Sunday, January 22, 2017

Thoughts on utilizing myself

For the last couple of days, particularly after analyzing the last year and writing the financial analysis blogpost, I have realized I have not done much, I am not doing much and I am unlikely to do anything in 'much' category in coming days. The rejection of the Amazon application is another pivotal point of my current thought process. The suicide attempt by Ravi after his post-marital affairs gave me a shock and bad feeling about my colleague, amidst whom I spend most part of my day. In summary, I believe there are mainly two threads here:

Thinking in Bhutan
1) I am not doing something that I want to do in the long run. If Politics is something that I want to try, I must start contributing towards it. But, I am not investing at all on this.
2) My current job does not require more than 60% of my time and energy. But, I am totally wasting the rest 40%.

Now, what can I do to overcome the above. I believe this can happen in two ways- on the job and off the job.
1) On the job: This is a relaxing, cool job and I have not have any strong reason to leave this instantly. But my knowledge and salary - both are not going to increase if I stick to this. Both my managers are in frustrated position because of directionless instructions from top. Hence, learning opportunity has gone down. The performance review usually delays by 7-8 months and increment comes in the range of 3%-4%. Also, government does not have any plan to give extra stature to the contractual consultants. Hence, sticking longer to this job does not make any sense.
Now, thinking about changing - where should I go? This brings back the main question- where do I want to see myself in couple of years down the lane? Is it really politics? Are you sure? Even if I keep some xyz in the future goal, the decision for immediate destination is very tricky. UN, WB are difficult to get into; PWC, KPMG etc- I am not interested; Should I try McKinsey once or connect back with OPML? Should I try for a job outside India? The Facebook Policy manager position with Nitin Saluja? NITI Aayog and Public Policy positions are not coming up; Connection with political bosses is not happening either. PhD thought again- oh no! I am at a loss. I think I want to increase my salary too. In that case, going for any fellowship will not be a good idea. Should I again try Stanford MBA once more and target corporate boss type position before venturing out to politics? Help me God !

2) Off the job: 40% of my time and energy are waiting to be utilized. I put some time in investment decisions in this month. The CPSE -ETF, e-NPS, myCAMS app are some examples of my new-found knowledge. The Assam Tribune collaboration work is something I volunteered on behalf of Xomidhan and this is going smoothly now. But there has to be something for long term impact, for example, writing a book. I have been thinking a lot on this and only three days back, I wrote the first line on the Bubble Theory. Although I am getting many ideas, I am not exactly sure whether I could build up this idea to turn into a book.
What else can I do? Agriculture? Starting a business? Investing in building life long relationship? Yeah, I have to get married too. Preparing myself for a marriage is something I am doing, I believe. Fixing sister's marriage is something where I can invest some time and energy. Clearing the Ghy land maybe another one.
Urge to do something extra has been there all along

But the bigger question is - am I missing something? What if I would have chosen a life in developed countries- US, UK, Europe by being in the top 1% earner of the country? (Ref- the book launch of American Indians at India International Centre Annex). What if I would have stayed in Amsterdam with McKinsey? I didn't think twice about leaving Microsoft, but I do think about the McKinsey thing. To be frank, coming back to India after Oxford didn't turn out to be a right decision. It is a different matter that I showed that as a good one to the world (and to myself).

Am I doing what an Oxford graduate should do? What I am doing today, I could have done without going to Oxford. This particular fact really disturbs me sometimes. What is the value addition? Or, the relevant question maybe how can I add value to the Oxford thing in case of 'on the job' thing as mentioned above?

Lot of questions my friend! Many I can't answer, and don't know where to look for solutions.



No comments:

Post a Comment