Delayed Decisions: Balancing Productivity and Pleasure
Questioner: Namaskar Acharya Ji. So, the question I had was that when you are with your friends, you tend to do some things that you know are just a waste of time. You still do them to get temporary enjoyment and miss out on a lot of things. This eventually leads to procrastination, and due to procrastination, there is a lot of pressure that is created on deadlines, especially for students who are in college. Deadlines are something which trigger us the most. On the other hand, enjoying the time is also important. So, how do we maintain a balance between enjoying and managing the deadlines and overall time management?
Acharya Prashant: Managing deadlines in context of what?
Questioner: In context of everything, like in terms, we are in college, we have assignments. There are exams. An exam is also a deadline to complete a particular syllabus. Even at workplaces, we have deadlines to achieve a particular target, that thing.
Acharya Prashant: So, you are asking how to adhere to the deadlines while simultaneously enjoying what you are doing? You see, a deadline is required only when you are in a system, a corrective system, an educational system. The presence of a deadline simply means that you are still not mature enough to do things on your own in a timely way, right?
So, the first thing that you need is, acknowledgement that you are still not there in terms of loving what you are doing. Otherwise, a deadline wouldn’t have been needed in the first place. Or even if the deadline would have been there, it would have been irrelevant. In spite of its presence, it would have had irrelevance. We are made to work in deadlines precisely because without deadlines, we won’t work. We would simply procrastinate, as you said.
So, you have to accept the deadlines, and you have to accept it knowing that the deadline is useful to you. You have to humbly admit that the deadline is not just an external imposition, it is actually your internal requirement. You need the deadline. It’s not somebody else’s whim being foisted on you as a deadline, right?
So now I know that the deadline is indeed helpful. Now, I also humbly admit that I am not yet somebody, who can work purely on her internal inspiration and do something or read something or learn something just on her own. Then instead of feeling resentful towards the deadline, you actually feel grateful. Thank God the deadline is there! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have learned at all.
Think of so many things you would have missed learning, had deadlines not been there. Right, is that not so? In fact, probably 90-95% of our knowledge comes riding to us on the back of deadlines. Does it not? So many of our achievements we are so proud of, wouldn’t have been possible in absence of deadlines.
Translate deadlines into discipline, right? What does discipline mean? It comes from the same root as disciple. What does disciple mean? A follower, a student, somebody who wants to learn. So, deadline is related to discipline. Discipline is related to love for learning.
So, if you have a love for learning, you will respect deadlines. And when you will respect deadlines, then it will become possible to enjoy the deadlines. Then it will not be an either-or situation. Then, you will not ask how do I enjoy the work while adhering to the deadlines. Then adherence to the deadlines itself will become a thing of joy. Why so joyful? Because I have a deadline to meet.
Then you will not say that once a deadline has been met, then I will go out and party and have some joy. No. I am joyful in the process of meeting the deadline. Because I know what the deadline means to me. The deadline means love to me. So, I am joyful. What am I doing? I have to finish this assignment off by midnight, and I am so joyful. Without the deadline, this thing wouldn’t have happened at all.
And respecting the deadline tells me that I am a sincere, authentic individual. It tells me I have a love for learning. It helps me have some self-respect. The more I stick to the deadlines, the greater is the self-respect I cultivate. And you will see this is how paradoxical it is. You can stick to deadlines only when you have some humility. And the more you stick to deadlines, the more you find your self-respect is deepening.
Are you getting it? So, enjoy even as you race to meet the deadlines.
Questioner: I didn’t get the point that how is it related to our self-respect?
Acharya Prashant: What do you respect yourself for? What do you respect anybody for?
Questioner: What the person is.
Acharya Prashant: What the person is. If the person is sincere, true, authentic, dedicated to her development, won’t you respect her?
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: You are that person when you meet the deadlines. So, won’t you respect yourself?
Questioner: Sure. But I have just another follow-up for this. So basically, we have deadlines. So, deadlines are, on the other hand, imposing work on yourself. For example, there is this particular task A, and I could complete it very nicely within one day, one and a half days. But the same task, I have two to three tasks at a time. At a time, I have three tasks.
So, if I don’t have any deadlines on my mind, I will do that whole day peacefully. But when I have the deadline there, I wake up with the pressure that I have the task, I have the deadline. In the pressure of doing all three tasks, I am not even able to do one task properly. Or maybe the pressure of even one task deadline, I mean, deadline just creates pressure on myself. And it’s like neither can I sleep and every time I wake up, it’s with something loaded like this happens.
Acharya Prashant: Why are the three tasks pending at the same time?
Questioner: Even if there is one task. Like, it’s just a thing that I have that thing in mind when there are deadlines. I can do a task normally, but when there are deadlines...
Acharya Prashant: If you could do it normally, normally as you said, normally, all on your own, then don’t you think you would have probably already finished it by now? Why would you wait for the last hour or the last day? Surely nobody puts you on a deadline of one day. Whenever submission dates are there with respect to assignments, you get what, one week, fifteen days, sometimes two months? So why would you be staring at the last day of submission?
Had there really been love, you would have completed it well ahead of time and submitted it already. This means you need the deadline. This means that it is just an imaginative fancy that you would complete it even in absence of deadline. You remove the deadline, and you find you will do nothing at all. Or maybe you will do one thing, claiming that one thing is your true love, whereas the fact is that you need to know five other things as well. Maybe without knowing those five other things, you cannot even know that one thing you claim to be in love with.
So, I am saying two things here, please. One, when you are really mature and really independent, then you don’t need deadlines at all. Two, if you are not yet that mature, then deadlines are something you should actually love, because deadlines are aiding your journey towards learning. A day will come when nobody will give you deadlines. A day will come when you will be all on your own.
You know, and when you are all on your own, then usually what do you do? You give deadlines to yourself. And that’s a good thing to do. That’s a good thing to do because human beings are never going to be perfect. They would always remain that lazy ego within, with all its fake excuses, looking for alibis to procrastinate, hide here, do there something, some mischief, some nonsense with all its absurd arguments. So, you better put paid to all that by giving yourself a hard deadline. This has to be done by this date, full stop.
Questioner: Okay, thank you.
Questioner: So, Acharya Ji, another question that I wanted to ask you is that it sometimes happens like it has happened with me, that if a senior or a colleague of mine has done something that really offended me. But I conveyed it to them later, not at the present moment, but in the heat of the moment, they said something that I did not like, and I conveyed it to them later.
So, I don’t know, out of guilt or what, they started making up for it. They started interacting with me more and telling me that they liked spending time with me so that I may come back to the same level with them that I was before the incident happened. But I’m not able to convince myself to forgive them for that, to go back to the same level. So, at this point, I don’t even want to disrespect that person. So, what should I exactly do?
Acharya Prashant: You must be having something good to do in your life, no? Or is that person, that colleague, that senior, is that everything to your life?
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: So many people say such wild things to me every day. If I start remembering all that, then I’m done. This is not even a question of forgiving. You forgive someone only when you at least remember the hurt.
Questioner: But then it’s not really possible to go back on the same level; I’ve known that person before.
Acharya Prashant: But why do you want to have any level with? I do not know which person; why do you want to have this leveling thing with this person you are referring to? Go back to my first question. There must be something worthwhile you have to do in life, right? Why don’t you focus on that? Which year are you in?
Questioner: Second year.
Acharya Prashant: So, Kharagpur campus. How many sports are you currently playing? It’s not an allegation; I just want to know.
Questioner: Two sports.
Acharya Prashant: Two sports and there are facilities for many more. There must be so many cultural clubs, right? Dramatics, debating. There would be a film society. There would probably be a literature club. There would be a dance society probably. When will you make use of all these opportunities? If you just keep remembering all these trivial things that happen almost daily with everybody. When will you rise to make something of your life? You are already in the second year. You have just entered the second year, or is it about to be completed?
Questioner: About to be completed.
Acharya Prashant: Oh, half the time, already gone! Now? Now, something will happen in the third year as well; then, something else will happen in the fourth year. And that will be all to your IIT story? How nice does it sound? “What did you do in IIT?” “I got offended four times.” “I got offended four times, and I spent four years trying to forget and forgive and whatnot, you know, that some Bollywood story.”
How many hours have you spent in the library? This is the time to delve into the greatest literature from across the world. Till you are in your class twelfth, all you read is Irodov and Resnick & Halliday. Those were the books in my time. I don’t know what goes now. So, all you read is these PCM books. Now is the time to deepen your personality, to know of all the great things that are there in the world, and you are squandering this time.
From here, you will probably enter some workplace, and they will drive you towards productivity, and you will be working for ten hours a day. And again, you will find you don’t have enough time for self-development. After that, probably those usual things concerning marriage and kids and such things will come, and again, you will find yourself short of time.
Don’t allow this to just pass by. Hold every moment by the collar and extract the maximum value you can. And the best way to squander time is by engaging yourself emotionally in some little thing and continuously thinking about it.
Questioner: Engaging ourselves in some little thing.
Acharya Prashant: These are very precious years, very, very precious years. Learn as much as you can. Develop yourself as much as you can. Broaden your personality like the branches of a tree. Grow in all possible directions. All these things, you know, the senior boy, junior girl, leave it to the filmmakers. I’m sorry. Did I say something that hurt? I didn’t mean to.
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: I just want you to make the best use of your time. That’s all.
Questioner: Thank you.
