BackHow to have your cake, and eat it too
Despite 10-hour-plus days at the office, four executives tell us how they make time for interests outside of work
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In Darren Conole’s line of work, wood would typically be used to fire the good kind of pizza oven or perhaps delicately smoke the pricier kind of fish. But for nearly a year, the executive chef at Shangri-La’s Eros Hotel, New Delhi, has had a completely different use for the material. He started with just two boards of ply and graduated to balsa wood, which he spent hours treating, measuring, cutting, shaping and refining—into models of the World War I ships HMAS Sydney and SMS Emden.
Work-life balance often seems like an unachievable goal. And yet there are executives who show us that not only is it possible, it is also very rewarding. We spoke to four such people across sectors about their interests and how they manage to pencil in their hobbies into their busy work-days.
Payback time
Return on investment was the last thing on the mind of Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd chief executive officer (CEO) Vikaas Sachdeva when he signed up for voice dubbing and modulation classes at the audio talent agency Sugar Mediaz Pvt. Ltd in 2004.
In a phone interview, the Mumbai-based executive sportingly does three different character impersonations—one in an old man’s quivering voice; the second, a young man’s confident boast; and third, a prepubescent boy’s squeaky complaint. Sachdeva, who wanted to be a newsreader like Prannoy Roy when he was growing up, says an All India Radio show on financial inclusion and mutual funds that he took part in last month made him realize just “how much my brief stint in voice modulation still helped me".
Earlier this month, Sachdeva says, he volunteered to be a part of the VocaliD human voice bank initiative started by speech scientist Rupal Patel, where people can “donate" their voices to help those who have severe speech disorders and rely on computerized devices to communicate. “Making time for family, hobbies, friends, fitness, etc., is usually a commitment one makes to oneself. I have always allocated blocks of the year, say a quarter or a half-year, to pursue different interests in a dedicated manner. They could be lawn tennis, voice modulation, running, yoga. Some of them, like running, then become a part of your life." Sachdeva adds, “You live only once. What’s the point of regretting not doing anything later in life when all you need to do is find some time for it now?"
Keeping the dream alive
As a boy, Sajid Khan wanted to become a pilot. But, says the Mumbai-based country manager (India) of South African Airways, “we didn’t have so much awareness back then". This was in 1990-91. Khan had finished his higher senior secondary exams, and was considering joining a flying school. But 20 years ago there were few places in India where an aspirant could rack up the requisite number of flying hours to qualify as a pilot. Khan could not go abroad to train, and that crushed his dream to take to the skies—for the time being.
A few years later, just out of management school, Khan took his first paragliding trip—in Nashik, Maharashtra. “Paragliding was a fairly new sport at that time and surely not around in Mumbai back then. Two brothers from Delhi running a company called Wild Ventures had flown down to conduct this course. I was the only one who had a short solo top-to-bottom flight in that course," Khan says. That first flight was challenging. Basic equipment design and inexperience made it hard for Khan to “get the gliders to inflate and get them overhead in a flying configuration". But he was hooked.
Now a single parent of a 10-year-old and a busy executive, Khan still slips away from the hubbub of the city to the quiet hills on most weekends to get a little air under his wings. Once in a while, his pre-teen joins him on the ride, flying as a co-passenger with one of the trainers. “Every flight teaches a pilot new things; it’s a continuous process," says Khan.
The ace up his sleeve when it comes to creating time is efficient use of technology. “Your movement up the corporate ladder is directly proportionate to your extent of responsibilities, and it’s a personal choice. As I climbed this ladder, I realized that it was ultimately up to me to manage my time effectively and optimize what I have for the best results. With technological innovations, there’s no limit to what you can achieve in a given day—it’s just about planning smart," Khan says. So he checks his email on the way to work—a significant time-saver in Mumbai’s infamous rush-hour traffic; he uses apps to monitor aircraft and tell him when his company flights land and take off; researching the latest paragliding equipment, and reading up on it—usually reserved for weekends—happens on the iPad, in moments snatched out of a busy day or on the long drive to what is now his favourite paragliding spot, Pawna Lake in Kamshet, Maharashtra, some 2 hours’ drive from the city. “Everyone has the same amount of time, it’s just a matter of finding out what you like to do with it," Khan says.
So much to do, so little time
The 46-year-old says he grew up in Melbourne, Australia, on his grandfather’s stories of World War-related travels and battles. “My grandfather survived Gallipoli (the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey)—one of the nastier places to be sent—contracted malaria twice, got sent to Palestine through the fall of Jerusalem, and then to France on the Western front. When the war ended, he got sent off to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks. He survived all that, came home, and two months later, tore his own arm off in a steam engine flywheel—his boiler suit got caught in there," says Conole—his eyebrows raised incredulously even all these years later.
It was this passion for the war that influenced his decision to make the HMAS Sydney and SMS Emden. He joined various online forums and discussions dedicated to the war and read literature, including diaries kept by military men from that time.
How does he make time for his interests? By working these activities—including research on them—into his everyday routine. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, he uses the time till morning to work on or research one of his outside-work projects. In any case, they are never far from his mind. Conole explains that while he was building the models, everything was fair game as materials went. “When the children broke a toy, I kept the parts for my ships. Inspiration would strike anywhere, at any time. Usually, by the next day, I’d have a pretty good idea of where and how I could use that piece," he says.
Family connections
Executives agree that the ideal work-life recipe should have a healthy pinch of family time. And if you can share your hobby with your family, that’s one way to ensure happy faces all around. That is just how things worked out for Nazara Technologies Pvt. Ltd founder and CEO Nitish Mittersain. Years before Mittersain founded the Mumbai-headquartered mobile games developer and publisher in 2000, he had grown accustomed to watching music practice every morning—his mother would train with devotional singer and Padma Shri awardee Purushottam Das Jalota.
“I come from a musical family," says Mittersain. That was at least part of the reason he picked up the saxophone when he was 19. And in part, fate conspired as he met the late Jazzy Joe, as Joe Pereira was known in Mumbai’s jazz circles, at the music shop where he bought his first saxophone.
Reedman Pereira, who started on an illustrious career in pre-independence India, was by then training a bunch of amateurs to form the Jazz Junkies. Mittersain joined the group of 15-20 musicians who would give live performances with Jazzy Joe at venues like the Bombay Gymkhana and Not Just Jazz By The Bay. After Pereira’s death last year, the group disbanded. Earlier this year, however, the members reconvened. They practise at least once a week after work now, “usually from 7.30-11.30pm".
The family connection, too, has come full circle for Mittersain. By the time his one-year-old wakes up at 7am, Mittersain is through with a 30- to 45-minute workout at the gym, reading the newspaper and work emails. For 1 hour till 8am, it’s their time to sit at the piano and play.
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