Life is the best teacher which practices the best pedagogy, i.e. experience. Through experiences it helps us learn and make few principles which we imbibe in our lives. Later or sooner we realize, there exists a theory which explains the same learning experience which you think you learnt yourself and you own.
In the early childhood and adolescence, I (as a matter of chance) practiced JIT (read procrastination – as a usual human instinct) without knowing the theory behind JIT. In my college I learnt about this philosophy and felt pride in the fact that – “Whats new in this! I have been practicing it since long (doesn’t matter if you name it procrastination)”. With time, I strengthened my belief in the philosophy and made it a religion for my life. Sometimes I also faced hurdles in implementing the same, seemed like, there was an invisible devil who was trying to play against this divine principle. But it was fun till the time I met Murphy. During my Fellowship period at IIM Lucknow, one of the renowned Ops Professors who was a fan of Murphy introduced him to the batch during one lecture. Then I realized the devil was none other than but Murphy. I strategized to make him my best friend so that he doesn’t trouble me ever, but no luck. Since that day he had been my worst enemy and has struck at the worst possible circumstances when I needed JIT a lot. Since then the battle became worse.
With learning experience, I grew smarter and proactive to safeguard myself from any consequences, which might arise as an influence of the great Murphy’s Law. But every time Murphy proved that there is no limit to his intelligence. Still, with vigor to fight, I kept applying JIT in most of the situations. Sometimes Murphy didn’t impact or didn’t impact much. But mostly these were the not-so severe circumstances. May be he just misguided me in a subtle way so that I become careless towards his “moves”. And yes, it was true. Whenever I became ignorant towards him, he struck at the worst possible time when I relied on the divine principle of JIT and had no other choice.
I mention here few of the instances where I tried to safeguard against my worst enemy but could not.
The professor who introduced Murphy to me had once given one group assignment, which carried 40% weightage for that subject. We had 5 days to finish that simulation assignment and needed to submit it at 5pm on Friday. Whole team of 4 people was relying on me, given that they had a blind faith in my knowledge of operations management. I rested till Thursday, making everyone anxious if we would be able to finish it by Friday. But as usual I finished the assignment in my hostel room at 4:30 sharp (JIT way) and rushed to the computer center (CC) to take a print. To defeat Murphy I carried one CD with me and also shared the document on the server so that I can pick it from CC also. I reached the CC and realized that the CD is corrupted. I was not in tension because I had the assignment stored on server also. But!!! The great Murphy made the server go down and inaccessible at the wrong (may be right) moment. It was 4:40pm. I rushed to my hostel burned another CD, also mailed it to myself, reached CC again. The CD again did not work. Even today I do not understand why. Anyway, I opened the mailbox to download the file. The internet was also slow. Downloading took 5 minutes for few KB file. Launched the print command and felt little relief it was still 4:55. I could pick the print and rush to professors room but………. the paper got jammed in the printer just before my assignment was about to be printed. I launched the print to another printer. It was queued and got printed in another 10 minutes. I rushed to the professor’s room and could reach only at 5:10pm. The professor was one of the ones who respect the time a lot (to my bad luck). Anyway he accepted the assignment with 5% penalty on the marks. Murphy you won!
Another story is very recent. It happened when I had to reach Mumbai airport with two of my colleagues. From the client site near Nariman point, it takes at least an hour and sometimes 1.5 hours or more. We planned to leave at 3.30pm to catch a flight at 5.30pm. Generally, when I travel by air, I usually do web check-in and carry the boarding pass with me. It saves a lot of time and also helps in avoiding Murphy’s mercy (read curse). Last time also I web checked-in and also suggested my colleagues but they could not because the time gap allowed to web check-in had exceeded. They did tele check-in. We could not leave the client site before 4. Then we asked the driver to rush it. He made us reach airport at 4:50pm (our luck) but when we entered the counter area, there was a long queue at the counters. We moved to self-check-in kiosks where the other two could fetch their boarding pass but I could not because I had done web check-in and self check in kiosk does not print boarding pass for web checked-in passengers - Irony of the automated systems. Being proactive worked in favor of Murphy. Anyway I had to queue myself into a long trail, got my boarding pass at 5.30pm. Luckily the flight was delayed so I could somehow catch the flight, being the last passenger to board. But yeah… I missed the nice snacks and a beer which my colleagues enjoyed at the lounge in the waiting area.
Also there have been many instances when I prayed that something could go wrong but it didn’t. May be this is also Murphy’s Law. Things going right was not right for me so Murphy made it go right and proved he is invincible.
I have succumbed to Murphy many times and now I respect him a lot just like my Professor. If I would write all the instances here the article would become too long and stretch into a book. I am sure it’s not only my story but the story of all those who believe in JIT the way we practice it (read: procrastination). But there is one thing which I can say if I have to summarize my learning from the battle between JIT and Murphy. Pre and post my introduction to Murphy and his law, my life offered me lot of instances when I tried to defy Murphy’s law but ended up realizing that my moves to defy Murphy’s law were actually programmed to carry me away in favor of Murphy’s law only. So here I coined a corollary of the great law for which I have a lot of respect:
Murphy’s law does not work when it is most required to work.
To know about Murphy’s law and read many variants and corollary of the same please refer to:
