 2nd, 1979. That's the day I was born! Unknowingly, it has been 37 years since, and today marks the start of my journey towards my 38th birthday. 

It was an eerily quiet day. My mom has completely forgotten that it's my birthday; my siblings couldn't be bothered; my friends didn't say a thing. My dad, despite being very advanced in age, surprisingly muttered a "Oh it's your birthday today, right?". Yea for sure it is. Well, thank you dad for being the one and only one to have remembered my birthday in this world :)  

Looking back at the past 37 years, I wouldn't dare say that I have left an indelible mark on this world and lived life as gloriously and bravely as I thought I would. For some reason, things didn't quite seem to go my way and life appeared pretty bleak at some point. 

I am currently working for one of the hottest "startups" in the world but I am unhappy. Fresh out of my MBA program not too long ago, I remember clearly during the interview that I said, "I don't care about the job title. All I want is a role where I can make an impact." Fast forward two years, I think I actually did have an impact in my role but it was, alas, disregarded -- and nothing can be a clearer indicator than the comments that I received during my performance appraisal last Friday. 

Going into the appraisal, I knew that the higher my expectations, the more disappointed I would be if reality turned out otherwise. True to my prediction, I was slammed with a "you met expectations" grading. An average grade? I was stunned but my manager did a great job of managing my expectations with a candid, word-by-word sharing of what others had said about me. For the first time in my life, I received comments such as, "arrogant", "off-putting" -- adjectives that I will never ever use on anyone but was surprised to have received them myself. I told my manager that I was both surprised and not surprised. The former because I didn't expect my actions to be construed as such and to be received such harsh comments that seemed like a personal attack on my character; the latter because I knew that my intensity at work - my go-getter character, forthrightness and goal-oriented self - was starkly different from the attitude of many of my colleagues. Perception is reality but was I really that much of a jerk? Wow, what a nasty revelation. 

For the rest of the day and over the weekend, I pondered over the comments I received and was trying to make sense of why it hurt so much. Receiving an average appraisal was surprisingly not the reason; rather, it was the rationale for why I received that rating that hurt me so bad. For one, I was evaluated to be subpar on my ability to "build relationships with folks in the office" and this metric carries a 50% weight. In layman's terms, I simply didn't know how to play politics and did a terrible job brown-nosing senior management. So what if I exceeded my target? So what if I were the only one on the team to have exceeded my target well within budget? So what if I had devised a program to structure my thinking and guide my execution? All these only and merely account for 50% of my overall assessment. What shocked me more was how my manager even said that they would also rate a worker's performance as average had they failed to meet targets but performed well in building relationships. How's that for building a business that's performance driven and target-focused? I was aghast, bemused and confused. Was this the deal I signed myself up for and the company in which I hoped to be able to make in impact in? What good was the impact if the recognition was missing? 

I certainly hope few people in this world come across such situations but I know it's happening on a daily basis. Performance reviews by humans are subjective by nature unless the company makes a conscious decision to abide strictly by the rules it has set for itself, that employees' performance will be judge solely on pre-agreed metrics and targets. For folks who may not be as well in building relationships with folks in the office, they don't necessarily have to be marked down. Rather, it simply means that they should take on a different career path; to ignore their hardwork and sterling achievement is just wrong. You never want to promote a person who is only good at politics but bad at delivering against targets. That's a sure road to failure. 

Dejected, I found myself in the library on a Friday night and I chanced upon a book by Clayton Christensen, "How will you measure your life?". It totally changed my perspective on life and brought so much joy to my heart. It was such an inspiring, enlightening and empowering read. In areas where I failed to have clarity before, I gained a new understanding; in areas where I was constantly searching for answers, I found a way to get my answers. More importantly, it helped me wrap my head around this question -- what's my purpose in life. 

Without going into the specifics, I would broadly list down for my own reference the wisdom of gold that was clearly elucidated in the book:

A) Before taking on a new role, be sure to answer these questions and not jump at it because it pays well. 

1. Is this work meaningful to me? 
2. Is this job going to give me a chance to develop? 
3. Am I going to learn new things? 
4. Will I have an opportunity for recognition and achievement? 
5. Am I going to be given responsibility? 

Credits to Clayton Christensen for putting out those questions. I knew that deep in my heart, my passion for this company has long been doused -- and my performance appraisal only serves to confirm that. Those questions will now serve to guide me through my next career switch. And if you were able to positively answer all of the above questions, you're well on your way to a happy, fulfilling career. 

B) Finding your purpose in life

The next big idea he shared centered around the the "purpose of life" and how we should go about searching for our purpose in life. He likened this to drawing and said that it is nothing but a simple 3-step process:

1. Distill the likeness of what we would like to be (the rough form of what you'd envision you to become)
• A man dedicated to helping others around me
• A kind, honest, forgiving and selfless being
2. Becoming committed
• It is one thing to have aspirational qualities written down but another to be deeply committed to those qualities that will serve our priorities and actions on a daily basis
• Never waver. "It’s easier to hold on to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold on to 98% of the time; once you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again." 
3. Finding the right metric
• For him, it's simply the number of individuals he was able to help. 

Clayton took a very structured and rational approach to figuring out what his purpose in life was and once he got it all nailed down, he was very strategic and thoughtful in the way he approached his every day life. Perhaps I needed it but reading his book (which I completed in two days) lifted me out of my doldrums and depression. It's the medicine I was looking for and I was glad that I found it on my birthday. 

So, Happy Birthday to my 37 year old self. Plucking out my wisdom tooth on Sunday (July 31st) wasn't that bad (it gave me five days of rest) and if anything, it freed me from work and gave me one of the best birthdays I've ever had, even if the whole world has all but forgotten about me. Knowing how to really live a life that I want and one that will make me happy is the best gift ever! :)