How to neutralise the enemy within yourself

NEW DELHI: Remember the

Trojan Horse

story? The city of Troy thought that the wooden horse was a

victory trophy

, but it turned out to be the cause of their destruction.


Similarly, in computers, a Trojan Horse is a malicious software program that users willingly run, not realising the damage until it is too late. How many such programs are you running in your professional life, which appear to be benign or even helpful even while it undermines every project and endeavour? Face and neutralise the enemy within yourself to unblock your career.

Logic is your enemy
All your education and work trains you to master the logical construct using which you analyse, explain and solve problems. However, combine strong logic with large fragile egos and what results is an ability to rationalise what went wrong, whose fault it is and how intentions were honest.

Logic is meant to focus on problems. When it shifts focus to a person and why you are not really to blame for a failure – it becomes an excuse. Instead of trying to escape blame, simply discard all logic and take full ownership for failures even if it is not justified. Once that is done, focus only on the future with ‘Now what do I do?’ and commit to an action plan for today and this week.

Don’t over-plan or over-think
The 40-70 rule comes from Colin Powell, US chief of armed forces and then US secretary of state, the first black person in both cases. It says that leaders should make decisions when they have 40-70% of information they need. Any lesser information is a gut shot and more than 70% information means that the decision was too late.

So, while it’s true that lack of information and planning leads to failure, at the same time, a love for planning frequently leads to its uglier form—over-thinking. To overcome this, set time and resource limits, decrease options available, focus on a single objective and action the first step before you are fully ready.

Get out of your comfort zone
Focusing on job security, perfection or zero-error syndrome and coasting along with minimum effort are all outcomes of an excessive focus on safety. If you find yourself achieving your deadlines without any stress or much effort, then you are warmly ensconced in your comfort zone.

The price you pay for short-term pleasure is no new learning, no growth and no path to

long-term success

. To avoid this Trojan, always seek roles and goals that are slightly outside your current abilities so that you are always pushing your limits.

Avoid busy-ness, upskill instead
Being busy is an addictive and rewarding state of mind. However, consider a person making a xerox of a 10,000-page legal document. He is likely to remain busy for a long time but in meaningless work. Like the hamster on a treadmill, how much of your busy-ness is achieved by filling your day with such work? Consider all this time as lost opportunity when you could have been up-skilling or simply letting your mind wander free to rejuvenate or come up with creative ideas. How much of your career path was lost to such busy-ness? Seek to change what you do and how you do it.

Say ‘no’ to mobile phone access
The boon of our times is bountiful access to information. Your cell phone means that you have nearly the same amount of opportunity to create wealth as anyone else through the one-click access to information and people that was denied to the previous generation.

Full access takes over your life leaving you with no freedom or opportunity to make progress. Choose to isolate yourself from such access for specific times in a day, week and year when you make time for your human connections, self-renewal, deep thought, important decisions and serious action.

(The writer is founder and CEO at QuezX.com and HeadHonchos.com)

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