Efficiency in Frugality: Lessons Learned Over Fifty Years
My manager Naik taught me fifty years ago how to do more with less. His favourite examples were bathing in half a bucket of water ( about 3 litres) and brushing his teeth with a half mug. Even while at the office, he taught me how to save paper. He always used both sides of the paper when writing. Alex and Reuter taught me to use a pencil and eraser for office work. A pen was taboo in their presence. They would hate me taking a pen out for taking notes. I could only use a pen for my signatures. These were not just random acts of frugality but strategies to be more efficient and mindful of our resources. They taught me the importance of being resourceful and finding ways to do more with less, a lesson that has stayed with me throughout my career. The computer was a big saviour of my stationery, as writing drafts and posting messages became easy.
In my corporate days, productivity was the ‘mantra’ for daily life. One of my KPIs was reducing standard person hours, a challenge that required me to submit proposals yearly. My President, Dhruva, opposed approving additional workforce during the peak business season, pushing me to innovate and motivate my team to work extra hours. He always tested my adaptability and resilience. Though I was under a lot of pressure, I learnt many lessons in an environment of budget cuts and project reductions.
On a few occasions, I could not do with more or less — for example, my shoe size. In one of Swamy’s talks, I remember saying that our earnings should be similar to our shoe sizes — neither less nor more. In my PLC days, there was a requirement that a particular output from a filter needed to be exact — 24.5 Db. The A1C test — the haemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test — is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past three months. This number needs to be less than 5.7%.
After fifty years of my life, I had to revisit the strategy — less with more. This concept of ‘less with more’ is about maximizing the impact of what we have rather than constantly seeking more. I had to eat less to live better, learn to talk less, and listen more in conversations. With the advent of Twitter, and now X, I had to learn to be brief on what I would say. Single-page notes, single-para notes, and elevator pitches became the order of the day. I look around for examples of ‘less with more’. My friend Nivedita specializes in haiku poetry, which conveys profound emotions in fourteen words. I love ‘bumper’ stickers on automobiles on roads, which are easy to remember and tell rich stories. I also learnt to restrict my Friday blogs to five hundred words.
