Why is it difficult to do something that we love, everyday?

The answer, I think, lies in this one word: Distractions. There is always something, or the other, that keeps us from doing what we want.

Our world today continues to have 24 hours in a day, but the number of things – useful as well as not so useful – we can do in these 24 hours has increased exponentially. Some of these things can be avoided easily, but some others seem absolutely necessary for our survival.

The way to avoid distractions, therefore, consists of three steps:

a) Identifying things that we should not be doing at all.

The first step in avoiding distractions is to identify what these distractions really are. Watching too much TV, chatting with friends, spending too much time online could be some of the things that are distracting you. Not only are these activities distracting, but they also suck valuable time from your day. You could add more time to your day by simply avoiding these activities.

I am sure if you pay close attention to the things you do everyday, you will easily be able to identify the things that you can easily avoid. These are typically things that you do just for the sake of doing them. You could add more time to your day by simply avoiding these activities.

b) Identifying things that are useful, and optimizing the way we do them.

There are many things that we do on any given day that are useful to us, but the way we do them ends up taking more time than it should. Thus we end up reducing the number of hours we have in our day.

For example, if I have to write a report on something, I would do it best if I do it when I am totally focused. If I am not focused, or I am multitasking, I may end up taking more time in completing the report than I ideally should have. Using Twitter and Facebook are two activities that most blogger and writers cannot avoid these days. These can, however, end up taking up huge amount of your time – time that you don’t have. So, we need to find the right tools that can help us in optimising the way we spend time on these sites.

c) Focusing on the absolutely essential.

The last step in avoiding distractions is to focus on the activities that we want to do, and that we need to do in order to make the most of the time that is available to us. Most of the time we go about living our day without paying deliberate attention to the things we are doing. This needs to be changed.

We need to pay attention to the things that we need to do so that we are able to do them without a miss. If we are not focused, it is quite probable that we are going to miss doing what we want to do most.

How do you avoid distractions?

In other words, it means that something happens, just because it was prophesied to be.

This is true about human behaviour too. If you expect others to do good, it is quite likely that they will. On the other hand, if you expect others to do evil, it is equally likely that they will.

As Goethe said, “If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be”.

In the field of management, a self fulfilling prophecy happens when an employee’s performance increases simply because the boss expects him to do better. The employee’s performance improves because he  works harder than usual to live up to the expectations of the boss.

On a very basic level every individual is his own boss, and the individual’s performance, therefore, depends on what he expects from himself.

A sportsman can be the best in his game  only if he expects himself to be the best. If he expects himself only to be good enough to play in the major league, he will always be good enough and never the best.

It is therefore of vital importance that we expect ourselves to be capable of doing great things. Often, in life, we tend to get disheartened with the way things are happening, and we begin to accept things as they are, instead of working towards making things as they can be.

Sometimes, people around us tell us that what we dream of achieving is not possible, that it requires special talent to do those things, and that we don’t have that kind of talent.  Though, deep in our hearts, we don’t want to give up, but we do because we begin to believe that we really are not talented enough.

It is, however, a strong belief in our capabilities that can help us push such negativity away and keep surging ahead on the path that leads to our dreams becoming a reality. We have to believe that we are capable of doing great things, good things, and in no  time we will find that we are doing those things.

We, too, can make a prophecy that comes true. All we need to do is believe in the prophecy and ourselves.

Wouldn’t you agree?

(Image: gravityx9 from sxc.hu)

It is easy to say things like, one must never lose hope, or that one must keep trying, but faced with truly trying circumstances, it is quite easy to give up, and lose all hope. How does one avoid that?

1. Look at the larger picture: When one is caught up in a bad situation, he, or she, tends to focus too much on the problem at hand, while all the other things – good things – are easily ignored, or taken for granted. It definitely helps if you take your eyes off the problems at hand, and look at all that is good in your life.

2. Look for inspiration outside: When you are going through a bad phase, it seems that you have the worst luck of them all. But, if you look around you, I am sure it will not be hard to find at least a few examples of people who had it worse than you, and who still manage to go about their lives quite contended. These people can be a source of inspiration to you, in your times of distress.

3. Anecdotes and Stories: Hope is a powerful thing, and though it is not a thing that can be felt or heard, it can be created. Once created, it can guide your actions and cause you to look at your situation in an optimistic way. Reading inspirational anecdotes and short stories are some surefire ways to ignite hope in your heart.

4. Action: Your actions may or may not result in the desirable outcomes, but one thing is certain, if you do not act, there will be no outcomes. So, no matter how bad things become, you should keep working on making things better. In the least it might just help you in keeping your mind off your troubles.

5. Friends: Last but not the least, have friends that are there to support you in your times of distress. As they say, no man is an island, and even the strongest of us requires someone to hold us when we are falling. So, in good times and bad, always keep your friends close.

These are just some ways to keep yourself on track, when the track seems to be leading nowhere at all. The essence of all these points is to keep trying, because if you keep trying, the brick wall that you are pushing against might just fall.

How do you deal with things, when they don’t seem to be going your way?

Hope you had a great 2010, and have an even better 2011.

New Year’s is a great time to take a quick look at the past, understand why things happened the way they did, and plan for things to happen in a better way in the coming year.  This is why New Year’s Day is a great time to make resolutions.

Anyone who knows me knows that I always have a long list of resolutions every year. Most of the time, by mid year I end up breaking all of the resolutions, and yet every year I make them.

Without going into a long-ish debate over whether it is a good idea to make resolutions or not, I will share two resolutions I have made for 2011:

1. Read more. Last year I had set a target of reading 200 books, and that proved to be a little too much for me. Based on last year’s experience, I have decided to revisit the target, and have come up with the number 130.  So, this year I have resolved to read at least 130 books.

2. Write more. I have always tried to write as much as I can, but in the absence of any quantifiable goals I have never been able to write as much as I would like. This year I have resolved to write for one hour every day. This, I hope, will also have a positive effect on the frequency of updation of this blog.

I think If I am able to stick to the above two resolutions, I will be a satisfied man at the end of 2011.

What are your resolutions for 2011?

Yesterday, while talking to a friend, I couldn’t remember the name of the movie, The Hurt locker. I could visualise the scenes from the movie in my head, but I just couldn’t recall the name. I didn’t try too hard to remember the name, as I had my good friend – my phone – with me. I opened Google on it, and in no time I knew the name that I had been trying to remember.

The Internet makes us all appear smarter. We have all the information we need on our finger tips, literally.  It is not just hard facts that can be found on the Internet, but even answers to life changing questions like, “How to wake up early in the morning?” can be found readily on the Internet.  (I did actually search the term “How to rise early” and found two interesting articles on the subject by Steve Pavlina and  Leo Babauta)

If such information is readily available, then isn’t it logical to assume that this world would now become a better place than it was when such information was not readily available to one and all? But, is that really so?

I think not.

The reason is simple, we read things, and we feel enlightened. We might even practice some of the things for a few days, but soon enough we are back to our old ways. The only difference is that we now know a few things that we didn’t know before. So, even though we fail to practice the things we have become aware of, we don’t fail to pass on this information to people around us, sometimes even when the information is not asked for.

The result of the above phenomenon is that there are a lot of “enlightened” citizens in our world today, and yet our world is none the better for it. An analogy of this, from the blogging world, is the large number of “How to make money blogs”, but only a few blogs actually making money.

It is like everyone wanting to change the world, but no one wanting to change.

In addition,  all the preaching and the gleaned knowledge – that we have, but don’t practice – can make us feel like someone we are not. So, it is in our best interests if we don’t preach what we don’t practice. Instead, we should practice what we become aware of, and then, maybe, preach what we practice.