Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
So today’s podcast episode is about productivity. And before I go and talk about it, kind of my rant on time and productivity, I’m gonna give you the backstory. And I’ll tell you how I got inspired to record today’s podcast. So I call up a friend of mine over the weekend, a friend of mine from my teenage years. And I’m talking to him after like, nearly 10, maybe 12 years. And I talked to him about a project that I want to do something that was on my mind for a long time, but I never got a chance to kind of put myself behind it. So I was sharing with him that I want to do this project. And he stopped me. He said, Srini, you know, that this is something that a 16-year-old does. And maybe if you are 25, it’s okay, so the 16 and 25 range. But by 25, it’s over. And if you stretch it out, maybe 30, it’s done. And you’re too extremely old for this, you shouldn’t be doing this. I said, Yes, I know. And I never thought I would come this far in life. Because I had my own moments where I thought I was done with life.
So from here on, everything that I am doing is upon us. And I said, I never thought that I was not 25 I never thought I was not 30. And the idea that I’m old has never crossed my mind. So I understand that when I go to mountains when I climb when I run, I cannot do it, or I don’t have the same level of energy. And I cannot perform at the same level that a 20-year-old does. But it doesn’t mean that I should not try. So, we get into this debate. Eventually, I said something like this along these lines. I said, What if I do what I do now, and I don’t get any results? I don’t get any success. It’s okay. But I’m going to do this as something that I want to explore something that I want to discover within myself. And when my time ends here, I’m done with my time here. What if I wake up on the other side? With all the skills he was completely taken off by the statement? What if I wake up on the other side with these skills? We call it a gift. That’s what people say if somebody is born with some amazing talent, we call it talent. We call it nature’s gift, or God’s gift, whatever. And if there was a way to show the past is there a possibility that this individual is given this incredible talent? And it’s given to them because not necessarily given but they created it somewhere? And it so happens that in this physical form and shape that talent just carried over? Is that a possibility? Is that debatable? He says it’s not and I agree it cannot be debated because there is no proof. Understand that. But he was appreciating the angle through which I was approaching this. The reason why I wanted to record this podcast, I want to make this I want to highlight this story is because I meet a lot of people who tell me that they’re too old to do something. And I meet a lot of people who tell me that they don’t have time to do what they think they should be doing. And actually, I made three specific categories of people, people who do not know what to do. That’s the first category. The second category is people who know what to do but do not have time. And then there is another category of people who are doing stuff but they’re not getting the results or the outcomes are not in line with the expectation so three categories.
You see if you look at everything around me and I’ve talked about this on this podcast many times, everything is united with time and everything is detached from time. So time is the only thing that glues or unloose. If you move away from Earth, you go to a different planet. Then time is different. Time is different in different places in the cosmos and in different In places the universe, here we are, we are united by time. So you have 24 hours to do what you have to do, I have 24 hours to do what I have to do, I sleep eight, you sleep, maybe six, or maybe four, maybe you have more time to do what you are supposed to do. But What an irony, when, you know, you’re given all this time to do what you’re supposed to do, but you are lost, unable to figure out what you’re supposed to do. And you end up losing time, and you’ll end up losing this gift called life. If I look into your life today, and I get this opportunity to look into many people’s lives, and thanks to odd maybe the role that I play the professional man, I get to see a lot of people, their lives, how they lead their life, they, they remove the curtain and allow me to see, you know, what’s happening behind in the room. The room being life here. If I look into your life, I could see a lot of things. But there is one thing that’s constant. If you look into my life, I look into your life, which is fine. That’s constant. There is some data now to prove this. And there is some supporting evidence that on average, every individual can restructure five hours of their time, restructure five hours in a day.
So five hours they are using to do things that do not matter. Or they don’t matter enough, you can and which I suggest you do. If you’re a gold-centric individual, you’re looking forward to doing something, as of the first of October, I kind of got on to do something big, big for the year 2022. And as I’m going through this process myself, I’m exploring even bigger and better things within myself, which I did not know that I had or I was not giving attention to. I’m regulating myself differently. I’m applying myself differently. So lots of new lessons, and new learnings for me, as I’m getting and using the next 90 days of this year, hopefully in a meaningful way with some goals and with some timeline set for myself. So I suggest that you really look into the things that you are doing right now. And ask yourself, what are the things that you can completely delete from your schedule? I want you to look into it and see what can you delegate from your schedule. Who else can do the job better than you the way you are doing it? Who else can you train to do the job such that you can free up your time and focus on the most important thing that you should be focusing on? What can you remove? Obviously, delete means removing. In fact, do you have enough time to completely drop everything? That’s a bigger one. So as you are deleting stuff, you’re decluttering stuff and you are delegating stuff, can you completely drop yourself that means you can relax. See some people relax without relaxation, they still have this fear of money, and they have feared for some deadlines that they have to catch up to. Doesn’t matter. So something in the back is going on, they’d never fully relax. I’ve known people who have told me that they haven’t slept for 2025 years. It’s crazy when you listen to the stories. The truth is, why not hack your schedule? That was another conversation I was I was part of this a while ago, this was post-COVID, COVID just happened. We were all coming out of it. And I was in a get-together I was in a gathering this was one of those first early gatherings in a friend’s place. You know, people are telling what they did with their time.
And I said, if you did something with your time, it should be visible. You shouldn’t be telling me what you did with your time. But I was listening to that when in fact they were sharing what they did with each other. I was just being a listener. You know, one individual said I use the time to learn new skills. That was another gentleman who said I was relaxing. This was the best time I heard about at home with the children. I was relaxing and different people were saying different things. Eventually, it came to me. Like I was dragged into the conversation. I said I did two things. One, I was exploring creativity, which I did not do for a long time. All my creative elements juices, my creative strengths. They were all challenged Over the last 20 years, so I did not do a lot with creativity. So I was spending time exploring creativity. And then a third, I think I regulate my emotions very well. I’m not saying I’m the best. So when I sit at deleting emotional energies, I mean, anger, frustration, disappointments, stress, all that I regulate them, but I’m not the best. So because I’m not the best I was trying to improve. So I did two things, during COVID, during the lockdown during the shutdown, whatever, during the sheltering place, whatever the word that you use in your country, wherever you are. Okay, so just to sum this up, I want you to start becoming serious about your time, I want you to understand that there is not an infinite amount of time left here, for any of us. Anything, everything that you wanted to do, do it. Let’s say somebody tells you that you’re too old to do something, don’t believe them. Do it anyway, who knows, everything that you’re doing may stack up for you. Next round, I don’t know when the next round is going to be I don’t know in what shape and form it’s going to be. Let’s believe that that way, at least we stay honest about our feelings here right now. So for me to stay honest about my feelings, I need to believe that yes, there is some stalking and there is on on the other side, I will wake up and when I do wake up, I will have the gift and will have this talent and the talent comes naturally.
For me. It comes because I have done the job ahead in time and the slave. So take that metaphor. See if you can structure your time, your life, your passions, your goals, and your ambitions for now. And I will catch up with you tomorrow. Right here. Thank you for your questions. And thank you for your everything. This is amazing, as I’m trying to answer your questions, exploring a whole different side of Maine. I’ll be back here again tomorrow with another question that has come in for a long time. I’ll answer that and I’ll continue to answer your question. So keep them coming. And I’ll talk to you stay tuned.