[SAN FRANCISCO, 7 JULY 1999, 04:32] I woke up with a fear. “Am I late for work?” With the tiniest eye opening (thanks to the fatigue of last few days), I checked my small alarm-clock besides me. “4:32″ “Great, I still have 13 mins to hibernate. Let’s.” Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... I woke up again, a shake from my friend: “Hey, get up – you’re late.” I watched in shock: 6:21 AM. I’m never late. Now, I can’t even make the 7:05 Caltrain to Sunnyvale, to reach Amdahl Corporation in time for my day’s start. In my mind I went over the usual route of changing two buses, starting at 6:10 AM to reach the train station at 6:55 AM to then board a train ride for 1 hour 20 minutes, and then a shuttle bus to Amdahl, reaching at 8:50. “I’m taking a CAB.” “What?” said my friend. “Are you crazy, taking a CAB for a 40-mile ride? You’re just an intern. It’s fine. They would understand.” I said “What about me? I detest being late. It’s for me.” “I don’t drive, so can’t take a rental car.” 20 mins later, I was in the CAB, while pondering over how much it is going to cost, and whether this ‘punishment’ was worth. Here I was staying at my friend’s place, without rent, trying to make ends meet, while doing the internship and finishing up the Master’s project at school, to be done by December. It was a long ride; I had plenty of time to count my blessings and to go over why I couldn’t respond to my morning alarm. My blessings being – my friend and his roommate allowing me to pile on with them. While I tried to “match” their goodwill by preparing home-cooked Indian delicacies that they had never experienced before in US, I was not able to cope-up with my schedule well enough. Daily I adjusted to go to sleep in the noise of late night TV which they had the right to watch…by putting ear-plugs in my ears. Then to wake up daily somewhere in between 2 AM and 4 AM to remove the plugs so that I can hear my alarm go off at 4:45. And then to take a long changing commute to be at work before 9 AM. Evenings…commute from 5:30 till 8:30. Then prepare dinner…by 9:30, have it with my roomies, chat, wash, study, work, and then fight to sleep before midnight! “It’s 136 Dollars.” said the CAB driver. I checked the reading, calculated the 15% tip and parted with my dough. A good 1/6th of my monthly income, gone in a day! However, the punishment made me feel good. About not compromising on something that I really felt strongly about. I was sure, that my colleagues and my boss would not have cared about my “late” contribution as an intern, but this was something I had to do. In order to sleep well, and be reminded of the “loss” whenever there was a chance of reaching somewhere sometime. I just chose to punish the carelessness, clearly escaping from excusing myself using reasons that were beyond my control anyway. On entering, my boss asked me: “You just arrived in a CAB? From where? Sunnyvale Station? You could’ve waited for the next shuttle.” “No” I said, “I came from San Francisco.” After few minutes, I was humbled and overwhelmed both by the response I got from my seniors. And I knew I had unintentionally won some friends and colleagues for life. We still stay in touch and every time someone has a story to tell about “punctuality” or “timeliness”, they often use this real example of an intern punished by self, paying for his mistake. ============== The context of this story, in my post, is mainly to point out that we often know and walk into doing something mediocre, and we hide it, and we defend our action if found by someone. Ultimately, we are fearing our advancement and stopping ourselves to grow, even though we know what is correct and what is not. Forget the “questionable” punishment of the above story, but we certainly should not resist and delay if we know there’s something that can be done better. “Hah! Everyone’s doing it.” Sure enough, but so what. Who’s stopping us to do it as required? Required, Not by others, but by self. The concept of self-punishment should be explored more I feel. Just as a technique to prevent ourselves from doing something to a degree that we have the capacity to do better. Devise your own little punishments, for every tiny output of yours. One-bug-fix-a-day is enough. If the bug resurfaces, punish self; without pointing to external circumstances – they were never in your control, so stop considering them as part of your personality design.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 04:20:37 +0000
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