“But why, Rajib”?
“Because this is unsustainable”
“Okay. Let me finish it this weekend. I will stop next weekend.”
“Put your laptop away right now. Go do something outside. We will talk on Monday morning.”

That Monday morning was a long talk with Bob. It is not an easy job to explain to a 5 percenter from Accenture and a successful executive in a start up company that had a great exit why six successive weekends of work at office is not a sign of success, it is a sign of a problem.

It began a journey of working with Bob on how not to miss the big picture. He was way overweight. In these days of hyper HR consciousness, it is difficult to tell an employee that they need to take care of themselves – for the company’s sake and for sure for their family and own’s sake. But I absolutely blurted out the truth in a one on one.

My message was clear: “At your level, Bob, I care less about what you do over the weekend and more about how alert are you on Monday morning to make sound decisions. But I will go with your take”.

Like I said, that started a journey. It did not happen overnight. Slowly but surely, Bob saw life as I see it. Above all, he started valuing quality over quantity. He changed a lot of habits. Got onto a routine that helped him drop an astounding 60 pounds. Started sleeping better and not coming into office sleepy on a Monday morning. As you must have guessed, his professional career started flourishing too.

Somewhere, in his journey, there was a fork and I went a different way. But caught back up with him this evening since I was around his digs for a business meeting. It was just so great to learn from his journey. I took in a lot of lessons about his experiments with meditation. Having won the physical fitness challenge, he is trying the mental exercise part.

Funny part? On his career front, he has grown unabated. And that was the lesson for me. Every time I think you cannot have a balanced growth in life in corporate America, I remind myself of Bob Castle!!