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** This is a guest post by Majd Uddin **

Life is short, let’s “AND” it.

One of the biggest situations of our lives is that we want to do more and we have so much less time. We want to pursue multiple passions but get stuck with following just one.

Take this example: Ali wants to be a Teacher and enjoys whenever he is given a chance to teach a Mathematics problem to his kids or family members. Ali thinks that if he becomes a full time teacher, he’ll enjoy his life. Nothing wrong so far but the problem is that Ali has a full time job of a Software Engineer and may not earn the same money while teaching.

Ali is stuck that should he be a Software Engineer “Or” a Teacher and has no answers. What if Ali picks a path where he is a Software Engineer “And” a Teacher?

Let me explain this. I know that if you have studied logic at any point in your career, you are thinking that I’ll draw a Logic Diagram with And/Or gates representing a connection. No for your amusement, I’m taking wisdom from Stephen R. Covey.

In his book “First Things First” that he co-authored with Roger Merrill and Rebecca Merrill, along with so many beautiful thoughts, he suggests that once you have figured out which are the things you want to pursuit, consider if you can make progress at two fronts by introducing an “And”.

Let’s revisit Ali’s situation and see what options are there to “And”.

Part time teaching. There are many institutes that want experienced folks as their faculty members and Ali can find some course over there to teach. It can be after office hours or even early in the morning as most of the software places normally have flexi-timing. It can be over the weekend where Ali can spend sometime following his passion and will come more charged to spend quality time with his family.

But if this is too much of asking and Ali doesn’t have that much energy to work extra hours. Ali still has other options.

In house trainings: Every organization wishes to train their employees but don’ want to spend money (which is a subject of how an “And” can be applied to this situation). How about Ali takes an initiative where he studies some tools/techniques in more depth and then teaches that to his colleagues. He stays mainly as Software guy but teaches. If the experiment goes fine, Ali can give lectures and hold workshops for fellows in his Industry.

Free coaching classes: And if Ali has started a path of doing more but not worrying about extra money, there are always some organizations that hold classes for free for the under-previliged people. And if that is again asking for too much time, Ali can always make the home classes that started his dilemma more planned and organized. He will enjoy more and his kids/family members would love him as a teacher.

Enough energy spent on solving Ali’s problem, let’s see what your situation is?

Do you want to become a professional photographer but have a job as an Accounts person? Consider an “And”.

Do you have passion for writing but your main job is to run family owned manufacturing business? Consider an “And”.

Do you love travelling and want to write about it but you are a teacher by profession? Consider an “And”.

Do you want to be an Entrepreneur but have a secure job which you don’t want to sacrifice right now? Consider an “And”.

Just like you might be reading this blog “And” enjoying a cup of tea/coffee along, start “ANDing” your life.

About Majd:

Majd is a fellow-blogger and an active member of Pakistani Testing Community. You can find some amazing and insightful posts at his blog knowlegetester.org.  Quite contrary to his usual testing related posts, he has penned down this guest post about making choices in life. Hope you enjoyed it!

He can be contacted at:

facebook: /knowledgetester
twitter: @majduddin