Sometimes, it takes hours to commute one kilometre in Dhaka, sometimes it takes even more time. This is a city full of cars and grand traffic jams that do not end. Long queues of traffic is a regular scene. You can’t find a single person who escapes this inevitable drudgery. If anyone does, he must be one of two things: either he is a magician, or he knows something about how to live in Dhaka productively.
Life stands still
In a recent New Republic article, Michael Hobbes mediates about the traffic jam of Dhaka:
“I am in a tiny steel cage attached to a motorcycle, stuttering through traffic in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In the last ten minutes, we have moved forward maybe three feet, inch by inch, the driver wrenching the wheel left and right, wriggling deeper into the wedge between a delivery truck and a rickshaw in front of us.
“Up ahead, the traffic is jammed so close together that pedestrians are climbing over pickup trucks and through empty rickshaws to cross the street. Two rows to my left is an ambulance, blue light spinning uselessly. The driver is in the road, smoking a cigarette, standing on his tiptoes, looking ahead for where the traffic clears. Every once in awhile he reaches into the open door to honk his horn.
“This is what the streets here look like from seven o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night. If you’re rich, you experience it from the back seat of a car, the percussion muffled behind glass. If you’re poor, you’re in a rickshaw, breathing in the exhaust.”
In Dhaka, days are short to make things, meet deadlines, and have fun, but traffic jams are long and cruel on the way home!
The story of missed meetings and lost opportunities
A study conducted by Tanzila Khan, senior lecturer, Stamford University Bangladesh and Md Rashedul Islam MCIPS, assistant engineer, Bangladesh Water Development Board, claims that the estimated cost of only delays caused by this traffic congestion is $3.8bn per-year, and there are air pollution, missed meetings and opportunities, life wasted in bus, quality of life and more.
The public transport system and toil of using it
Public transportation in Dhaka is another grand story. In brief, if you are a user of public transport, then life is a perpetual disaster for you. It’s extremely hard to get into a bus and after prolong battle when you get in, there is no seat to sit and after few minutes the bus is full like a bottle of sugar; even movement hurts. Using public transport is detrimental for energy and physical and mental condition after a long day of work.
The point
By now, those of you confused with the title of this article, may have got the point – why we need a productivity deal only for Dhakaians. Dhaka is a different and difficult place to stay productive.
You need to be very strategic to be productive and accomplish your goals here. Every day people waste hundreds and thousands of collective hours of their lives on the streets, sitting idle in traffic jams. Fighting this stalemate yet being able to produce is an uphill battle.
If you don’t think through how you are going to design your days then you are going to be in serious trouble. You will miss meetings, deadlines, and opportunities. And you will always be short of time.
Background: Suffering is the greatest teacher
As a start-up founder, I always struggle with time, deadlines, and meetings. In the last couple of months, I have had to cancel meetings, miss deadlines, and got into trouble just because of my lack of time, or a better way to say, my inability to be productive in Dhaka.
Suffering is a great teacher. It teaches you in hard ways, but these lessons last. After missing multiple deadlines and screwing up dozens of relationships, I have come to realise that I need to take control of my time.
As an attempt to find a way out of this downward spiral, I started to contemplate and read productivity tips from top experts and media outlets. I re-adjusted my sleeping routine, started to use new and popular time management techniques with no use. Nothing worked.
I got frustrated and angry.
I don’t blame those productivity tips or time management techniques. It was not like that all those productivity tips were just bluffs or click hungry tricks, nor did I fail to apply those tips properly.
The important difference was context. These productivity tips were simply not written for Dhaka. That’s it. That made all the difference.
Context is king in life, work, and relationships. Now I have come to understand context is also important when you are thinking about “productivity.”
For Dhakaians, productivity is managing time and energy while struggling with traffic and a terrible public transport system.
The remedy
This article is not for everyone. This is for people who are living in Dhaka, or is a similarly traffic congested city – struggling with their time and productivity, and falling short of their ambitions.
Life is too short to live in a gridlocked and limited way.
Let’s find some practical and effective ways to live life to the fullest in Dhaka. Don’t be a pessimist; even in Dhaka you can accomplish more. Also remember that everything has trade-offs.
1. Stop attending too many meetings
Deduction is the first step to productivity. Free up your schedule. Attend as low a number of meetings as possible. Most meetings are unnecessary and produce very trivial results.
Only attend meetings that are really important and make these meetings time bound. However, if you need to attend multiple meetings a day, take help of technology: Skype is a great way, and there are hundreds of useful and effective collaborative tools to do meeting and more.
Few things I do:
1. I schedule meetings early in morning and for a short period of time.
2. I try to use technology to do out of office meetings.
2. Stop attending multiple events
One cannot do everything like a magician. You have to be pragmatic and realistic like a dying man. Cut off events that are not critical to growth and progress.
Attending multiple events has become a new life-style and way of proving one’s capacity and progress in recent times. Stop going with the flow and curb the number of events that you have to attend. A person who is passionate about getting things done needs to be a little boring and out of touch to be productive.
3. Work from a distance
This is a tough decision to make, and for service-holders, this is an impossible idea. However, this is a good idea for entrepreneurs. If not every day, working from a distance for few days in a week is massively helpful.
Yes, this is an unknown territory and most can’t adapt to it right away, but it is worth a try. Start with one-two days per week and expand that routine to three-four days. The good part of working from a distance is that it will save lots of hours.
There are downsides to this approach as well: management culture is difficult, and since we don’t have a culture of working from a distance, keeping employees active and accountable is difficult under this practice. However, many companies around the world are trying this to good results.
Prepare a structure, set some rules and metrics and plan for keeping everyone motivated and launch into the world of remote work.
4. While planning a visit/meeting, consider traffic condition and schedule accordingly
Early morning is the best time to take care of office meetings. If it works for you take this opportunity. The most important thing is to plan the meetings and visits ahead. While planning, traffic and other issues should be taken under consideration.
Hurrying does not help much; planning well does.
5. Waking up early
This habit is a huge productivity booster. Just by waking up early, people can double productivity easily.
A head-start from the very beginning of the day is always useful, and traffic is often low during the early hours of the day.
6. Reschedule the office time
The common office time in Dhaka is between 9-5/10-6. This is convenient, yet inconvenient as well. Rescheduling the office time, for example: starting at 8am and finishing at 4pm, and also taking advantage of the holidays like Fridays and Saturdays, is a good way to beat the rush-hours.
There will be issues with this kind of a schedule, but everything has a downside. If the business type is over reliant on other stakeholders like banks and government offices then rescheduling might be a difficult choice. But there is no harm in trying.
7. Always keep a smart-device
Despite the best efforts, people will still end up in one of the gridlocks every now and then. Devices like an iPad or a smart-phone that can be used while sitting in the back seat of a car is handy in such times. If you use public transports, keep a headphone with you and make a play-list. E-books, or TEDtalk videos, or good music, or verses from the holy books is a grand way to pass these idle times.
8. Walk
For those who use public transport, I strongly suggest walking as a vital tool for boosting their productivity. If the office is within a walking distance, or a bit further, walking is the best solution. It saves time and also benefits health.
Using public transport during and after office is extremely hard, unless luck is extremely favourable. Walk, save time and stay fit.
9. Use bike/bicycle
Start using bicycle. It helps in two ways: you can take shorter route and save time; riding a bicycle is also a healthy habit.