Unemployment in our country is skyrocketing. We have considered this as a prominent obstruction in our society every time.
Is unemployment among youth seriously the root cause or are we viewing it under a wrong light?
Real Life Examples
I met a girl during one of my projects and was very impressed with her skills and hard work. So, I offered her a platform in my organization where she could work and hone her skills. Everything was going smoothly initially until the fifth day when she complained about not getting time for herself and that she will not be able to give 6-8 hours for work. I considered her problem minding about her priorities in day to day life, but, out of curiosity, I asked her about her daily schedule. I was really surprised to know that the tasks she gave priorities to, were not so important to be prioritized. The major problems that I diagnosed with the conversation are:
- Irregularity of schedule
- Wastage of time
- Confusions
- Lack of productivity
- Influence of friend circle
Alright friends, let’s get to another example:
Last year I met an eighteen year old enthusiastic young boy who was looking for a medium to bear his own expenses all by himself. He had amazing writing skills. His works never justified his age and used to speak a lot more. A few months later, something caught up his mind and he started taking breaks at regular intervals without realizing his responsibility of informing me. I have seen the excellence and dedication in his work. Being productive for 18 hours every day is not something easy, but he used to do it, which meant he was capable of doing such tasks. But, the key question that arises is, what is the reason behind these irregularities?
According to me, this young generation is following a different work culture where money is their first priority, in order to fulfill their basic requirements. The work they do holds some value for the organization, but without realizing this, they just focus on completing their tasks, getting paid and vanish, without contemplating the bigger picture. When the prime motive is just some pennies, capabilities remain undiscovered. They never understand the threat they pose to an organization and indirectly to themselves by inconsistent working patterns.
Let’s get to another example:
A 17 year old boy, renowned script writer and co-author of bestselling novels wanted to associate with us so I offered him the opportunity. To my surprise, he was so good at work; it seemed as if some experienced and mature person was working. Once again, a month passed by and I came to know about his changed work ethics. I was unable to understand the reason behind this sudden change. Alcoholism and peer group, hanging out with friends, became the prime aims of his life. I tried to help him get out of the situation, but then I came to know that these days, friends are the biggest influencers. He quitted the work and past some days he realized the significance of the organization that he had quit under the wrong influence and begged to rejoin.
Here is one more example:
A girl, aged 20 years, very talented with good communication skills joined me for one of my projects. She was very actively involved in the initial days, and then a sudden wave of irresponsibility conquered her mind. She started being less responsive to the work assigned and once again, this made me rethink over the mental state of our Youth. She used the confidential details of our organization for some of her own purposes which made me realize how ignorant our youth is, regarding the official policies.
The Root Problem
What do we conclude from these situations?
What do the youth want and expect from their work is a question I seek an answer to.
Is youth seriously deprived of employment or are they in the habit of neglecting the opportunities offered to them?
Time Management
Let me explain very clearly, we all have 24 hours in a day. Generally, 6-8 hours of time is devoted to sleep. Then we are left with 16 hours, which is a good time period for other tasks. Deduction of 6-8 hours for work/school/college, etc leaves us with 8 hours.
Where to spend these 8 hours?
Let’s assume 2 hours (maximum 4 hours) for daily routine activities and self care like bath, meals, exercise, chatting, and friends time etc. So, now we are left with 4 hours. No one realizes where these 4 hours go. These 4 hours can be utilized in a very productive way. The fact being, lack of planning and preparation. That is why, it seems like time flew by and we did not get to know about it. But in reality it is nothing more than mismanagement of time.
Some Solutions
Youth is diverted to some false paths where they have prioritized the adorable virtual world of social media (snapchat, instagram, etc). They are busy in night clubs, chill outs, alcohols, drugs, hookups and what not. I am not of the view to not have a friend circle or no hangouts; it’s just that you should know when and how much time should be devoted to these activities.
They should learn to shift their priorities to something that would actually benefit them in their future. Those 4 hours that we talked about earlier are not to be invested here, rather can be given to some productive works such as maybe some online course, or a part time job, or may be just exploring your passion and working on them. If youth can’t develop the employability skills to maintain employment, the cycle of poverty will continue.
Ironically, we are not managing our time effectively and then say “yaar time hi nahi hota hai”. We really need to rethink and reschedule our daily plans and set some boundaries between our personal and professional lives. Our time devotion to personal tasks should never compromise our professional life or that phase of life where you are supposed to build your career as a foundation for your future life.
This whole Covid situation has brought a lot of opportunities for the youth who can manage online studies along with work from home facilities. They are not aware of their powers of being techno friendly and the time they are getting at the comfort of their homes is precious. The above mentioned problems, let’s say distractions, are taking the youth far away from the dreams they think they will achieve one day.
The talent and skills that this generation of youth holds is commendable. The social distractions have held our youth from doing what they should and this in turn brings instability at work places. Consistently, about 65 percent of youth ages 16 to 24 will lose their jobs before the three-month probationary period ends and staying at a workplace for 3 months, is an achievement these days. Energy needs to be channelized in the right direction and the youth should take authority of his/her own actions.
Our country is one of the youngest, youngest in terms of the adult population it accommodates. The development of our country is possible only when youth on their personal levels become aware of their potential and strive hard to be on the top of the world.
experts Opinions
the blog by makes a very important and pertinent points. I am sure most of us would agree with the observation that youth in general today are little less sincere towards their work, have lost their sense of priority and probably have got into short term orientation. Now this may look like a judgemental sweeping statement but this is what the prevailing trend looks like. As a professional speaker and wellness educator from last 10 years, this is what I have observed. In current times, the world has 3 distinct features:
1) It is changing faster than ever and the base is only on increasing
2) it makes us overloaded with information and
3) it provides us with abundance of choices.
So lets come to the first one
the change of pace has become very fast and this breeds impatience. we are not used to wait for long anymore. Things need to happen very fast in today’s world. We expect everything instantly and that in general creates a sense of impatience. People do not want to wait longer for things. second thing, overload of information, we are living in an information economy, the most big companies if u think of they are into business of data and information and this has what made us hooked to our devices. This is the addiction that most of the people are addicted to but not realising it and because if this again lot of things can happen. number 3, abundance of choices: we have too many choices for almost and every thing. You want to buy anything today, you often find too many choices. choices are good thing, they give us a sense of freedom but if we do not have the maturity to make a choice, stick with it. or a certain time period choices are not actually a good thing for us. These are the three reasons which probably propel the youth today. apart from many other reasons in this kind of pattern.
Noe let’s understand what could be the solution I propose only 2 solutions to keep it short 1. developing depth and clarity, for this the youth need to learn to contemplate, to spend some time with self which our mobile phone have stolen from us. We need to understand that if I do not have the clarity then I will not have clarity of my thoughts and I will be dependent on others. I will become an approval seeker. In fact that’s one of the reasons many people are too much influenced by the friend circle. They seek this peer group approval because somewhere they lack confidence in self. They do not have that sense of originality and this is because they are never gone into depth of themselves, they have not explored themself, they have not asked tough questions to themself and this makes them confused person, and the easy thing for a confused person is to choose what everybody is doing, and that’s what is happening. So, we need to develop the habit of contemplation, that creates original thought process in the person and a sense of personality, individuality which is very important for a person to be self dependent and developing the depth in their work.
Next thing what the youth needs to learn is to think about not just goal but purpose. The difference is we need to ask one more why before we just launch on to our goal. Goal could be making money , but ask one more why, why am I making money, that’s your purpose. Purpose usually is little beyond material things.
Purpose is non physical, goal may be physical. You are making money, fine, but for what ? If I don;t understsnd that then I sell myself too cheap. If I am spending significant amount of my active life in my workplace there must be a handsome return in that regard and that return is not just in form of money. If I am selling myself just for money, I am selling this human life at too cheap price. There is something else a workplace can offer and youth have to think about it. Workplace can offer fulfillment, a workplace can be a place of your growth in your skills, a sense of contribution can come from that, all that we need to think about. So, while choosing the work, we need to understand, why am I choosing this. Money is just one small target, one small goal. Yes money will give a good life to you, to your family, may be you contribute to the society with money but there is something more in the life than just money and we need to understand that workplace can give that too. So, not being short sighted while choosing work and career is very very important. That will give us a sense of depth and bring a whole heartedness to work, it will not not just like the one part of work but will do everything wholeheartedly.
Picture credits to Sify.com, Pinterest, Sentinel.com
