"Attend this wonderful session by a notable person"- no one shows up

"Attend this session , you will also get a certificate at the end ;) " - all the slots are booked

This scenario tells how many of us think. In this post I'll talk about the differences between process and result centric benhaviour and what should one do to think in the right way.

In the hindsight, when I look back and think why I couldn't crack JEE or similar exams is that my learning was completely result-centric, I used to chase for results in my weekend test missing out what the real understanding. My views changed when I entered my university and I thought our schools and colleges try to make us focus on the results instead of the process. Just like people say instead of looking for the destination, enjoy the journey. Many of us are busy thinking about joining the next big company, cracking the next exam or even getting good grades missing the realm of learning. Focussing only on the results make our brains biased towards it, where instead of thinking about what do I do, you think of what do I get. I'm not saying those are bad or we shouldn't care about the results but you should care about how you are measuring the results simply put ie. metrics. Many of us are not trained to measure an output rightly. We often see many managers in call centres measure the employee performance by the no of connected call instead of the customer engagement or satisfaction( you can know this by the duration of the call) or a school measuring the teacher's performance just by looking at students marks. I would recommend you'll to read this wonderful book on metrics.

Many of you might be nodding your head while reading and this might look simple to read but very hard to implement. So to embed thinking in your daily life, you need to journal regularly to become more self-aware and start reading case studies or management theories from legends like Peter Drucker, Micheal Porter.You can also start reading Harvard Bussines Reviews(HRB) articles to starting thinking in this way. So never let the results to hinder your progress, keep improving your craft and the results will follow. This same analogy works for almost everything like money or happiness to, instead of chasing them, build your core craft and they will follow.

I would like to end by the follwing excerpt from Bhagawat Geeta:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते संगोsस्त्वकर्मणि।।(2.47)

This is the complete shloka from chapter two. In this shloka, Bhagwan Shree Krishna says you can do only your duties but its outcome is out of your control. So never ever think that you are the reason for the outcome. Do your duties without being attached to the outcome.