Setting and achieving goals in career and life

Here are a few important tips and considerations as per conventional wisdom and quotable quotes that can help our budding and enterprising youth in setting and accomplishing goals in their career and life. Seven steps required for the same are presented as under: 

1.               Set goals for yourself 

First and foremost, rule of goal setting is to set your goals by yourself. Since goal setting is all about you, your life, your hopes, your dreams and your plans, others cannot set the goals for you whether they are your parents, friends, relatives, teachers, mentors or anyone else though they may help and guide you in doing the same. You cannot achieve your real goals if you are living someone else’s dreams and expectations. Therefore, you are the one who’ll have to undertake the task of setting and achieving your goals, no one else can do that for you. The goals that you set for yourselves should be SMART i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Tony Gaskins, an American motivational speaker, author and life coach has very well said, “If you do not build your own dreams, someone will hire you to help him build his dreams”. Here we need to make a clear distinction between working for our institutions and working for individuals. 

2.               Write down your goals 

It is believed that specifying your goals in writing stimulates the ‘filtering’ system of your brain, called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). When you write down your goals, the RAS begins to collect and store relevant information and then keeps sending inputs to the conscious part of your mind from time to time. It acts behind the scenes, making you more conscious of the available opportunities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, thereby helping you to get oriented towards your goals. Therefore, you need to make sure that your goal is positive, action-oriented and as specific, clear, unambiguous and elaborate as possible. 

3.               Set deadlines for your goals 

American writer and author of the bestseller “Studying Smart: time management for college students”, Diana Scharf Hunt has said, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” Therefore, after you set your goals, you need to fix timelines and deadlines for achieving them well in time that will keep you steadfast and save you from a whole lot of distractions and deviations which may deter you from focussing on your goals. Though it is said that we should not count our chicken before the eggs are hatched, in case of goal setting we need to start counting our chicken even before they are hatched implying that we have to imagine ourselves accomplishing our goals and thereby feel the excitement of it which will keep us on track towards our goals. By setting a deadline, your subconscious mind gets activated to ensure the achievement of your goal within the prescribed timeframe. If your projections are realistic and based on some reasonable logic, then you will achieve your goals on their fixed timelines. 

Diana Scharf in her quote above has laid emphasis on “dreams” that are important for touching new heights in one’s career and life. As narrated by the former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam, “dreams are not those which we see in our sleep but dreams are those which do not let us sleep”. These are the dreams for our future, our career and our ambition in life, that keep us going amid all odds and obstructions and make each day of our life meaningful and worth living. However, it needs to be understood that dreams alone are not enough. If you simply dream and sit on an idea and fail to act on your goals, then that is not your dream but your ‘wishful thinking’ or so-called ‘day-dreaming’. You need to give wings to your dreams, impart a tangible vision and a passion to your dreams, that alone will take you where you actually want to be in life. Nevertheless, foregone conclusion is that without dreams we merely exist, we do not live our life to its fullest and we are not here in this world merely to exist. We are here to live each day of our life with full vigour, purpose, objective and reason. 

4.               Devise an action plan for achieving your goals 

Goals are the roadmaps that guide us and show us the way towards fulfilling our dreams. Every small step that we take towards accomplishment of our ultimate goal is a goal in itself and a milestone achieved. These milestones serve as checkpoints along the way that fully align with the final goal. As such merely setting one’s goals is not enough, we need to devise a concrete action plan on achieving them too. As Rabindra Nath Tagore has said, “You cannot cross a river simply by standing on the shore and staring at the water, you need to jump into it and swim across”. We need to continuously monitor and review our progress on achieving each milestone in our journey towards our final destination and once each milestone is achieved, we may reward ourselves with little joys and thus celebrate our incremental success. David Joseph Schwartz, an American motivational writer and coach, known for authoring “The Magic of Thinking Big” way back in 1959 has said, “Think little goals and expect little achievements; think big goals and win big success”. We should not choose easily attainable goals, because that way we may fail to realize and reach out to our full potential. Difficult but attainable goals make us strive hard and walk an extra mile towards them. While devising our action plan, we need to undertake a SWOC analysis of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges towards achieving our goals and accordingly devise suitable strategies to bolster on our strengths, capitalize on our opportunities, overcome our weaknesses and take all challenges in our way head-on. 

5.               Compete with yourself 

Once we set our goals and embark on our journey towards achieving them, we always need to be in competition with ourselves but not necessarily with others. Every day we need to make sincere efforts to make ourselves a better version and put our best foot forward without caring for winning or losing because with enough hard work we may either achieve our goals or else we may find something that is even more rewarding and, in the end, irrespective of the final outcome, we will realize that we have lived our life to our best. Unhealthy competition is a big distraction that leads to waste of time, energy, focus and resources and therefore we should stay away from it. We need to focus on ourselves, do what is best for us and do it to the best of our abilities. As per Michael Jerome Oher, a former American footballer who played in the National Football League for eight seasons, “We need to go after our goals like it’s nobody’s business”. 

6.               Maintaining balance in life 

Maintaining balance in everything that we do in our life is very important. While pursuing our goals, we need to maintain a fine balance between hard work and entertainment, between studies and sports, between books and social media, between self-study and coaching, between our work and our personal life, between ourselves and other important people in our lives. Success is nothing but the net outcome of this very balance. As per Denise Morrison, an American business executive who served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Campbell Soup Company from 2011 to 2018, “Life is a balancing act. You have multiple roles and goals, and you can do it all – just not all at once”. It is said that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and therefore we need not to tax and deprive ourselves of all other small joys in life for achieving our goals but we just need to maintain a fine balance and avoid unnecessary distractions and wastage of our precious time in unproductive activities. 

7.               Chase your goals and dreams like a tiger 

You need to firmly resolve to take massive action towards the accomplishment of your goals. Hard work, persistence, perseverance and determination will keep you on the right track every time obstacles come to stand in your way. By continuing to take relentless action, you will develop the necessary discipline and momentum that will eventually help you reach the point where nothing can stop you from achieving your goals. You need to manage your negative emotions, stress and all kinds of anxieties well taking help of your parents, teachers and mentors. You need to be happy, cool and relaxed amid all circumstances and try to be productive on each passing day. You need to gird up your loins because no one else is going to do that for you. So be your own motivator without waiting for others to motivate you. Above all, do what you enjoy to do and enjoy doing what you choose to do. Do not get demotivated when you come across hurdles in your way. Successful person is the one who knows very well how to overcome hurdles by converting them into stepping stones. Last but not the least passion, perseverance and dedication are the keys to your success.

 

(Based on the excerpts from the speech delivered by the author online as Special Guest during the day-long counselling-cum-guidance programme organized by Sir Syed Educational Trust, North Kashmir at Govt. Higher Secondary School, Tanghdar on June 16, 2022. Author is Director, Centre for Career Planning and Counselling, University of Kashmir)

Fostering multidisciplinary research at colleges in the context of NEP-2020

 In the context of NEP-2020 degree colleges need to augment their infrastructure, manpower and other facilities, offer multidisciplinary research degrees at UG and PG level and allow their students to create new knowledge

As per the New Education Policy (NEP-2020), newly proposed four-year multidisciplinary bachelor's degree programmes at colleges will provide an opportunity to students to experience the full range of holistic and multidisciplinary education besides allowing them to select major and minor subjects of their choice. Proposed four-year UG programme shall lead to a degree with research if the students complete a rigorous research project in their major area of study. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) including colleges and universities will now have the flexibility to offer a two-year Master’s degree programme with the second year devoted entirely to research for those who have completed 3-year bachelor’s programme, whereas for students completing a 4-year bachelor’s programme with research, there would be a 1-year Master’s programme and an integrated 5-year bachelor’s/master’s degree programme will also be up for the grabs. Henceforth undertaking a doctorate shall require either a master’s degree or a 4-year bachelor’s degree with research. Accordingly, colleges have to gear up themselves to face these new challenges of starting multidisciplinary research and offering research degrees to their students. 

In order to get going with research at undergraduate level, degree colleges need to augment their infrastructure, manpower and other facilities including laboratories equipped with sophisticated equipments and libraries equipped with standard reference books for research. They need to explore liberal funding opportunities for this purpose at local, regional, national and international levels from government as well as non-government sources. They need to impart specialized training to their technical and teaching staff through continuing education programmes like refresher and orientation courses, with a view to prepare them for in-house research activities. They need to be trained about the research methodology, study designs, sampling methods, hypothesis testing, ethics, integrity and confidentiality in research besides other socio-cultural and legal aspects and intricacies of research. Then the colleges need to devise policies for research in which they need to incorporate sufficient provisions for incentivization of good quality and cutting-edge research. They also need to promote and encourage problem-based, practice-based, demand-driven, context-specific, translational, need-based, locally and socially relevant research on their campuses. Translational research in particular will ensure translation of scientific evidence generated through research into a policy framework that in turn should get translated into practice on ground. 

While stepping into the domain of research colleges need to promote and foster collaborative multidisciplinary research, breaking the silos in which academicians have been working so far and dissolving the compartments in which knowledge has been constrained. Knowledge is an ocean that knows no boundaries and hence cannot be confined into compartments. Rising above their subject specific domains and discipline-specific empires, academicians need to intermingle and come up with integrated, collaborative, trans-disciplinary research problems and collectively devise holistic solutions to those problems with a view to resolve the problems being faced by the human kind and make this world a better place to live. It is said that narrow disciplinarians often commit errors that can be best detected by people familiar with two or more disciplines. Therefore, “undisciplining of knowledge” is a need of the hour and churning out “undisciplinarians”, who don’t follow only one discipline of knowledge throughout their life, is what NEP-2020 intends to achieve. In order to exactly illustrate how this can be accomplished in actual practice at our colleges, I hereby cite an example of undertaking such kind of research on medicinal plants. 

Nature has gifted our valley of Kashmir with the precious wealth of medicinal plants that need to be tapped and explored for their immense therapeutic potential. This could serve as a potential area for multidisciplinary research at our colleges. Botanists at our colleges can undertake research on the cultivation, collection, conservation, bioprospection and biodiversity documentation of medicinal plants whereas our Chemists can undertake research on the isolation, purification, characterization of natural products from medicinal plants. Zoologists can perform animal testing of natural products for their medicinal properties using cell cultures, stem cells, cancer cell lines, laboratory animals, including research on their mutagenicity, teratogenicity, carcinogenicity testing and evaluation. Researchers of Biochemistry can study the effects of natural products derived from medicinal plants on the biochemistry and physiology of human beings and animals whereas our Biotechnologists can study genetic and molecular signatures of the natural products isolated from medicinal plants through studies involving gene mapping, gene expression, recombinant technology, proteomics, transcriptomics, genomics and metabonomics. Pharmacologists in turn can study the effects of natural products on living systems either in-situ, in-utero, in-vitro, in-vivo or in-silico whereas our industrial pharmacists can lead to the formulation of natural products into dosage forms like tablets, capsules, injections, ointments, syrups, implants, patches etc. Similarly, many other examples can be cited from other areas of research. This way whole process can be completed in an integrated fashion within the same higher education institution leading to better outcomes of research having sufficient utility and valorisation in day-to-day life. 

Many of the social, cultural, economic, demographic, ecological, environmental and geographical problems existing in our society require multi-disciplinary approaches. Majority of the worthwhile topics of research fall at the interstices of the traditional disciplines. Interdisciplinarity entails greater flexibility in research and promotes creativity, critical and analytical mindset. Therefore, there is a dire need to promote interdisciplinary education and research at our higher education institutions in consonance with NEP-2020. Our colleges can serve as breeding grounds for such kind of research since they have to start from a scratch. When they embark on their journey towards research with transdisciplinary approaches their research outcomes will witness a paradigm shift from that of the conventional research carried out by our higher education institutions thus far. Interdisciplinary research will help breach communication gaps and missing linkages in the contemporary academics, thereby helping in mobilizing its enormous intellectual resources in the direction of greater social solidarity and justice. Colleges need to plan their research goals and research designs accordingly and identify research questions after mutual consultations rather than working separately and pursuing their separate agenda for research. Common aims and objectives in research will yield better research benefits, outputs and outcomes that will have a better societal impact and make the whole research process productive and relevant. Such type of joint research protocols will also garner greater financial support from national and international funding agencies. 

To begin with, our colleges need to inculcate a good research culture at their campuses. In order to produce researchers of national and international repute they need to promote scientific temper and inquisitiveness among their students. At the very outset they should give simple research problems to their students in order to acclimatize them and stimulate their appetite towards research. Students need to be told about the difference between peer-reviewed and grey literature and in order to make research ventures interesting they need to be exposed to interesting and exciting case studies in diverse streams and then the importance of transdisciplinary education and research needs to be explained to them in a very lucid and attractive manner. Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote comes very handy at such occasions that reads, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. Similarly, the quote of William Arthur Ward that reads, “The mediocre teacher tells; the good teacher explains; the superior teacher demonstrates; the great teacher inspires,” fits into the bill very well. We need teachers at our colleges who would demonstrate practically and inspire awe among their students towards research, who would hand hold them, mentor them and lead them towards new vistas and horizons of research. Simultaneously motivational and mentoring sessions need to be conducted on regular basis inviting acclaimed and accomplished researchers for their interactions with the students. This will inspire them to set and achieve their goals and fulfil their dreams in life. 

(Based on excerpts from a lecture delivered by the author at Islamia College of Science and Commerce, Srinagar during its first interdisciplinary science colloquium. Author teaches at the Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences and holds the additional charge of Director, Centre for Career Planning and Counselling, University of Kashmir)

ABPMJAY: A game-changer in healthcare

 With more than 18 crore golden cards having been issued nationwide so far, Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY scheme has considerably improved accessibility, availability and affordability of healthcare and medicines in India

Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) is a health insurance scheme launched by the Govt. of India with an aim of moving closer towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and providing health insurance cover to about 100 million poor and vulnerable citizens of India. This flagship scheme provides an insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakhs per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalizations, with no cap on family size and the services are portable all across the country. This scheme was launched by the Prime Minister, Sh. Narendra Modi on September 23^rd, 2018 as a progressive step towards achieving UHC in India. So far more than 18 crore Ayushman cards have been issued nationwide under this scheme. Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted on May 13^th, 2022 that under this scheme, more than 3.2 crore people have availed the benefits of free hospitalization and free medicines worth an amount of Rs. 37,398 crores. This scheme has two interlinked components viz., Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) and the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY). While on one hand HWCs are intended to progressively expand access to comprehensive primary health care, free essential medicines as well as diagnostics services, on the other hand, PM-JAY aims to provide financial risk protection for secondary and tertiary care to bottom 40% of India’s population besides ensuring improved access to good quality healthcare services through a combination of public and private empaneled providers for everyone without facing any financial hardships. Around 1350 medical and surgical packages are covered under this scheme which include almost all secondary and most of the tertiary care procedures. As a result of Ayushman Bharat scheme access including availability and affordability of medicines and healthcare in India has drastically improved.

As per WHO-World Medicines Situation Reports of 2004 and 2011, almost 65% of Indian population lacked access to medicines during that period. The average cost per hospitalization at present in our country is Rs. 20,000 which is more than annual consumer expenditure of nearly half of our population. Out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on health in India is believed to be 62.6% of total healthcare expenditure which is one of the highest in the world and nearly thrice the global average of 20%. OOPE on medicines alone accounts for 70% of total out-of-pocket expenditure on health which is more than twice that of consultation fees and diagnostic services. In India more than 300 million people face catastrophic expenditures and around 50 million people (nearly 4% of total population) are pushed below poverty line every year on account of these out-of-pocket expenditures on health. One of the main reasons for this has been the limited access to healthcare services in public sector which means that the medicines and other healthcare services were either not available or not affordable to 65% of Indian population. Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY was launched with an aim to protect the population against these very financial hardships and catastrophic expenditures on healthcare and medicines. This scheme has successfully averted these disastrous consequences for a large segment of more than 1.3 crore population of India. As a result of AB-PMJAY scheme the access to healthcare and medicines has considerable improved in India now that has been duly acknowledged by reputed, scientific, international journals like Lancet, BMJ etc.

Unlike previous UHC schemes like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), Employees Health Insurance Scheme (EHIS) and the Senior Citizens Health Insurance Scheme (SCHIC), the AB-PMJAY has no cap on family size and age. The identification of beneficiaries under this scheme is being done on the basis of socio-economic and caste census (SECC) of 2011. The centre–state financing mode is same as that of the National Health Mission. Various states running similar schemes have been given an option to either merge with PMJAY or run it in a parallel mode. Unlike previous UHC schemes, AB-PMJAY covers larger population, provides more comprehensive benefit package and incorporates a wider network of hospitals for healthcare delivery. HWCs have been upgraded to provide wider range of pre-emptive, preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative healthcare services including treatment and services for non-communicable diseases as well as chronic communicable diseases like tuberculosis. These services have been expanded in view of India’s high out-of-pocket expenditures. The union budget of 2022-2023 has allocated Rs. 6412 crores for AB-PMJAY whereas an amount of Rupees 6400 crores was allocated last year. Further an allocation of Rs. 5156 crores has been made for the newly announced PM-AB Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM) in October 2021 with a view to strengthen the health infrastructure of the country in a mission mode and improve primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare services. This way AB-PMJAY is receiving a substantial financial package by the Govt. of India for its successful implementation. As on 21st March 2022, a total of 74,947 AB-HWCs were operational which is set to reach a target of 1.5 lakh by December, 2022.

AB-PMJAY was introduced in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir on December 1, 2018, by the Govt. of India. Earlier this scheme was meant to provide health coverage of about 5 lakh rupees per year to each family member of the eligible household that was below poverty line for tertiary and secondary care hospitalization. However, on December 26, 2020 Govt. of India made this scheme universal in J&K under the revised title of Ayushman Bharat Jan Arogya Yojana Sehat. As per the data obtained from State Health Agency (SHA) of J&K, number of eligible families covered under this scheme as on September, 2021 were 5,97,801 besides additional families numbering 14, 56,497, thus providing coverage to about 98% of eligible families in J&K. As per official figures under this scheme 33.70 lakh golden or sehat cards have been issued in J&K among 9.57 lakh families out of a total of 14.56 lakh families that are eligible to be covered under this scheme. Since the launch of this scheme in J&K, around 60,594 patients have been treated through 218 empaneled hospitals and an amount of Rs. 60.12 crores has been paid against a total of 123986 claims made. The State Health Agency of J&K has also started an initiative by the name of ‘Gaon Gaon Ayushman’ to reach out to the last mile villages that remain cut off from the rest of the world due to inclement weather conditions so as to percolate the benefits of the scheme down to every beneficiary. In order to ensure hassle-free registration of all eligible beneficiaries under the scheme, the State Health Agency has set up a network of more than 8000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) and virtual learning environment (VLE) Centres in villages for ensuring 100% registration besides awareness activities at the grassroots level in association with PRI representatives and ASHA workers.

Various scientific studies on AB-PMJAY have reported mixed responses on financial risk protection by this scheme. It has been observed that high value claims of greater than Rs. 30,000 and very high value claims of greater than Rs. 1,00,000 make up 32% and 9% of PMJAY claim payouts respectively. This is indicative of the fact that this scheme has enabled access to services that would otherwise be out-of-pocket or catastrophic to the individuals. However, PMJAY does not cover out-patient services that account for around 60% to 70% of the total OOPE in India that needs to be considered in future after its successful coverage among all hospitalized patients. In a retrospective study by Khan A et al (2020, 2021) conducted among 160 patients registered at Ayushman Bharat cell of a Srinagar-based tertiary care hospital namely SKIMS between 26th December, 2020 and 20th February, 2021, every patient was found to have received the benefits of the scheme as a result which they had to pay nothing for their hospitalization and there was no need for them to sell their assets or borrow money for treatment thus bringing the prevalence of distress financing to zero level. This was found to be quite opposite to the observations made by the same authors at the same centre before the launch of this scheme wherein prevalence of distress financing among cancer and chronic kidney disease patients was found to be more than 70%. Similarly, several other studies from different parts of the country have reported findings in appreciation of this scheme though several concerns like the number of hassles/formalities involved for patients and delays in expediting payments to service providers have been expressed as well.

One of the major objectives of the AB PM-JAY is to reduce OOPE and provide financial risk protection against catastrophic health expenditures (CHE) to all its citizens. Secondary and tertiary care accounts for nearly one-third of total OOPE. Therefore, OOPE cannot be reduced only by covering secondary and tertiary services, although, reduction in the incidence of CHE due to sudden hospitalization can be achieved. As India moves on its path towards Universal Health Coverage, emphasis needs to be laid upon reduction of financial burden as a result of OOPE in ambulatory or outpatient care by extending the insurance cover under PM-JAY to out-patients too in due course of time. Further in order to make this scheme long-lasting and sustainable for all times to come, govt. needs to pool available funds from all sources including budgetary allocations, employers, households, individuals, insurance companies and NGOs and thereby derive a suitable mix of trade-off between the extent of population to be covered, extent of services to be provided and the extent of costs to be borne by the govt. though extreme care should be taken not to surrender it to private insurance companies or profit making organizations since that will kill the basic essence and spirit of this scheme. A nominal cess of 2 or 3 percent on total taxable income on account of services to be provided under this scheme could also be helpful in making this scheme sustainable and successful in future, whose ultimate aim is to enforce social solidarity and ensure social security to all citizens of the country by enhancing their access to quality medicines and healthcare services.

(Author teaches at the Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kashmir)