Personal Productivity

There is no meaning to live if there isn’t a purpose to live for. We all realize this and we are continuously in search for our purposes. Religions and philosophers defined our purposes and articulated them in many ways. Unfortunately, in most cases it is difficult to apply those definition to our daily life. These definitions are either too abstract or too complex to understand. In this article, a simple method to find out the purposes of life is introduced.

Lets start with the simple fact that “we depend on each other”. Proofing this fact is easy. Spend few moments reviewing your daily life and count the number of people you depend on. Think what would you do if they disappear. This exercise is sufficient to proof that our dependence on others is real and serious. In most cases the loss of one of those we depend on can turn our life upside down.

Now think about the people who depend on you. Focus on those who have no choice but to depend on you or someone else. Think about what will happen to them if you let them down. You will quickly realize that your purpose in life is to be there for them. You have no choice but to honor the dependency.

If you agree with the above, start preparing your list of purposes. We will first focus on our relationships to others. Our relationships define our dependency. Examples of relationships are son, wife, father, friend, and neighbor. Although the list of all possible relationships is long, each individual has a limited number of these relations. Keep in mind that one’s relationships change with time and so are one’s purposes in life. The list of your relationships to others is all what you need to get busy fulfilling your responsibilities.

There is no doubt that some relationships are more important than others. If you are the only one who has a specific relation to someone, this relationship should be your top priority. You may have few of these. As an example, each person has one father. In the father’s list the “father” realtionship is one of the top priorities the father has. A mother with three children has three top priority relationships, one for each child. If your father has two sons and you are one of them, your “son” relationship is in the second priority because you share it with your brother. Proceed with prioritizing your relationships. These priorities should directly affect how much time and resource you will put in fulfilling your duties.

The next step is to understand each relationship and what are your obligations towards the other party. Each relationship has general characteristics. Those can be found by searching the web. Besides the general characteristics, there are special ones that you will determine based on the needs of the other party.

It is very comforting to know why we exist in life and know how to fulfill our purposes of existance. You have the list, you have no execuse.

The three sources of hope are internal, personal experience, and external. Internal hope is fostered by inner desire for achieving a dream or a goal. Successful personal experiences feed back to the person a sense of hope and confidence in transforming dreams into reality. The external source of hope comes from events external to us and not under our direct control.

The inner hope should be sufficient to trigger thoughts and ideas for improvement. This hope must be guarded against any external effects. We cannot live without it.

Those who are active and involved in providing services and products have the opportunity to nurture their hope with the success of their efforts. It is important that their efforts be carefully planned and implemented to produce useful results most of the time. Failures must be looked at as experiments that teach us lessons to be used in future activities. It is imperative that we do not let any failure, large or small, negatively affect our level of hope. Everything we do in life is an “attempt”. There are no guarantees that any effort will achieve the intended goal. The correct attitude is to treat every disappointment as a “lesson learned”.

Activities by others are under their control and should not ever affect us negatively. When someone fails to meet the expectations, we must think of the many possible reason for his or her behavior. Most of the time the actions are suitable for the surrounding circumstances and conditions. Anyone else would have done the same.

The second reason for others’ failures is that the expectations are not reasonable. This is an opportunity to learn a lesson. It is always helpful to discuss with others before judging.

The third reason for falling short of the expectations is lack of knowledge or skill. This is a great opportunity to teach someone and enhance the person’s capabilities. Teaching someone is the best investment in the future.

The last reason is bad intentions. This may be remedied by teaching and breaching but most of the time establishing laws and enforcing them is necessary. There will always be people who harm others intentionally or not. The hope is to reduce their number and lessen the effect of their actions.

In summary, we must always ignite our inner hope, stay active and benefit from our successes, learn from our failures, and help others to better themselves and their communities. Small steps over time will achieve our hopes.

The first question comes to mind after grieving those we lost in a building collapse is “who is responsible?”. This is the right question to ask. Finding the responsible could lead to finding the root causes of the disaster. Unfortunately, most of the time we stop at the first cause that comes to mind. What is easier than blaming the government. There is no doubt that the government is responsible. One of the most important responsibilities of the government is to protect the people from all sources of danger.

We must not stop at blaming the government for two reasons. The first is that there are others who contributed to the problem. We expect the government to catch them, prevent them from causing harm, and punish them if necessary. However, we must not forget that the government made up of the same people. This is the second reason. Following this line of thought, we can now focus our attention on ourselves, the people.

The problem is mainly caused by widespread lack of awareness among those who contributed to the collapse of the building and loss of lives. Here are some examples:

1. Anyone who buys or rents a place and allows his or her family to live in is responsible. He should investigate the building construction and make sure that it is built correctly. Everyone needs to know how to obtain information about the safety of the building.

2. The developer of the building should be aware of the right and wrong ways of construction. The developer should hire respectable engineer and contractors. He or she should insist that the building meets the specifications.

3. The contractor should be educated about the safety requirements and should be taught not to cut corners to save money for the developer/owner or for himself.

4. The Engineer should understand his responsibility and make an extra effort to inform the public, specially the future tenants, about any safety problems. No one wants to be a killer.

5. Lastly, comes the government and its responsibility. Government employees lack “awareness” of the consequences of ignoring their duty.

All of the above people are Egyptians and represent the society. Until awareness spreads widely enough, there will always be problems.

One solution for the problem of collapsing buildings is to create a public database of the buildings and their state of adherence to the building code. All the information must be available free to the public. The database can be populated by anyone who can collect information about the existing and under construction buildings. The names of those who participated in the construction must be included. Civil engineers should volunteer few hours of their time every week to examine buildings and provide data for publishing. The information will be available to everyone interested in moving into a building. If a large number of websites are setup for this purpose, it will be difficult to stop the growth of the databases. Builders, contractors, and engineers who find their names published will think twice before ruining their reputation and owning empty buildings.

Responsibilities of advancing a society falls on the shoulders of its members. They have to exert continuous mental and physical efforts to keep the wheels of progress running. Innovative ideas and hard work to turn the ideas into reality are essential to maintain the momentum of progress. Accordingly, progress depends on individuals who are mentally and physically healthy.

Maintaining good health requires healthy environment as well as healthy life style. Nature provided perfect environment for the human health. It is the responsibility of humans to keep the environment clean and free from health threats.

The human body is very sensitive to external environment and internal intakes. Each individual is responsible for guarding his body against harmful intakes. This includes the air we breath and the food we eat. The key to protecting ourselves is through awareness and knowledge.

Health professionals are hereby invited to dedicate small fraction of their time to spread awareness and health knowledge. Given the number of health professionals, one or two hours a week by each professional are sufficient to enhance the quality of health in the society.

Depending on your ability and willingness, you may select any of the following groups:

• Your family
• Your friends
• Students at Schools, and colleges
• Government employees
• Employees of large corporations
• Clubs and associations

Each group may be gathered formally in a lecture or conference setting. Taking advantage of social gathering is very effective.

Topics should be tailored for the recipients. In some cases it will depend on the group’s life style or job. In other cases, the choice of the topic will be motivated by certain unhealthy behaviors that require correction. The following is a list of suggested topics:

• The value of health awareness
• Healthy environment
• Protecting the external of the body from physical harm and diseases
• Healthy intakes
• Routine prevention and checkups

Health professionals are urged to take this invitation seriously. They need to integrate this social service as part of their life style. Don’t we all want to live in healthy environment and among health people.

No one can live in isolation. We build societies of individuals who cooperate and support each other. The success of any society depends mainly on the ability of each individual to perform a useful function. Effective members of the society are those who have the ability and the will to carry the social responsibilities.

There are two basic goals that must guide and direct each member of the society. The first, and by far the most important, is Continuous self improvement. The second is helping others to continuously improve themselves. These goals must be integrated in the person’s life.

If we believe in the basic principal that everything can be improved, everything will be improved. Our belief will motivate us to put the effort needed for improvement. There are three steps required to achieve any improvement. These steps are observing, researching, then applying. For example, after observing how I do my job, I research the available methods and tools, then I apply the best of what I find. I should repeat the three steps continuously to use newly discovered or invented methods and tools. These steps should be applied to everything we do no matter how small or large. Our lives are full of activities that will benefit from continuous self improvement. A student can improve his or her life style to have more time and energy for studying and achieving success. There is no one learning method that fits all. Each student must find the method that brings him the best results. This can only be achieved through continuous self improvement. Businesspeople, parents taking care of young children, and all professionals can benefit tremendously from continuously improving themselves and their skills. Above all, one extremely important area that we all must give attention to, is improving our actions that affect others. It is the number one social responsibility.

The value of self improvement is very limited if others’ behaviors have negative impact on the society. It is a prerequisite for progress that the majority of the people improve. We cannot assume that every person can improve one’s self. Self improvement is one of the activities that itself needs continuous improvement. Those who find themselves successful in improving themselves should help others. There are many ways for helping others. The most effective way is by example. Behavior is contiguous. If you make the benefits of improving yourself evident to others, others will naturally imitate you. By telling people about your success, you motivate them to follow pursuit. For example, by telling others about the shorter way I discovered to go to work everyday, I motivate them to find their shorter way too.

Parents, teachers, managers, and anyone who people may look up to, has the responsibility of guiding and teaching. Also those who are on display most of the time such as policemen on the street, sales persons in stores, and media stars must focus harder on improving themselves and we must focus harder on helping them improve.

All efforts for improvement, self or others, must be directed towards personal and social needs. Personal and social need priorities must be clearly understood and communicated by everyone to other members of the society.

World wide research proved that widespread and multifaceted education system is the most effective means to advance societies. Statistics has shown that there is a direct correlation between the spread of education in a society and its economic prosperity, enhanced quality of life, and reduced crimes. Also, research showed that education systems must be customized to the society’s needs in order to be effective in enhancing the quality of life and eliminating the society’s persisting problems.

Statistically, Egypt achieved respectable progress in improving literacy. If the trend continues, Egypt may be able, in short time, to close the gap between the current literacy level of 71.4% (2005 estimate) to the international target of 90-95%. The secretes behind Egypt’s progress is the free education and its spread to rural areas, the growth of private education, and the eagerness of parents to educate their children. If Egyptians adopt need-based educational philosophy, they will enjoy faster progress.

There are four educational areas that must be covered simultaneously. The first is basic education that covers language skills, religion, science, geography, history, sociology, .. etc. The curriculum must be localized not imported. Each subject must be taught in manner that relates to the students’ culture.

Basic education must be compulsory to cover at least 95% of the population. Naturally, the current economic conditions will not allow it to spread that far. With time, as the economy improves, the target will be reached. Education cannot be compulsory unless it is affordable. Combination of free public schools and various levels of private schools will ease the burden on the public system. Free education must be only for those who cannot afford the expenses. People who are well-off has the responsibility to support those who cannot afford it. Dependency on the government only is ineffective.

The second area is vocational education to provide local businesses with needed skilled labor. Traditionally, vocational education term has been used to refer to blue collar work. Actually it should include white collar professions as well. Vocational education must be based on surveys of all local businesses. The needs of these businesses in terms of quality and quantity of workforce for the short and long term must be studied, articulated, and published. The outcome of such surveys should be in the form of clear definition of the qualifications for each job title the businesses need. Establishing an association, funded by local businesses, to annually produce such reports is one effective approach. This is not the job of the government.

Providing vocational education is the job of the private sector. Universities and various levels of institutes provide specialized education based on the annual reports published by local businesses. Funding for this kind of education comes from various sources. Businesses benefiting from the graduates will no doubt have interest in sponsoring students. Some of the students may be concurrently employed by the sponsors.

The third area is behavior enhancement education. Everyone in the society is interested in living with people who are well mannered. The responsibility falls on every person’s shoulders. Parents are the most effective “teachers” in the area of behavior. Those who do not receive good behavior education through their parents must be educated by the society. School teachers stand second to parents with respect to influencing students. Teachers communicate their teaching by example and by breaching. Behavior education must be part of the curriculum of the other areas of education. General behavior education should be taught as part of basic education through religion and sociology courses. Also special courses to teach behaviors related to the local culture may be offered. Vocational schools can provide courses tailored to the specific profession being studied. Businesses should continuously provide courses to its employees to enhance there ability to work with others in a team environment. It is in the best interest of businesses to enhance its employees to contribute to the business’s success.

The fourth area of education is remedial education. This area of education is for those who did not benefit from or did not participate in the other areas of education. A person who causes a problem, that could have been avoided by education, is identified as a candidate for remedial education. The person is forced to attend a class or classes to remedy the deficiency that caused the problem. Funding must be available for those who cannot afford this education.

It is the responsibility of everyone in the society to make sure that education is taken seriously. Assuming that the government will do everything is unrealistic. The least a person can do is to pass to others the education he is fortunate to have. People, who are in a position to implement any of the ideas presented in this article, are urged to act.

References:

• Issues in Basic Education in Developing Countries: An Exploration of Policy Options for Improved Delivery, Joseph P. G. Chimombo
• Egypt Statistical Data