Failure at Decisive Moment - 1

Put your efforts, don’t worry about results.  Have a stable mind and strike a balance with self-control during extreme excitement and extreme frustration due to success and failure respectively.  These are words from Bhagavat Gita.  Very nice to tell and listen too.  However, when the occasion comes, it is very difficult to tackle the situation with stable mind.

This happens to me very often in my life.  Put in all efforts and when the results are out, there will be great fall from the peak of expectation.  How will be feeling be?

There was a lesson in a Coursera course on innovation where you need to write a failure resume.  I wrote three of my failures at that time. I want to share one such failure, which can be quoted in my failure resume.

Hong Kong Computer Society has a women wing called FACE Club to attract Female IT personnel, connect and engage them in activities together to increase the number of women folk entering the IT field in Hong Kong from 18% to higher levels. 

To engage the women, we brainstormed various activities and implemented few of them.  Out of that, one of the activity we thought about was Step Challenge, which will help the women folk to work out after their busy work schedule. Objective was to create an awareness to a healthier life style for them through this. We planned to have it in the start of 2018 but succeeded to start in the month of November after negotiating with the App development companies, training and testing. 

I had the experience of such step challenge with City U Walk, which used to be held in the month of March for past 4 years.  My Ph.D Supervisor, Dr. Ron Kwok is the brainchild of the scheme for university and it was taken care by my co-researcher Mrs. Clara Choi Ki.  The App was improved every year after lot of study. She obtained her Ph.D degree after a thorough research on how people get interested and motivated in such sport activity with a goal to achieve and a contest to compete. I was not able to compete for first three years as I had always problem with my mobile version.

I should introduce my nature before going any further. Firstly, I was not a person who is interested in walking.  Secondly, cannot walk even 1km without a break. However, last year somehow I managed to be in the contest as I got a new mobile. I enrolled in the Alumni category. Due to lot of promotion, more than 20 of my friends joined the contest in the Friends of City University of Hong Kong category. We were all enthusiastically walking and having fun. I was consistently around 6^th place but pushed further down on the last few days under Alumni category. However, under Friend’s category there was a dramatic finish in that event when the first place winner suddenly appeared from down the line with a big margin on the last day. Previous year 2^nd place winner (2017) and the 1^st place contender until that time (2018) was literally shocked.

I was given a target to get 5 groups and few individuals to participate in this contest. I promoted FACE Club Step Challenge contest with my friends in the field of IT and others.  However, I could not succeed in getting any enrollments to form a group due to that dramatic finish of the earlier contest .  Then I enrolled my husband and son in the contest under individual category.  Finally, there were 33 female and 26 male participants under individual category when the contest started.

My target was to walk as much as I can with a target of 10000 steps a day. contest started. On the first day, there was one women participant, who reached more than 42000 steps. My participating fever went up seeing such a competitor.  No hope of getting any first place in this contest . However, I thought I would go through the contest, as I was one of the Chairperson in setting up this contest. 

Next few days, there was no activity by that contender. However, the first place participant was way ahead of all of us in the next week. I think, though she does not run consistently, she could manage to do a marathon on weekends.

That was the week I started my incubator office at Inno Center Kowloon Tong.  I started to walk around Kowloon Tong after my lunch for more than one hour regularly to complete my quota of 10000 steps.  Since my enrollment for 10km Standard Charted Marathon was successful, I thought this would be my training period to succeed in that.

Until 15^th November, I was shuttling between 4^th and 5^th place.  On 16^th, suddenly I reached 3^rd place.  Then my contest fever picked up.  I wanted to maintain that status.  On that weekend, I could reach the second place.  I was truly excited that I can aim for 2^nd place as well.  I sent a message in the app to both the nearest competitors. I found that the second place participant did not walk on the weekend because of her Bipasana Yoga classes.  After 21^st, there was a true contest for 2^nd and 3^rd place. I was very keen on getting on to second place then on.  On 24^th November, I got my best record of more than 24500 steps. So I targeted to walk at least 15000 steps every day instead of my daily target of 10000 steps till that date.  For few days of that week, I could maintain my 2^nd place.  However, on the last three days, the contest got severe. We were shuttling between 2^nd and 3^rd place. 

On the final day, there was a nail biting finish.  I made myself available to walk for more hours to target that 2^nd place.  By afternoon, I had completed my quota of 10000 steps.  After reaching home, I started walking with my husband Siva to make sure to reach the second place.  When I completed 22000 steps, I synchronized my steps with the MoveSpring App.  I saw that the 2^nd place contender was 2500 steps ahead of me.  Then I made up my mind to walk more though my legs needed rest.  I walked to reach more than 26500 steps (my personal best) so that I will be ahead of my nearest contender. At 11:50 and at 12 midnight, I was 2400 steps ahead and I went to sleep thinking that I would be placed in second place finally. 

The decisive moment failure happened on next day morning. I checked the MoveSpring App as soon as I woke up. I found that I was trailing from 2^nd place with 250 steps.  I was crest-fallen.  I had put so much of effort and worked beyond my capacity. However, I could not achieve what I wanted to.

It was really too hard to take it at that moment. But that feeling faded away in a day or two. I have faced many such failures but after sometime, that feeling of failure fades out and I will raise to the occasion again to try my chances.  Good or bad, I have that characteristic. 

One good thing in this contest is that my husband got the first place and son the 4^th place in the men’s category. We as a family have crossed 1 million steps in this month with my husband around 550000, my son around 378000 and myself around 470000, which we could not have imagined without this contest.  I am satisfied with that though could not win the position that I targeted.

The greatest take away for me was to realize that I am capable of walking more than 15km in a day.  I am not afraid of walking long distance any more. That is the fruit for my efforts during this one month. I learnt how such events can be organised.

(Note: When the results were announced on 5th Dec, I found that the second contender was more than 11500 steps ahead of me.  I had noticed that the contender was working on US timing earlier.  I was working on HK timing.  My chase to 2nd place was worthless because of that.  I should have set a larger margin (80000 steps) like my husband to get a place on the top. Wishes to the winners for taking up this challenge and putting efforts to get placed on the top.)