Concentration helps: Swami Vivekananda
Awake! Arise! Stop Not till the Goal is Reached said Swami Vivekananda. He was too much of a Motivator to be called a Saint, and too Saintly to be called a Motivator. Of course he was not like today’s Motivators..if only he had left tapes, videos, …it would have been great.
His books stir you, his words would have Charged you, big time. More than being a motivator he talks a lot about Concentration. Low end people like me need silence to concentrate.
One C A firm in London used to ban incoming calls for partners from 9am to 1pm – when they were to work uninterrupted, and concentrate on client meetings, audit finalization, etc.
This had been an age old practice – incoming calls if any would be answered after 2pm. Nowadays of course you can be disturbed at 2 am or 2pm by a message, a FB entry, a tweet, or even a phone call if your boss is awake.
Interruptions by the electronic invasion of our lives – mailing everything to everyone – just in case – have all ensured that we do not get enough time to concentrate unless you choose vampire hours to work.
Worse is what people call ‘multi-tasking’ this ensures that you do both the work badly. I know that certain things like peeling of potatoes and watching TV can be done together, but people have much worse combinations. So many people drive and talk on the mobile, talking on the mobile while getting into a train, getting off a train, crossing the road – it is perhaps the worst thing a sensible person can do. We are all guilty of doing this at some point in time in our lives.
Trying to multi task (especially women) is become so normal that watching Television (in all its gory) while having dinner seems to be such an In thing. When we were younger, lunch was in the kitchen and television was in the drawing room. Today the dining table has been shifted to the television watching area…
Slavery to the screen – ‘Screen slavery’ – ipad, ipod, iphone, tab, lap top, television – let us be clear how many of us can stay away from all these screens for say 24 hours?
So we are back to our normal life and think ‘Ha once I get back home, nobody will disturb me.’. Ha!
Even then Google, FB, Linkedin, Wassup – can all disturb you. Of course it is your choice…but the urge is real and seemingly genuine. You realized how these have been horrible ‘IRAs’ as friends from BNI would call it. (IRA is Income Reducing Activity) and BNI is Business Network International – a networking organisation).
Now Harvard Business School says it is a good thing to have such ‘shut up time’…read on
Karthikraja K
In office also, Socializing is available only in Pantry/cefteria. No talks; all are going by email and confrimation also received in email. Trustworthy dissolved and evidence creation becomes routine job to cover his *ss.
Electronic Gadgets are created to make issue complex and reduce emotions to promote machine life. Really hurts, but ” when you are in rome, be Roman” rule biases us.
VK
I’ve seen folks study while listening to songs/music. I never could understand how they do that! Still don’t.
Sometimes I help people put together their application and SOPs for applying to universities in the US. I am usually aghast at the lack of coherence and connectivity between paragraphs. Their lack of concentration is very evident. Many of the sentences were written after much time-gaps…people get distracted into “other activities” while they are still trying to complete one single task!
vijay
Can you please recommend some good books on Vivekananda to understand and implement his philosophy. Thanks