Purpose vs Productivity ?

At the beginning of spring season, the city municipal corporation decided to grow some beautiful flower plants at the city center. As the City Center was relatively big, where they needed thousands of such plants, they have decided to recruit 3 gardeners for this job. 

The City council  published an advertisement in the local news papers, and after the stringent interview process they appointed three expert gardeners Max, Magda and Marko. All were very enthusiastic for their job. In order to increase productivity of the work, their supervisor Mr Müller, decided to divide the planting job in 3 work items. They invited Max and assigned him the task to dig a hole in the ground. Magda was told to put exact 5 different seeds in the hole. And Marko was asked to close the hole with soil. They were supposed to start their job from 15th February, in a week time. They have been given all the necessary tools and seeds. 

image source: https://depositphotos.com/18965201/stock-illustration-hand-drawn-vector-illustration-of.html

On Monday, the 15th Feb they started working sharp at 8:00 am. They were experts. They were motivated for their new job. They worked hard till 12:00 pm, took a lunch break for exact 45 mins and started the work again. At 15:00 Hrs., their supervisor Mr Müller who was busy in the office, thought of supervising the work at site. He arrived their at 15:15 Hrs. to check how the things were going. Although the gardeners were working hard, he was absolutely SHOCKED 😱by seeing the way they were working. Max was digging the hole and Marko was following him and closing the hole. Some times, Max was taking more time to dig the hole, Marko was very cooperative, he was patiently waiting and after some time closing the hole.  Mr. Müller called both of them and asked how is their work going. Max said from the morning he dug more than 150 holes. Marko said he closed all the 150 holes. Mr. Müller asked but where is Magda ? Both of them innocently said, she is SICK, so she did not come to work today. Mr. Müller inquired further then who as sowing the seeds, both of them said NOBODY.

image source: https://www.pngkey.com/detail/u2w7a9o0w7a9a9u2_smiley-lol-emoticon-laughter-clip-art-laughing-pointing/

Max and Marko both were honest, hardworking, cooperative, precise, productive and efficient. 

But what were they missing: the PURPOSE. Without knowing why we are doing it, all our hard work, precision, productivity and efficiency is of no use. 

Although this story is little exaggerating, but more or less don't we also put our efforts where we don't know the purpose ?




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Change - an inevitable phenomenon

Image
                 One of the great Greek Philosophers: Heraclitus said, "Change is the only constant in life" . Unknowingly we are experiencing many psychophysical changes in our lives. Everybody wants to lead a happy life but very few are ready to come out of their comfort zone and opt for change.  Imagine a situation that you have newly joined a famous multinational company and you came across a more than a decade old established process in your department, which you feel can be improved. You approach your boss with an improvisation. What do you think, what will be his reaction? In more than 90 percent cases he will defend the existing process and rule out the change. Many a time it is difficult for a person to bring a small change in his personal life then what to speak of a change in a multinational company with decades of established processes. Why is human mind so reluctant to change ?  Everybody knows change is an inevitable part of our life. It is quite rewarding as we
Read more

Power of Optimism

Image
W hile pursuing my Masters in Microsystems Engineering, I was living in furtwangen, Germany. Furtwangen is a small city in Baden-Württemberg. It is situated in the heart of the black forest and known for its Cuckoo musical clocks and the source of Danube river. The second largest river in Europe flowing through 10 countries. Every time I visited the Danube source, that small stream taught me many life lessons. One of the things I learnt is the Power of Optimism. When I first visited  the source, I was bewildered by thinking how such a small stream which is just a 50 cm by 50 cm small water outlet at the top of a mountain becomes such a huge river of 2850 km.  During my stay in Furtwangen, I have spent many hours sitting there alone, watching the water coming out of the head of the mountain. The water coming out is absolutely tiny. But without focusing on the hurdles (in this case stony pathway) and without focusing its volume, it just starts following. Many times the stones in the pat
Read more