Monday, January 19, 2009

Taking the first step

The other day I was reading Seth Godin, and one thing that he said really struck me.

He said, look at your outbox and see how many mails that you sent out were the replies to incoming mails and how many were self initiatied emails. This could give you an indications of how time do you send in "reaction" as to "action". 
Ofcourse this does  not apply to everyone, but still i found this simple analysis very powerful.

So many times we just end up in life just waiting for something to happen and reacting and not acting. How many times we wait for some other person to start conversation, go over to adjacent cube to start talking instead of letting time go, in a gathering waiting to be forced to come forward to share the experience rather than volunteering, waiting for life to happen instead of making it happen.

Now whenever I reply to email, I have become little concious, wondering if I could have initiated that or should I start some similar conversation with some other person.

Cheers.
Happy Monday.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah,we might have missed out on so many interesting people and conversations coz we dont initiate and take that first step..but then,isnt the first step the hardest?:)

crumbs said...

true, there are so many times that I have hesitated at doing something, then when someone else goes ahead and does it, I end up thinking, "Damn, that wasn't so bad, wish I had done it!" =/
Oh, and is there a thing like a happy Monday? :)

Goli said...

@Rashmi.. sure, it is difficult but I guess it is the only way out.

@Crumbs: It happened to me so many times as well, but my aim is to minimize that.

Anonymous said...

i agree, so many thoughts just remain in our minds just coz we cant gather enough courage to take actions. i really like the analogy of the outbox, so simple yet so effective.

broca's area said...

"ego" comes in the way!