Mind it! On making a strategy for a plan to prepare a time management process to begin my work - 29 October 2014

[2] Mind it! a diary of vagrant journeys within the mind.

On making a strategy for a plan to prepare a time management process to begin my work

I usually think that I am unable to get all my work done in the time that it should be completed. I plan to do my work within the time that it should be done, but then I turn around, and find that the time has a-gone by, and there is nothing left. So, I take the smart road. I start planning my work. And usually I find that I have planned all my work very meticulously. Very soon, I reach the same milestone – that all the time has gone by while I was planning to do my work, and there is no time left to actually do the work that I was planning to work on...

Now, I have begun planning the time that I am going to work on how to plan perfectly. Very soon, I guess that I will be able to divide my day perfectly into exact working hours to (1) learn how to plan, (2) read very good planning strategies, (3) understand the best planning strategies and (4) start making a time-table to make good plans. This way, I will probably be preparing the best plan and a superb schedule on how to begin my work.

I am sure that you are now wondering as to why I am not just getting to my work and start finishing it, instead of planning my work. That is very silly. That is not the way of a super manager or an efficient worker. You have to have a time schedule, to-do lists, a perfect plan and a list of team members to delegate the various portions of the plan and monitor and supervise them while they begin to start the work that you were supposed to complete in the first place.

Very soon, I have begun to realise that I am never getting around to actually beginning my work. I have therefore made a good plan on visiting the best book stores and surf the e-marketing web pages to look for the most excellent authors and books on time management, planning work and knowing my best psychological barriers in planning my work. I have also prepared a good strategy to purchase such books. I go to the best book stores, look for the books and check the prices and look around if there are good sales. The best books are very costly. But, I am very intelligent. So, I write down the title of the book, or take a photograph with my cell phone, and get back to the house and surf 2-3 different e-marketing sites. At least one of them is bound to have a sale on these books. Of course, during festivals, New Year or Christmas or other times, they do have a super sale. I could wait for those times.

This usually takes about a month of careful surfing, keeping notes, checking my notebook, preparing a checklist of the books that I want to purchase, and marking out my e-calendar of the best super sale times. Finally, I am able to pick up the 4-5 really costly and most useful and most absolutely necessary got-to-have books that will help me understand my inner self, recognise my time schedules and the inherent problems that they have. One of these books is bound to help me understand the gap between my energy levels, my problems with my aerobics and thereby make it very clear that I probably need to take up yoga or meditation because I am too stressed out by thinking of my plans.

One of these excellent books instructed me that it is because of a bad sleeping pattern that had accumulated over several years that my sleep was putting off my insomnia and preventing me from picking up on strategic mistakes in my planning. Therefore, my bad planning was hijacking my strategies and time management and preventing me from doing any good work. So, I had to develop a strategy of my sleepless hours, and I had to prepare a strategy for my good sleep hours. Of course, some wise people had told me to do good reading during my sleepless hours, so I have an excellent collection of books and magazines, newspapers and web printouts to read up and catch up on whenever I cannot sleep. But, I seem to be always on the internet or watching news channels on the TV when I am awake, so I am not able to pick up my exact sleepless hours.

But the plan that seems to really work is when I am actually sleeping. The book advised me that our mind is the bestest when we are sleeping, and that since there are no distractions, and before we pass on to deep sleep, we are able to plan our next day in a most effective manner. So, I keep a diary, some pens and pencils, a couple of torches and candles and matches to be ready when the idea strikes. Of course, I can easily switch on the lights in the room and make decent notes, or not switch off the lights through the night, and be able to write down the thoughts whenever they come. But then, I would not be sleeping, would I?

I wait until I am fast asleep and I have begun to delve deeply into my dreams. And, suddenly I wake up. It’s usually because of a mosquito or a humid draft or just an unpleasant dream, or most usually, it is due to hearing my own loud snoring. I switch on the torch, pick up the diary and start writing down a list of to-do items that I should work on, immediately on waking up, or for the morrow. This list gets my mind to work on various other related actions, and I keep waking up again and again to keep writing and writing and writing. Finally I am happy that I have washed off all the points of distraction within my mind and I have written them away. Now, I can actually get to sleep well. Almost, of course!

There is also another strategy. It is popularly known as ‘minimalism’. This strategy is actually quite silly. The idea is that one should make small lists – about 3 or 5 or 10 items only in the morning or noon or evening or night, and as far as I am concerned, about 2 similar stages during the night after midnight. Start with these small lists, and try to do the first one on each list. Once you have ticked off the first item, go to an absolutely different list of entirely opposite themes. Take up a very different task and complete that one. Jump off to another thematic area, and complete another task. This helps you complete about 5-7-10 tasks in a day. This is quite silly, believe me. Who benefits by completing their work without a plan?

The entire idea is to plan your work properly with a very efficient strategy, after learning how to do it by reading it up on the best books that you should take all the time you have in selecting very carefully before you decide the best time of the day to do some good thinking about it all. Its very simple, really. Mind it!

Published at - http://intellectualpost.com/mind-it-a-diary-of-vagrant-journeys-within-the-mind-2/

Loneliness can take you towards fear - 8 December 2009

Loneliness can lead to fear and develop in to an uncurable condition. 
Bharat Bhushan - 8 December 2009

There are unique points of time within our lives, when we move from one state of happening to the other. From being a school-going child to a junior college adolescent, and later as a young adult, to an undergraduate college. Much later, to a new job, or to postgraduate studies, and then again, to on-the-job training and thereafter to a longish career. At each moment of 'happening', one is saying goodbye to a set of friends, familiar situations, used-to time schedules and entering strange and new situations, new friends and unfamiliar bonds.

At this point of migration within our lives, we are alone. This could be for a short while, and it may not matter if there would be a couple of friends who would also migrate with you. If you are all alone, and the movement is from one geographical location to the other, even if within the same city, it can hit you hard. That moment of loneliness, if it stretches out, and there is no discussion or counseling within the house, and if you are a single child, that loneliness can lead to fear. This condition usually cannot be reverted unless recognised, and unless YOU want to be cured.

Each young adult has their own story. Some of it real, and some of it imagined, while dangerously, some of it as pure fiction within their minds. They have some assumptions about their friends, suspicions when a particular friend is more friendly with someone else, or if their parents fight over some issue, and they come to conclusions because of something that they have read, or seen on TV or discussed in social media. These assumptions become strong ideas, and later evolve as stories within their own right. From a tight school-time day schedule, the young adults are now in colleges and new workplaces and are able to organise or escape from their schedules. This leads to escapism within their own mind, and they never realise it.

And then, comes along a friend, or a book, or a twist in the story of a soap opera, and there is a sad and tragical situation that has happened. This has an easy impact on the mind of a young adult. Loneliness can easily create empty space within the mind. Not many of us realise it, but it is true that the mind operates in multiple channels. You are thinking of the day to come, when you are brushing your teeth, for example. When the lecturer in your college classroom is boring, you are thinking of the cricket match that is to come, and at the same moment, whispering to your friend, while staring at another handsome or beautiful classmate. So, you can do so many different actions at the same moment. This is true of our mind also.

Sad situations catalyse within the minds of young adults and make them imagine that the future holds terrible options for them. Their biggest fear is the break-up of the family, and along with that perspective, is the fear that their parents or elders could actually be correct when they point out their mistakes. Their friends do not do so, and they are usually in agreement with them. So, how could the parents or elders or teachers know better? There is one way to know that you are correct or you are wrong. If you are thinking it out within your head, all alone, and working out all the combinations and permutations, then you are usually very wrong. If you are discussing it out, or have written it in your diary and slept over it, or actually, if you have had an argument with your parents or elders, then you are mostly correct.

The young adult is totally confused about situations because of a chemical imbalance in their hormones as they are at that delicate stage in their lives. They have fallen in love, or have been infatuated, or been refused in love, or are confused about teensy weensy situations. "His hand touched mine, and he patted me on my back. Does he love me? Does he love me and nobody else?" Such doubts abound within the minds of the young adult. And when there are no answers, or, if there are disappointments, then the escape route is to create chaos within the house and within the family. This is the result of mythological situations within the mind that have developed into really familiar characters that are very friendly, because they occur within oneselves, or during sleep time.