I watched my 2-year old son flip through youtube cartoon videos as if he's trying to get a peek into the cartoon before moving on. I tried to reason with him a few days back. I failed. I think he feels that what comes next maybe better than the current one (its a guess - nobody will come to know until he can articulate!). But - I think we all have the same problem. Its something which we brush under the garb of keeping ourselves busy.
Let me articulate my thoughts here.
If you've watched the latest documentary on Warren Buffett (on HBO) - you will notice the friendship he shares with another of the world's wealthiest men - Bill Gates. There’s a scene where Buffett and Gates had met early on and were sitting at a table, when they were both asked to write down on a piece of paper the one thing that they each felt attributed most to their success.
Surely enough, Buffett and Gates had written the same word down on their respective papers: focus.
Tom Watson Sr., the man who built IBM was asked what his secret for success was - his reply was a classic - "I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots". Again an attribution to being focused.
Many of the highly regarded men attribute their success to a singular focus - commitment to a main goal or purpose in their lives which result in out-sized success. Be it playing a sport or running a business or creating art or whatever else that someone is endowed with enough talent - its usually the maximization of those talents that result in out-sized success.
What can we do to stay focused?
1) Limit your time spent on weapons of mass-distraction i.e., TV, Internet, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Email, etc.
Get real. Read a book. Take a walk, come out of the virtual world. Refrain from responding to that email with 50 people on cc. Who really cares anyway. If its that important - they'll call you. Probably you should make a call - if you think you're feedback is so important in the first place.
Wake up early. The one hour in the morning is a wonderful time to read 20-pages of that book. In two weeks, you will read a book. In a year - you will read 26 books.
2) Set a goal - maybe learn a new sport. Your goal should not be a laundry list of 10 or 20. Just one or two works fine.
Learn a sport. I have seen that many a sport can be learnt at reasonable prices - if only we put in the effort to go to your sports center to inquire. Its wonderful to meet new people - we are far too bucketed in the midst of people in similar jobs / roles / age. Learning a new sport gets you to meet with interesting people in different walks of life.
I took this to heart. I recently started learning golf. I met this wonderful Gujarati old man who came to the US 30 years back. He was learning the sport too, we were joking about our inability to play golf not thinking you are hitting a cricket ball. He happened to own the two Marriott's I was passing by on way to work at San Jose. He seemed to have some interesting life advise that I could not get otherwise. The 3-hours on Saturdays was well spent.
3) Is your time getting divided too much? Maybe eliminating or reducing certain distractions help.
We all have a limited amount of time and talent and we have to allocate it in a way so it will work better for us. Learning to say "no" sometimes can be liberating in life. We have become too much of "yes" men to keep us in our limits of mediocrity. At the end - the idea should be to let people do what they're best at and you do what you're best at. The rest is all crap. Really.
At the core of trying to get some focus in our lives - its important to realize that a majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do. Let's get back to basics.
Ciao till next time...Harsha
