It has been some time since I wanted to write on this. I held myself off this to ensure I don’t over react and put in something out of frustration. Usually, I have a lot of patience and don’t lose my cool easily but there’s something which has been bugging me for some time.

It is about undisclosed expectations. Now what’s that? I’ll have to build up a story around that. Let’s assume that there’s a kid in your neighborhood. You’ve got a family and there is a kid in your family as well, but he is too small to the world outside. You come to know of the neighborhood kid, meet him and somehow like him. Luckily you’ve got a chocolate with you and you give it to him. A couple of days pass, and by chance, you meet your little friend while taking an evening walk in the adjoining park. He greets you and and this time you offer him a chocolate again. Days pass on, and it becomes a sort of a routine. You buy chocolates for the neighborhood kid, slowly more because of an obligation rather than anything else. On the other hand, the kid has developed a shuttle expectation within himself, that you’ll offer him chocolates whenever you meet him. The kid has grown up, and so have the expectations. You think, now that the kid has grown up, probably he doesn’t need chocolates anymore. You’d rather give those to the kid at home, who has grown up enough to try out the chocolates now. You stop giving chocolates to the neighborhood kid and reserve them for home.

What happens now? In all probability, the neighborhood kid would start feeling uneasy and react. He would probably not think of all those days you’ve offered him chocolates, but will definitely react to the situation at hand. Assume that you can afford to give chocolates only to one kid. That makes it straightforward to be the kid at home rather the one in your neighborhood. You don’t really like the neighborhood kid’s reaction. Though he can’t claim those chocolates on you, he’ll show his resentment in one or the other ways. That makes you annoyed. You think you offered him the chocolates all these days you could, and now that the kid in your family needs you’ve just switched the attention. You think why should the neighborhood kid react like this?

In the above fabricated story, who is to be held responsible for the situation? You for offering chocolates initially and then pulling off? Or the kid for not acknowledging the fact he got chocolates out of nothing for all those days and should not complain for something which was never a norm?

Well he was just a kid! If you do this to the eldest of people, the situation is not going to improve. It is a human tendency to take things for granted, if they happen on a regular basis. We are bound to complain if it goes missing, even if it never belonged to us. It takes a lot of guts to happily acknowledge the fact that losing something which never belonged to you is not a loss at all! Why to complain? It was a bonus anyway. You can’t hold anyone responsible for not offering the bonus consistently.

It has happened to me is some way. It turns out that to avoid such situations, one should not stretch beyond limits on a regular basis. It sets that ‘Undisclosed Expectation’ which is very difficult to break. The ‘delta’‘ or the additional effort you put in should never be comparable to the ‘mainline’ effort. The undisclosed expectations could be very dangerous. Since one just can’t force this upon, they tend to react in unjustified ways.

Notes to myself: If I have to avoid setting ‘undisclosed expectations’ , I need to make a deliberate effort not to stretch beyond the comfort zone . Else, I’ll be in trouble. Anything which is within the comfort zone is fine, even it has some ‘delta’

Can anyone guess something out of the title of the post? We’ll you possibly can’t because I myself figured it while writing the last sentence in the post. So read on…

I’ve been juggling between roles for some time, at my work place. The last six months have been quite exciting in terms of happenings. Though the situation has been pretty hectic and quite demanding for quite some time now, I could figure out some humor in it.

In the software industry, people usually start as software Trainees, and with time, aptitude and potential become Developers, Sr. Developers. Tech Leads/Team Lead, Project Managers, Sr. Project Managers, Account Manager and so on. And then there are loads of other things like hiring, branding, training, pre-sales, accounts etc. which you can contribute in, based on your inclinations.

After a brief stint into development, I decided that it is not something I like the most. Just to emphasize, the ability to develop and the willingness to develop are two different things. However, the willingness (lack of willingness rather) can easily jeopardize the ability. Getting back to the roles, I guess an understanding of the development process definitely helps you when you move through the roles mentioned above. I’ve seen people coming straight into project management and creating a discomfort by virtue of having unrealistic expectation (there definitely are exceptions and I know a couple).

I’ve realized that I am not one of those who enjoy getting deep into development (though I respect people who do that), so after a couple of years of doing almost everything I mentioned above, I thought I am slowly getting into what I long for. Interestingly this is what actually happened:

Account Manager>Project Manager>Tech Lead>Developer..(hope it ends here! )

A reverse gear? Yup! Time and situation are really powerful. So now what next? Well I remember one of my professors at college saying,

“Anyone can excel in what they like doing, the challenge is to excel in something you don’t like and enjoy.”

I don’t even remember what subject he taught but do remember this point. Well, I am trying to motivate myself with this, not sure if this will help for long. Not that I do not enjoy coding at all, just that I enjoy the other things more which I may miss for sometime. So the professor’s statement applies to some extent.

So what’s the future? Well, next time when I move out of development (I hope it is soon) I’ll ensure that I have the right escape velocity so I don’t fall back and start it all again!

I don’t really remember when was the last time I reached home from work while the Sun was still shining. And fortunately, it was today, the 30^th of April 2008 that I was home without switching on the headlights of my motorbike.

Also, I just realized that if I don’t put up a posting today, it would be the first month without a post, since I started blogging. Definitely not something I even dreamed of. So this is one of those obligatory posts.

Let me carry on from where I left:

Relaxed….

Again, for the last 2-3 weeks, I’ve spent a lot of hours at work. More often or not, the work flowed down to my home too. The end result is still not visible to me. Something was terribly wrong. I was spending time, but not getting enough out of it. I know it happens sometimes, but this time, it was a long stretch. Though there was a lot of work pending, I decided to pull myself out of this by deciding to take the last weekend completely off the work. I deliberately decided to not even think about it. And this did wonders to the way I was perceiving things at my end. The last three days have been more productive than the last two weeks I suppose! Also, now I can easily realize what went wrong. Instead of focusing on the current task at hand, I was overwhelmed by the sea of things I had to accomplish. It was partly because of the fact that the situation didn’t allow me to overlook certain things which I should have. The bottom line is that one can only do a limited amount of work in a given time, so it will always make sense to focus on the current task at hand. However, it is also important to have a planning and visibility towards what’s coming next.

Lastly, I think I’ve been in and out of such situations quite a few times. Whatever I try out, such situations are inevitable once in a while. So next time I am caught in such a situation, I’ll take that ‘Obligatory Break!’ which would hopefully help me to get back on track both physically and mentally