Are you able to Concentrate?

“Can you please concentrate and read this blog properly?“ Can’t relate to it?

Let me take you back to the most commonly heard statements from the childhood.

• Can you concentrate on your studies? ??
• Will you keep the mobile aside and eat your food properly? ??
• Can you just focus on the road and drive straight? ??
• Are you even listening what I am saying? (I need a breakup, you don't care anymore ??)

Is it relatable now? One of these would have happened to you at some point of time in your life, atleast the last one for sure.

With me, all of these are pretty common. I have accepted the fact that it’s bound to happen.

When did this start happening?

I was in 11th, time when you need to look cool ??, and I used study with hard core metal playing in the background. I used to score decent marks which gave me an edge to brag about it.

It was a delight to hear “how can you study while listening to metal songs?”. More I got to hear this, more I got the push to keep doing it and everything went absolutely perfect. (There isn’t any sad ending here or shocks. It’s not a movie ?? )

College started and I got a car ?? in my first year, and pretty soon became a rash, fast & care free driver. I was so carefree, that while driving I can play music, hold my girlfriend’s hand ?? with one hand and still manage to change gear and steer with another one, make my dog ?? sit on my lap and drive at 100, eating a pizza ??& watching Game Of Thrones Season and driving. I was just doing perfect and was talked about driving skills. (Oh please, nothing wrong happened here as well, stop expecting a failure ??).

And finally I landed up in some decent companies. The very first thing I used to do after reaching to my office, was to grab a ?, tune to some music ?? and start working. It went absolutely perfect for 10 years.

Then finally came Covid which lead to Work From Home.

???????, Isn’t that cool? I can stay in my bed watch Netflix and work. I can cook my food ?? ????and attend meetings.

Everything was already going flawless, but that was not it, more to come. In November 2020, got into Atlassian. A simple command of Build of the huge project can easily lead to completion of a FRIENDS episode (its hard to believe but haven’t seen FRIENDS before, first time).

But it wasn’t only FRIENDS or the Project which was happening in parallel, my dog peed on the floor, someone’s on the door, Prithveesh khana kha le (mom shouting to eat your food), neighbours are visiting, mom: can you please order vegetables online, anytime video calls from friends…. endless stuff starting happening.

Very soon, everything become stressful and I started working late at night as Days were not enough.

Why was all this happening to me? (In corporate terms - lets have a retrospective)

Even before Retrospective meetings came to my life, I used to casually introspect myself. And so I did it again.

As soon as I looked back in my life, I realised I was always doing Multitasking. I was never concentrating on one task or prioritising things in an efficient manner. I didn’t realise when it became a Habit and led to so much stress. I started questioning myself,

Am I enjoying while watching FRIENDS?

Did I spend quality time with my family?

Was I able to finish my 1 hour task in 1 hour?

The habit of Multitasking started to become stress.

• Eating lunch when I was in meetings or watching some tutorial never made me realise that I enjoyed or even had my lunch properly.
• Watching FRIENDS while doing a build never made me feel that I took a break from work.
• Talking to my parents while working on something in parallel. For them I was too busy to talk to them, and for me, I did spend some time talking with them.
• Working on less difficult task (official or personal) while being on video call with friends, didn’t lead to any fruitful conversation with them.

None of these multitasking were “cool” enough to make me feel proud of myself or to relax me enough.

And very soon, I realised my mistake which I have been doing since always.

“Multitasking” & “Concentration” are poles apart or simply antonyms.

“Concentrating” is not only meant for work, studies or healthy stuff, but it is also applicable for entertainment, relaxing, enjoying, talking, sharing your feelings or even sleeping.

Late but realised the importance of Habit

So,

• If I am on a break, I am on both mental & physical break.
• If I am talking to my girlfriend, then I am not scrolling on Instagram in parallel, I am there for her.
• If I am talking to my parents, then they n I should feel it, we are having a talk.
• If I am working, then FRIENDS need to wait, because I’m working.
• If I my dog needs to play tug of war then I am not looking at the computer screen and playing with him with one hand.

In a nutshell, don’t treat yourself as a multicore processor, you have one brain one heart and one body only, use it for only one thing at a time.

I hope you were able to concentrate on my blog ??