THE pandemic has come to a certain close. That’s what we all believe. This is time to go ahead. And we are at the harbinger of a new beginning after all the lockdown days. The world has changed dramatically since 2020. Today, more than any other times, people search endlessly to discover the most precious investment they can make in these uncertain times.
Post-lockdown, life has become more complex, more cyber, more digital, more demanding and more challenging. There are more passwords in our lives today than yesterday. And, the most important single lesson lockdown has taught me was all about my TIME. And, I believe, the most important investment anyone can make towards themselves is the management of their DAILY TIME.
The majority of participants in this socially networked group will be in our middle life or the latter half of the middle life or better, in our golden age. I am conscious of how people suddenly see me today as an “uncle”. I became annoyed the other day when a supermarket staff accosted and demanded my age ID card. I am sure many in this group also have had similar experiences. But, what I thought was not all about how others recognize us, but about how we’ll manage the time left in us by God.
Today, society is in a hunger for more and more abstract thoughts around social media, around news channels and around a world of cacophony called distraction. The pernicious effect of these media machines is far too complex to understand. They all struggle to grab our attention, our time and our mental resources to themselves... I struggled to get out of those media platforms since the last two lockdowns.
Scarcity of time is a phenomenon all of us experience. Even on a lockdown day, when all our missions are static, we cannot find the time we need for getting on with what we have planned. This scarcity in time will bring in a phenomenon called tunnelling. Tunnelling is a behaviour we succumb to when we need to finish a project or a task on time, and when there is a time scarcity for its accomplishment. When we set aside all our thoughts and all our peripheral activities to pin sharply on the task we are doing, we are tunnelling. Tunnelling is good and tunnelling is bad. I discovered that social chats, social media activities and mental involvement in various news were a major distraction of any task I am grilled to. It is very important to plan our time productively if we are to use any of the social media platforms for our excellence.
Sometimes we ramble into book shops. I rambled into a book shop and brought home three volumes of an author by the name STEPHEN R COVEY. Like many books I have purchased, these 3 books remained in my study, closed and unread for years. The second pandemic lockdown made it possible for me to open it…. and read. One most important lesson Stephen teaches in these books is how personal change can be achieved by taking control of our time.
I am recommending all my friends to have these three volumes of Stephen Covey on your study table today and read them through. You are going to make a big difference in the way you will manage your time and other needful resources. These reading are going to change the way you look at your time.
Age is no barrier to a personal change. And it's all because YOUR TIME is the most precious commodity God has placed into your hands.
Wishing a happy reading to all!
