Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying – “People often expect different results from doing the same actions”.
Does the scenario of a busy executive – attending a conference call, biting into his sandwich, intermittently checking e-mails, and browsing through the latest business magazine – and doing all this simultaneously – sound familiar to you? How about a parent at home playing a game of monopoly with one child, helping another child with her homework, finishing a phone conversation, and checking on the score of a football game on TV – all at the same time?
Welcome to the world of multi-tasking!
And what’s the rush about?
There never seems time enough to fit in all our priorities – the desire to gun for the next big job at work at any cost forces us out of the lives of our children; the ambition to succeed at work and be a model parent and spouse leaves us with no time for pursuing personal interests. The result is we are preoccupied all the time – juggling between multiple tasks at the same time and mentally planning about a few others to follow. The choices thrown at us – for career, investments, leisure, education, socializing etc. – are mind numbing. The advertisers would have everyone believe that their life is always short of perfect. How well prepared are we to make the choices?
As I have briefly discussed before, we need to step back and first build clarity about the purpose of our life. What are we aiming to accomplish and why? Are we looking for money or happiness? More success or greater contribution? What’s the role of family, friends in our life? Where does the awareness about community and environment fit in? Answering some of these and related issues most important to us may be a good start to gaining clarity about the purpose of our life. As we begin to make this the anchor of our decision making, making choices suddenly becomes so much simpler – releasing wonderful chunks of time to lead an enjoyable, purposeful…
