Restructure your day! (15 thoughts on living a calm, focused & meaningful life in the midst of chaos.)

Never in the history of mankind has the need for focus been more urgent than what it is today. We live in an age of hyper-connectivity & yet we are more disconnected than ever before, historically speaking, whether it is to reality itself ( thanks to all the manipulation around us in a post-truth world) ; to each other ( thanks to the endless platter of?‘nexts’?to move to, without having the patience to actually observe the other person with empathy) ; ?or even to our own selves ( thanks to 24x7 Radio NST { nonstop thinking}, as Rev Thich Nhat Hanh says, most of which is shallow chatter pretending to be thoughts & which subdues the voice of our soul.)

?But why?

Here’s why -

• Your contribution is important. Life is ticking by while you’re in those endless meetings, or replying every email with a life-or-death frenzy, or trying to dominate every argument on Twitter, or trying to win the trophy for being the most supportive cheerleader for your fake friends on Facebook.
• Your attention is important?– Living & working in a world that probably has the shortest average individual attention span ever, your ability to focus on deep, meaningful work will separate you from the herd.
• Your health is important?– Focus is good for your body. Contrary to popular notion, cognitively demanding & well-planned work doesn’t exhaust us, but rather, it?energizes?us. Examine how your metabolism speeds up after a well-executed day for the brain, making you feel even better than what you do after a rigorous physical workout.
• Your social positioning is important?– Focus makes you a better listener instead of a knee-jerk reactor & also an analytical reader rather than a shallow browser. A focused presence earns you a certain aura of propriety, which in turns earns you more respect than what shallow over-exposure does.
• Your perspective is important?- In an unfocused day filled with emails, messages, news items, hyperlinks, social media feed, podcasts & all those beeps from all those sources slugging it for your attention, you’re being constantly bombarded with content – some original, some repetitive & others manipulative or fake. It is not humanly possible to stay insulated from all the content thrown at you. And before you realize, it starts forging your opinions & shaping your worldview, even without your permission, thus making you a slave to content, but blind to context.
• Your life is important?– Lastly, a focused living brings you you back in touch with yourself & allows you to access your buried thoughts, confront your deepest fears & re-kindle all those neglected dreams.

?And how?

Honest confession. I’m neither an expert on neuroscience nor an accomplished ‘guru’ who has figured it all out. ?But as a student of human behavior & an explorer of human potential, I try to observe & learn from a wide sample of men & women who seem to have cracked the code of living a balanced life. Obviously, I am often unsuccessful in adopting many of the best practices that I find interesting. But that’s my personal failing & not because the practices themselves are flawed. Sharing fifteen thoughts below for your consideration & with a hope that you’ll do a better job at embracing them & living a richer, more meaningful life!

1. Rethink your ‘workday’?- What we call a typical ‘workday’, even if we are among the sincerest of workers in our organization, is basically a bunch of hours spent jumping from task to task, most of which contribute to someone else’s work (or whims) & not even our own. So, the first hack is to?schedule our tasks around work, and not vice versa. ?A working day is not about playing fastest- finger- first on your Outlook. Close your mailbox when you work. Keep fixed blocks of time to read & reply to emails. Turn off notifications. If there’s a fire somewhere, they will call you on your phone.
2. Prioritize?– You have a finite quota of daily focus. Even the best among us cannot sustain more than four hours of intense focus. So, it makes sense to prioritize your work & make sure you are not expending your precious willpower on low-value work.
3. Optimize?– Respect your body clock & arrange your work around your energy cycles. Do not over-exercise in the mornings & deplete your reserves. For a demanding day, do not do more than 30 mins of cardio in the morning, followed by a carb-spiked breakfast. Have a non-greasy lunch that leaves you slightly hungry during your afternoon work. Do not drink coffee after 2 PM. If time permits, lift weights in the evening. Etc.
4. Meet less, work more?- Take a hard look at each meeting invite that lands into your calendar. If you get the remotest whiff of socializing in it, decline it promptly citing some reason. Later, in exactly two minutes you can find out what transpired in that 60 min meeting & end up with a bonus 58 mins for worthier pursuits. And if at all you need to be in a meeting, give it all you have. Do not doze off, multi-task, or fiddle with your smartphone while inside a meeting. Listen, absorb, probe, contribute.
5. Schedule - Each waking hour of the next day in advance. Make allowances for spill overs as they happen but maintain the integrity of the content within each box. This is an absolute superpower if you can master it.
6. Space has energy?& vibes?- As is said. Find your holy space where you can do find your deepest focus for your best work. Your equivalent of Bill Gates’ ‘Think weeks’?retreat or Nicholas Carr’s cabin where he wrote the aptly titled book on focus (‘Shallows’) , or JK Rowling’s strategy of retreating into the Balmoral hotel suite to finish her final novel ( Deathly Hallows) . You may also consider the extreme example as quoted by Cal Newport about Peter Shankman who blocked himself 40k feet above sea level by booking a return biz class ticket to Japan & where he finished an entire manuscript for a new book up in the air, cut off from connectivity & distractions.
7. Get seriously anti-social on social media?– Social media has made us shallow creatures addicted to dopamine drips from gossip & self-aggrandization, & also, if I may be a bit harsh, into hypocrites who shed copious digital empathy but who don’t really care much for anyone else in real life. Simply shun social media. It’s not just the rabbit hole of FOMO it traps you in, but also the toxic trailing noise at the back of your head it generates which prevents you from being your best even when you are not online. Don’t just stop at the usual suspects of Facebook, Instagram & Twitter, but also unsubscribe yourself from all publications that drop ‘content’ in your inbox which pretends to be?pop-psychology-profound?& which in turn leads you into a vicious cycle of clicking one hyperlink after the other before you realize that you’ve wasted an entire morning.
8. Enforce efficiency in your working hours?- Avoid going for lunch at lunchbreak. Go one hour early or one hour after the usual lunch hour to enjoy a quieter & hassle-free meal, and then utilize the peace of a silent workplace when everyone else is out, to do some quality work. ?Try to live as close as possible to your workplace (even better, if you can work from home on most days) . Nothing is more criminally wasteful than spending 10% of your life in traffic (as most people in big cities do).
9. Schedule your downtime?- I know this sounds suffocating, but it’s liberating. ?It’s always great to have a plan for the hours outside work where you do your leisure activities, in-person catch ups with real people, work on those abs, or simply, where you finish that book.
10. Identify your ghost hour -?Where you can do your best work. Mine is 5-6 AM, after a good night’s sleep and with a generous dose of caffeine in my bloodstream, where I can generate more output than what I can manage in 3-4 hours at office. Maybe your ghost hour is 1-2 AM or 9-10 PM. No worries. To each – his own, her own.
11. Disconnect?- Stop reading & listening to the news. Remove yourself from all WhatsApp (or equivalent) groups. Stop trying to save the world by forwarding 5000 messages to 10000 people each day. Instantly delete any forwarded message that comes in &, if possible, block the sender right away.
12. Keep a daily journal?– At the end of each day, document how you spent it hour by hour, with brutal honesty. Imagine that you need to present your day to an external auditor. Check how many non-compliance ticks you get on a typical day. Also, once you finish your journal entry, write down your unfinished work in it instead of carrying it as a load inside your head. I disagree with Bluma Zeigarnik on the efficiency of interrupted tasks. Unfinished work weighs heavily on us & continues to bother us even after working hours. Just close each day by doing the maximum you can manage & dump the rest on paper. You’ll be amazed to notice so many great ideas to tackle those unfinished tasks having crept up in your mind while you were sleeping.
13. Declutter- Clean your drawers, throw away unnecessary memorabilia, donate clothes that you no longer wear. My ground rule is that if I didn’t feel the need for something in the past 3 months, I’ll probably not need it for the next 12.
14. Make time for time?- Find a pocket of time each day where you do?nothing. I know this sounds contrarian & counterintuitive, but it’s important to frequently embrace boredom & force yourself to be alone with your thoughts. Go for a leisurely & aimless walk in the afternoon without your smartphone on you. Watch your thoughts as they swim in & out of your mind. Inspect. Accept. Reject. Repeat.
15. ?You are not (just) your job?- Your off-work hours are a very important aspect of your identity. Carve a meaningful personal life outside the confines of your day job. If your entire identity is linked to your business card title, you are in for disappointments. So, each day, find time to be yourself. Play that guitar. Write that poem. Call your ageing parents & let them speak without interruption. Sit with your kids & listen to their impossible dreams.

Treat each day as if it were your life in miniature. Because indeed, it is!

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(An excerpt from my 2023 book, 'Life as unusual - Work as usual', that made it to the Top 3 on Amazon India. If you like reading standalone articles on overlapping boundaries of work & life, you may check out my books on Amazon in your country)

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