Speed, overtake and risk

By Vinod Bidwaik

It takes me 1/2 hour for going at the office. The road is always busy. Lot of vehicles on the road make the journey little bit slow. There are certain people who do not follow the discipline of the road and then creates bedlam on the road. Mondays become sometimes anxious due to this reason. There are telcons planned and I have to reach in the office at sharp 9.00 pm. Lot of mails and calls waiting on the laptops make the day demanding.  

There is a line of 4-wheelers running at the speed of 30-40 and I want it to run at the speed of at least 50-60. Long queue of vehicles and everybody is in the line.  I have two options, either to follow the next vehicle and follow the pace or just overtake and try to reach next to next to next vehicle. I choose second one. There are two possibilities if I opt for second option- I reach in front of all and be on time in the office or I am responsible for creating one more chaos on the road and take the blame from others for that.  I chose to be calculative. I see that pace is slow and all the vehicles are following the same pace. I don’t want to one of them but I should be careful. I increase the speed and overtake all and reach next to all. I got it.  Sometimes I have to make space for me indicating another vehicle that I am planning in your line in front of you, be careful.

And one day, I enticed to compare the metaphor with our life. We have dreams and Goals in our life and definitely we want to achieve the same. Life is the journey and we want to reach at the destination. Sometimes we take speed and sometimes we just follow the line of vehicles.

Here are some of my takeaways from this:

1)      Don’t follow always: Sometimes, following somebody is beneficial, but not always. You need to decide your own action to achieve your goals. If you try to only follow, then there are near miss opportunities of success. Perhaps if you overtake them just by increasing your speed, you may get the key to success.   

                

2)    Take calculative risks: I calculate the risk and as I told you I choose second option to increase the speed and overtake other vehicle. There are people who play the safe game and then blame their destiny. You yourself can decide your fate, destiny.  Playing safe is again sometimes beneficial and not always. You know that if you increase your speed, overtake others, or choose another way, further way can be risky. There are lots of risks in the life. Overcoming the fear and taking calculative risk creates the way for the success. 

3)      Have the urgency: I always tell my team to imagine that if they don’t do the task on time, they would loose the job and the job what they are doing is the only job available in the market. Creating the need of urgency makes your job easy. Steve Jobs rightly asked to imagine that tomorrow you are going to die. When I commute to office, I have the urgency to go in the office, but this is not the urgency, I have lot many things to do and I have in mind that I have to finish all just today. 

4)      Be alert and aware about the situation and check others movement: I increase the speed of my car on the road, but I also check the situation and movements of others. I know I can be careful but others may create the problem for me. There are others guys on the road, who must be thinking the same what I am thinking and this may lead to the major accident. To avoid this I am alert to understand the situation and try to make the safe space for me by taking the control on speed.

Life is like the same. Once you like this you will enjoy the way of making it more adventurous.