Personal improvements

Professionally I have improved myself over the years. From the start of my career to where I am now, I’ve come a long way. It’s not a journey of sitting tight and hoping for things to improve. It is more a story of taking risks and branching out, looking out for the next opportunity and taking some with open arms.

But as a person, I am not sure whether I have made such vast strides. While I have been pretty interested in personal development and had been reading up quite a bit, the application of those things that I have learned into my personal self has been pretty inconsistent. While I may have tried and practiced certain things, looking back, I cannot recall internalizing anything into my life fully. I think I am basically the same person I was then, just with a certain level of maturity gained with age. Sometimes I wonder whether I read for the sake of reading these personal development books, rather than to actually gain something personally.

I have never really planned my life in detail. This is a point that often drives my wife crazy. She likes to plan things out and live life according to a plan. I am more of a come as they may I will spend my day kind of a person. While the hours I bill are guided by the requirements and work on the projects and I do spend sometime thinking about improvements to my company, I don’t think such planning is done, on my own, on my personal life.

While living spontaneously has its thrills, I find that at times my holidays are spent aimlessly. Such aimlessness is sometimes required to recharge our batteries to face the work life with vigor again, I wonder whether it does justice to my family. As it is now, I spend most of my waking ours at work, and spend very little time (comparatively) with them, and if I spend most of the family time also recharging myself for work, where does that leave them?

One of the key reasons that I got back into freelancing was to find a balance between work and ‘life’ but I find myself again at a point where ‘work’ has become ‘life’!  Having taken the decision to transition my freelancing career to the next level by starting a company, I find doing more and more everyday! Being a start up we are understaffed and over worked. We have too many things on our plates and are running tight deadlines. I work during my day and spend my evenings in meetings with my clients. I generally clock in about 12 hours of billable hours a day! That’s a lot more than I used to clock when I was working for others!

This is one area that I need to spend my effort on. Improving the ‘life’ aspects of my life! And maybe its time to dig up those books once again and time to put into practice what I read.