Hey work, I will not think about you after work!

The more people I meet from the urban workforce (the non-assembly line service sector), the stronger my belief gets that “in these modern times, the place of work is getting reduced to an execution zone”. Notice how many of us draw a “Jobs to do” list on the night before Monday morning or in the subway or bus on our way to work.
Place of work no more seems to resemble a place for contemplation, at least no more individual contemplation.
There is just too much ringing, buzzing, pinging and falling apart - for one to be able to ‘switch oneself off’ and contemplate. There are way too many people pressured by the weight of project delivery date!

No wonder some people are trying to create zones that can still trigger some thinking – usually through groupthink. A more popular word for this is brainstorming.
Increasingly brainstorms tend to be proxies for lack of opportunity to think on one’s own feet (and rest of the times it is aimed at ‘creating a perception of consensus’ for something that might originally be an individual’s idea).

Lack of opportunity to think at work might not lead to anything significant, as long people do not treat their work and life as two separate and watertight compartments. If we are telling ourselves that we are not at all going to think about work after office hours, then in a way, we are telling ourselves that we are not going to think about improving the quality of our work!

My good friend Manish Sinha often used to say, “The best work happens at the fringe of work”. In other words best ideas usually come our way when we are not necessarily looking for them.
This, I am sure contradicts with what we hear most of the business leaders claiming in media– “I stop thinking about work the moment I am at home”.

I would not say if it is good or bad but if we try and demarcate work and life the way many of the business leaders make us understand that they do, we might not be able to achieve the quality of thinking that is needed for the same breakthroughs to happen.

This does not mean that we cannot be great achievers if we are not workaholics; it just means that we need to keep our minds open for fresh thoughts and breakthrough ideas can come anytime.