One of my best friends in the Indian Police Service recently told me the story of his boss at a paramilitary organization, who used to tell his staff, “After 5 pm, I want all of you on the sports ground — nobody should be seen in the office.”
So one day, an officer protested saying, “Sir, we have so much work. How can we leave at 5 pm?”
The boss said, “Let me tell you. I am not just the chief of this organisation, but I am also temporarily heading three other paramilitaries (leading over half a million soldiers.) And if I am leaving office at 5 PM, what is your excuse?”
And this was not empty talk. This officer kept himself so fit that during his field visits, he would walk along India’s borders for hours — even his younger colleagues struggled to keep pace.
I don’t know the secret of his working until 5 PM but here is my guess — delegation, focusing on high leverage items, and not wasting time.
When you are at the top, your time has very high leverage. You can spend an hour quibbling over minor matters or chit-chatting, or you can take a critical decision that impacts millions — in the same time, you make a million-times higher impact.
The key is ‘leverage’ — prioritize things with disproportionately higher impact. Don’t get lost in minutiae. Work with focus. And ruthlessly eliminate time-suckers and distractors (e.g., useless meetings).
If someone running a veritable army can do a 9-to-5, I suspect we can all work at least a little bit smarter.
– Rajan