Early Bird

I am one of those few people whom friends often tease “She’s a school kid. She loves sleeping by 10:30pm”. Yes that’s true, although the interpretation is wrong. I don’t love sleeping at 10:30 pm but I definitely love waking up at 6 am. That is because human body needs on an average 7 hours of sleep to be efficient, fresh and cheerful. So I hit bed by 10:30 pm and wake up at 6 am.

And when I wake up, the peacefulness of early hours makes me feel like my clock is working as per inter-stellar time.  Within an early morning hour, I am able to do so many things which I would otherwise struggle completing in half a day. This efficiency, energy, and spirit is maintained through the day.

Below are the reasons/benefits for which I prefer waking up early:

Winner’s confidence: There is a sense of control acquired when you wake up suppressing your inner voice. When the alarm goes off, there is a voice which tells you that you went late to bed last night or no one around is awake, you also sleep. DON’T LISTEN. If you win the battle here, things start on a high note and get even better during the course of day.

Greeting the Day: I enjoy nature. Walking on silent roads, watching birds chirping and flocking in fascinating patterns, observing the sky getting illuminated with sun rays, and spending time in lush green garden brings a perfect start to my day.

Morning Sky :)

Get Active: Morning is a great time to exercise. Along with bringing in lots of positive energy and enthusiasm, it’s a great stress buster and leaves you calm and focused for the rest of the day.

Fresh air in which I workout!

Quiet time: My idea of personal time includes meditation, reading & writing. I ensure to do at least 2 of these at the start of each day. It helps me to connect with myself. Doing something for myself early in morning energizes me and makes me ready for the day. 

Ways of pursuing passion! 

One step ahead with enhanced productivity: Waking up early helps me be more organized and plan my day well ahead. Instead of waking up from bed and rushing to office, I prefer giving myself the time to list and prioritize the day’s activities. This helps me do things with complete focus and by the time other people begin to work, I would have already completed few important tasks. This gives me psychological comfort and also buffer time for impromptu work.

More time for family: Early start to the day helps me complete my activities on time and leave office without having to worry about connecting back from home. Having done few things of my interest in morning, and completed the day’s work in office, in the evening I feel much more relaxed and satisfied about the way my day was spent. This leaves me with some more time for my family. I cherish sharing the dinner time with dad and chit chatting with mom while watching her favourite soap operas. I look forward to this time each day. 

Time for beautiful sunset from office!

To conclude, waking up early has improved my quality of life in many ways mentioned above. But in the beginning this may be hard. To start with take baby steps like just waking up 15 minutes earlier. Get to bed an hour earlier so that you won’t feel tired. It may take couple of days to adjust and you may not feel the benefits right away, but stick with it. Once you experience the benefits, it will be difficult to let go of this good habit. 

P.S: However I like to stay late on one of either Friday/Saturday. This helps me come out of my routine and feel good about being still able to stay awake beyond regular time :P

Cheers

Morning Bird

Komal

Award - My moment of Fame

Last one week has been extremely generous on me, showering lots of love in personal life and appreciation in professional. While personal end can be put off for the moment, I would like to share my professional achievement here. 

I am just a month short of completing 2 years with Infosys. These 2 years were not exactly like a flash in second, but yes, it doesn't feel like I am going to complete 2 years so soon. I have always enjoyed working here. Employees of Infosys, relatives of employee, media & population at large have lot of things to say about Infosys. Good, Bad, Ugly...! We're the first one to hit media top lines for positive or negative reasons. Personally for me, it has been a journey full of learning, fun & memories. 

For HR team, the awards are given away semi-annually. There is a HR town hall in which people who have contributed significantly &who went the extra mile are rewarded. This time it was scheduled on 10th Sept. When I logged in the morning, my calendar looked packed. I did not plan to attend the townhall and I thought to utilize the time for completing piled up work. At 10:30 am, I thought its late now! And then an email popped in, saying the town hall will now begin at 11 am. So far I was giving myself the reason that it will be a long walk from bldg 4 to bldg 12 [Infoscions will understand this], and its better not to attend than being late. But now I did not find an explanation to convince myself. It's rare that something is done for HR. Else we're busy organizing things for others. With this thought, I took the long walk in pleasant weather and reached the auditorium. 

After 1.5 hour of speeches, discussions & debates on various topics, came the time for awards. A presentation was projected on the Video Conference. And came the first slide. My eyes quickly skimmed through the names & photos and they stopped on one! It was a girl's photo in a blazer, written underneath - "Komal Laddha - HRD Shine Award in recognition of outstanding performance and contribution to HRD 2015-16". Yayyieee. It's me! And people in the room started clapping, SMS started pouring in, People on Lync started to ping to congratulate. My team's email thread was started and team members started writing some good words for me. And this was my moment of fame :) It really feels good when your colleagues come up to you and say "You totally deserved this". That's what matters more than an award. 

I was still cherishing for this award, but it was not over yet! On 11th Sept, we had an internal team meeting. Two members from each team were being recognized for the efforts put in to ensure maximum retention [ya! It's right. That's my job!] From my team it was me & my location colleague who received the appreciation & award from our HR head. And all I could do was smile and say "thank you". 

Recognition for the work done, is one of the biggest motivation. You may be well paid off financially but if you do not enjoy coming to office each day, the journey in the organization is bound to be short lived. And that excitement to go to office comes when you have the confidence that your efforts will be recognized :) 

That's me, posing off with my accomplishment !!!

Signing -off on this note. 

Cheers
Komal

Chasing Ice! Documentary of a lifetime

Climate change is so much  heard of, so much talked about...but I never had a chance to see it this close. Although I was sitting on my couch watching just a documentary. But it was an experience of a lifetime. Hats off to the team of James Balog who put in unimaginable efforts just to convince people that we're going to pay the penalty of our ignorance & harsh treatment we give to our beautiful nature in our very own lifetime. 

To give you a quick brief, James Balog is an acclaimed environmental photographer. He aims to spread awareness in people by showing the real climatic changes through photographs. He believes that one of the best ways to get real picture of global warming is to observe depletion of glaciers. And with this starts his journey of EIS [Extreme Ice Surey]. His team start off by setting up 25  cameras in different places [Greenland, Iceland & Alaska] by placing time-lapse cameras which capture photographs every one hour throughout the daytime. These places are not for human existence. Even technology will also fail to support in such severe & extremely cold conditions. And here is a team which keeps visiting these places periodically over 3 years to ensure the gadgets are working fine.  Although watching it on a TV screen, the calving of ice for continuous 75 minutes, which is witnessed by James & his companion, leaves you in splits. 

I was really moved watching this documentary. They have put in enormous efforts just so that they could let us know with evidence, what is the impact of our actions, on our beloved nature. The least we can do is to watch it. Sharing the breathtaking trailer which will compel you to watch the complete documentary. 

Chasing Ice Documentary trailer

Having watched this I feel I have made some good use of my weekend.

~~ Cheers ~~

Joy of Learning

Hey All [more to myself],

I am back to this place after 1 year 4 months. And it indeed feels nice :) I was waiting for this urge to come in me to get back to this place as writing cannot be imposed.

It's now almost 2 years into my Job and  Sunday is usually marked by some good time with friends, lots of time with family and some time with myself. All this while I resorted to a personal diary to share my thoughts. So what's special about this Sunday? 

Can you recollect the day when for the first time after learning to ride a bicycle you went out on your own? Or the first time after you learnt driving a bike by troubling someone to accompany you always and then a day came when you got the confidence to hit the road all by yourself? Well I had a similar experience today.

Having learnt car driving 2 years back, I never felt the need to make it a part of my regular routine. Thanks to my simple lifestyle & awesome friends who always picked up and dropped me. But off late this was taking a hit on my self confidence. And 6 months back when dad got a second hand car only so that I could learn car driving without having to worry about implications if I went wrong, I decided "this is it" [Bas bahut hua]. Slowly, steadily with support of different people I started honing my skills of car driving. Sometimes I fared well, sometimes I went wrong, Once met with a accident and lots of instances when I felt this was not meant for me....! On one side came a voice from within "Komal, you need not do this. There are umpteen number of people who are living without knowing this". And immediately popped another voice "Komal, in today's world car driving is a must thing. If you let your fear take over you today, you'll never be able to drive".

And today, 9th Aug, finally I gathered courage to take the car out all by myself for a lunch meet with friends. No one in car to guide me, to scare me, to motivate me. Me and my car. It was the same feeling as a child would get while taking his first steps in life [although I have no memory of it :P]Finally I checked all prerequisites mentioned by few experts and slowly took the car out from parking after taking God's name. My car's tire hardly took 2 rounds after the main gate, a black cat crossed from left to right in front of my car. Holy Shit! Whyyy??? Why now? I stopped the car aside. I got a feeling that this is divine hint to say me that I am not ready for this [You know how we are trained for this from childhood]. May be I should simply put the car back in parking and take an auto. I took a few seconds and told myself, "You never believed in these superstitions. Then why today? Why on this occasion. Drive slowly, drive carefully and you'll be fine". I started the car again and took a leap of courage to drive all by my own.

What happened after it is nothing to be elaborated about. I am sitting here and posting this blog after such a long gap. With this, I trust you can imagine how full of adrenaline rush was my experience today from which I emerged victorious.


Signing off with this thought :) Stay tuned.

"To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around" 
                                                                              - Richie Norton