Honesty

During recent trip to India I have encountered some experiences of extortion. I am sure we can all relate numerous stories of such bad experiences and spread negative thoughts. Instead I would like to share a story of Honesty which we encounter rarely.

While staying in Rajahmundry. I had to visit a few places in the city. Instead of taking multiple autos, I had an arrangement with auto driver to be with me for a couple of hours and charge me accordingly.  We almost toured half of the city to complete various errands and after reaching our final destination, I asked the driver to state his price. He said, whatever I give will be OK. I was generous and extended an amount so that he will not complain about it. Instead, he returned half of the money I was paying to him and said that, he deserves only that.  It was rare to note such an honest person and didn’t know what to say. But I am sure I will remember this for quite sometime and write about it too.

Have you had any such experiences in your life? Or have you been able to act in a selfless manner and provide a life time experience for someone else?

Related Link: Goodness lives forever

Being Flexible

I have written earlier a tip about being flexible. Recently I came across a concept of flexibility and flightiness. You should not assume flightiness is same as being flexible.

Flexibility is ability to take diversions from your main goals to accommodate urgent requests from others. For Example, you are in middle of completing a presentation due for tomorrow and one of your colleagues comes by asking you to join an urgent meeting that needs your expertise. While you are working on a deadline you accommodate this unexpected demand on your time. After you are done with the meeting you come back to your deadline and complete your task.

Flightiness is when you let the diversion throw you off-track from your key tasks.  Later you use the interruption as an excuse to postpone your own task. Continuing the above example, after attending the meeting, you suddenly take active interest in that project or something else and loose track of your time. Next day you realize that you forgot about your presentation. You postpone your presentation.

If this flightiness happens once in a while, it is acceptable. When it becomes a habit, it becomes a serious time management problem.  Be aware of this subtle difference and don’t pride your flightiness as your flexibility.  A strategy to make sure this does not happen is relying on your planner or reminder system to help you to get back to your Important tasks.