3 Ways to leave office at 6

"I have become a Sunday wale Daddy" said Abhijit.
"Sunday Uncle, you mean" replied his friend Randhir Mishra
"What can I do? I work six days a week, sometimes seven. I barely get to see my kids. Most of the time they are sleeping by the time I come back home. I see them grow horizontally more than I see them grow vertically?
"You know I used to be like that. Then one day, my boss, who I consider an excellent time manager, told me - when you die, you are not going to say - I wish I had spend more time in the office."
"That must be a wake up call"
"It was"
Robin Sharma had made this statement in his book - The Monk who sold his Ferrari, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear"
"Guess your boss was this person for you"
"yes, he was the one who gave me three things to do. Took me a while to implement it, but I finally got the hang of it."

Step 1: Fix a time to get out of office in the evening.

Most of us have a fixed time to reach office, but we don't have a fixed time to get out of office. Observe your own behaviour for one week. If you normally leave at 9 pm, advance this time in half hour slots and leave at 8.30 pm regularly for the next fifteen days. Then after fifteen days have passed, advance your departure time to 8 pm. That way, your colleagues and bosses get time to adjust to your routine. If you suddenly leave at 6 pm when they are used to seeing you till 9, they would put all sorts of pressure and emotional stress on you "he is not a team player", "he is leaving the work and going", etc.

Step 2: Learn to say No.

It takes us about a year or so in corporate lives to figure out that there is no end to the amount of work we can do at the office. Work by its very nature never ends. One goal is achieved, another one comes in sight and so on and so forth. In one of the banks we were consulting for, our client was a middle level manager who just could not say "NO". He ended up taking on far more tasks than he could handle well. Many of these tasks were actually not his job at all, they were supposed to be done by the boss. Other tasks he took on because he wanted to impress the senior leaders of his company. What happened finally? He did his boss's job, he did all the other tasks too. But in the appraisals, he got evaluated on his performance on his current role, not these extra things he did. And that's where he was found lacking. Learning to say "No" enables us to focus on the doing the tasks that we get paid for, enabling us to focus on our own priorities.

Step 3: Develop an activity to do in the evening with family

The best than one parent can do is half the job. Kids need you. Not your "quality time", but your quantity time. Look at what some of these Americans and Australians do. They have an active sports life. They play tennis, golf, jogging, something in the evening every day. Most Indians on the other hand stopped their sports lives the day they got into corporate life. Get back to the sports routine. Start with twice a week to begin with. Play cricket or football with your kids in the evening. Cycle with them. This way, you get your exercise and the kids get to be with their Daddy too.

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Maneesh Konkar