Sunday, April 8, 2007
Appraisals
It's April. Another appraisal season.
It was one such pressure filled season years back,that made me think about the importance of appraisals. And I found myslef asking if appraisals really mattered to me? They do matter as an employee ofcourse, but do they matter to me as an individual?
Why do I do the work I do? What is that makes me do it well? What is that makes me want to stay back in office, work hard, sacrifice my pleasures?
An A in my appraisal? A 1 ranking among my peers? Awards?
Is that all that motivates me?
And I then realised that , No, I don’t crave these. The only thing that matters to me, is my own satisfaction, my own joy, my own thrill, my own sense of achievement.
What if I dont get any awards. What if I get a 3 ranking or a B-?
Would that make me someone less worthwhile?
Would a folded up,crushed 1000 rupee note lose any of its value? Would it lose any of its value if someone calls it anything less?
Would you become less wothwhile just becomes someone thinks so?
What matters to me is the difference I have made to the people with whom I have worked. No awards and no rankings can make up for that.
So another season is coming up soon. And I no longer care what I get. Because I know the work that I have done. And I am happy with it. But not content yet, because there's so much more to do and learn.
At the end of day, the insight that I have gained is that, the fun is in the journey ( doing your work well and learning from it) , and not in the destination. ( Awards! )
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3 comments:
it is a very grey area aroj...u have written about the white side...think about the black one too,...think of a guy who works just to earn...his motive in life is different...i see ppl here....work is not their primary objective...in india expectations form work are more. expectations at work are more...u being able to deliver wat office wants is your choice...but wat abt those who wants work to be just work....y stay late?y sacrifice?these ppl are punished...appraisals is a big deal to them.
Well, the point I was trying to make was that you cannot base your own sense of worth on the opinion of others. You should look out for external factors to boost your own self esteem!
Your sense of worth has to come from within you.
At the same time, I am not for people who have an exaggerated sense of their own importance... that's what makes these people arrogant and empty.
It's a grey area indeed. But for me, this is what I feel and what I believe.
As we discussed, I have a small blog entry that's about the quote 'All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind'.
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