33 Finding the rhythm in our affairs

One of the keys to managing our various responsibilities and affairs (and I do mean the mundane type, not the romantic!) is to find a certain rhythm in them – and to maintain it! Let’s take a few examples to illustrate this principle.

Any job, say as a project manager, will call for a certain cycle of events: planning the coming year’s program and budget, submitting the budget and getting sanctions, issuing tenders or notifications, assigning works to agencies, reporting the previous year’s activities, calling mid-term review meetings and reports, preparing our own half-yearly and annual reports, and so on, round and round the revolving cage. Often we see people getting stressed out because they seem to always be lagging behind in this relentless cycle. But we don’t need to fall behind, as most of these activities or actions are pretty much pre-ordained. The smart thing to do is to start preparing for them in advance. For instance, we know very well that there is going to be an annual report of the previous 12 months due by, say February in draft form and by June with final figures (well, government works slowly!). We need to draw up the template right from the first quarter, filling up whatever figures are available, leaving columns for quarters yet to come and the totals for the year. The rest of the text could well be drafted in the course of the year: the background, the planned activities, the descriptive and background material, the heartfelt tributes and acknowledgments, and so on. The final task becomes all that much faster and easier at the end of the year, when we also have to prepare the annual accounts and close and balance the books. We saw a similar need for rhythm in mundane activities like planning the annual tax payments and filing returns in the last post. There is a similar value in having a rhythm in our daily cycle of activities, in balancing between work, rest and recreation.

This is in our working life. Something similar applies to our life on the whole. There is a rhythm, a periodicity, to the whole life cycle, and we need to go with the rhythm rather than work against it. There will be phases when things move fast, and we have to be ready to hop on: job offers, transfers and promotions, challenges, transitions, tensions to deal with. There will be periods when we will be learning, and periods when we will do things practically. There will be periods when nothing much seems to be happening, when life becomes flat and a bit of drudgery, when we will have to grit the teeth and ride through it. We need to pace ourselves accordingly, rather than flail against the course of things. We have to use the energy in our circumstances to gather momentum. There is not much use putting our shoulders against the wheel; a small nudge is enough, however, if we apply it in the same direction it is moving. This is the principle of resonance, where small increments applied in cycle build up the energy beyond expectations.

An institution, or a team, that has this sense of timing and rhythm, where the team members are able to coordinate their efforts, will perform more effectively. There is a palpable sense of  power under control in such environments, almost like the low throbbing of a powerful engine powering a huge ship along.