Reflection - Pat Gelsinger Lecture

When I was made to transfer from Ateneo Law, I was unable to stand being idle at home. I felt that my time, effort, and potential was being wasted by me just lounging around at our house while still being undecided on what to do with my life. At the same time, I observed that my father was continuously bogged down by matters incidental to actual decisions to be made or work to be done for our business. It was at this juncture that I decided to volunteer to formally work for our business and at least attempt to apply what I had learned in college and what little I have so far from law school. Ultimately, my goal was to at least put myself on the front lines so that my dad would not have to spend so much time letting incidental decisions get in the way of bigger business decisions.

During this span of time, one of the lessons I picked up on quickly was my father’s initial inability to simply take a break. Back then, we would arrive at the office in the morning at around 9am and leave at 7pm or at times, even later. This schedule would be fairly tolerable for someone in peak physical condition, but be that as it may, my father is not that young anymore. In addition to doing what I could to help out, I decided to be more active in telling him to simply stay home when sick, sleep earlier, and even stay at home during weekends when possible. I still do these activities, but at a lesser extent as my dad now incorporates taking breaks from work into his daily activities.

It is at this point that I can relate with Pat Gelsinger’s lecture. In Pat’s lecture, he narrated how he was a totally different person depending on which day of the week it was and how he had a literal hell of a time “balancing” his different personalities. Specifically, Pat had a hard time picking between his family and professional responsibilities. In the end, he decided to put his foot down and decide in favor of his family.

From a manager’s perspective, this may pose a risk. Productivity may suffer if a key employee decides to now show up for work in order to keep his or her promise to his or her family. More relevantly, from a manager/proprietor’s perspective, even more productivity may be lost if one decides to go out with one’s family instead of accomplishing even more work or making more decisions that the staff would be able to get things done.

I believe a little or a reasonable reduction in productive time is good and worthy sacrifice. In my opinion, what is important is to keep the enterprise running and to have it running well. In light of this, a business cannot run well with people who are run ragged by their work. This lesson is true for all the ranks within the business. It matters for the employees and the staff who do the actual field work but it matters even more for the managers and the business owners upon whose decisions depend the very direction and potential success of the enterprise.

In conclusion, Pat’s lecture managed to summarize what I was attempting to reconcile with my dad some time ago. Thankfully, however, he too realized this on his admission that his body may not be able to take the same amount of punishment that it once had.

On my end, though, work, life, and school are all very closely intertwined. I hope to be able to find an analogous solution for myself that I don’t run myself ragged over the course of my life as well as my career.