Comedian Vivek Muralidharan recently stirred up a conversation about work-life balance with his hilarious take on Narayana Murthy's 70-hour workweek philosophy. As someone who is known for their successful career and dedication to work, Narayana Murthy's views on work hours have sparked a lot of debate and discussion. However, in his trademark style, Vivek managed to break down the seriousness of this philosophy and highlight the importance of taking breaks and enjoying life.
For those who are not familiar, Narayana Murthy is the co-founder of Infosys, one of India's largest IT companies. He is known for his disciplined work ethic and is often quoted as saying that one needs to work at least 70 hours a week to have a successful career. This may seem like a daunting and exhausting task to many, but Narayana Murthy firmly believes that hard work and dedication are the keys to success.
Vivek, on the other hand, humorously points out the absurdity of this philosophy by saying that with 70-hour workweeks, one only has two months in a year to enjoy life. He cleverly uses this statement to highlight the importance of work-life balance and how it is often overlooked in our pursuit of success. Viveks's Instagram reel has gone viral. In the video, he makes a funny presentation to the audience by calculating the time we spend on the things we do each day. He talks about things by picking up the phone of someone in the audience and calculating the time on a calculator. With 24 hours in a day, a person gets 168 hours in a week. From this subtract 70 hours to work and the remainder is 98 hours.
If you subtract seven hours of sleep a day from this, you have 49 hours left in a week. Vivek says that after spending time on entertainment and exercise and other things, one person gets 24 hours to live in a week. However, this is not the end of it. If we add up this figure in the manner of 52 weeks in a year, after work and other things, a person gets a total of 52 days to live which is about two months.
In today's fast-paced world, where we are constantly bombarded with messages about hustling and grinding 24/7, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that working long hours is necessary for success. However, what we often fail to realise is that success without happiness and fulfilment is meaningless.
Vivek's comedic take on this philosophy is a reminder to not take things too seriously and to find humour in the absurdities of life. We often get caught up in the rat race of trying to do more and be more, but sometimes we need to step back and laugh at ourselves. It's important to find a balance between working hard and finding joy in life's little moments.
