The First 24 Hours: Day 16 — Not TO-DO List!

Have you heard of Dhinchak Pooja? My day was as low as her singing standards(offense intended!)

Since morning, nothing has happened right. I was feeling terrible, blank and incomplete. Apart from the regular things, I was also sad because the “Ghar ka Khana” including(but not limited to) all the ladoos and mathris and homemade chocolates, biscuits and whatnot that I have brought during my winter vacations are going to end really soon. I decorated all of them at my study table and decided to embrace their “aakhiri kuch din” in my room. I called and explained the gravity of this issue to my mom so now she is ready to parcel the next slot(she is the sweetest!).

But even this “khush khabri” did not work out to make me feel any better. As an alternative, I started watching ted talks. The next hour, I invested sticking the to-do’s and motivational quotes all over the walls of my room but within the next 15 minutes, all the papers were on the floor as neither the glue on the paper nor my determination was strong enough to hold them(xD).

It was one of the most unproductive days of my life but then I watched “The art of focus by Christina Bengtsson”. The talk was about how do you bring out the best in yourself and most interestingly, it was not at all spiritual.

Christina has excellently pointed out the struggles of the human mind to focus, i.e,

• Our minds are often full of disturbing thoughts and worried about not being good enough
• Instead of working on what we already know, we constantly focus on what we will achieve
• And, we all have the “kaash thoda time aur hota” syndrome

I was convinced enough that she was talking about me to be very specific so I had no other option than to continue.

The major takeaway that I got is,

Focus is simply choosing the right thoughts among thousands of thoughts!

We live in a time with endless possibilities around us that made us try to excel in all arenas consequently diving our focus on all the must do’s and must have and time is somehow eaten up in the due process.

So rather than having a to-do list, we should start building a not-to-do list to avoid these distractions. That will automatically shift the brain in focus.

Today, in this performance-based society, it’s no longer about prioritizing but about prioritizing away!

Though my day was still unproductive as it was over by the end of this talk, I have learned now to focus on the better things(i.e. the next day xD).

Thank you for reading!