Phones and Addiction

My initial concept of addiction was drugs – opium, Marijuana etc. My parents would warn me of staying away from suspicious people.

As I grew older I realized that chemists / pharmacy guys were not giving cough syrup to unknown people without a prescription. These are typically over the counter medications so I was surprised about why this kind of behavior. Being curious, I asked one of them the reason. That’s when I was told that people become addicted to these syrups and need them because of that.

While these addictions cause harm to the body, one of the biggest addictions that we face today is because of our mobile phones. I have written multiple posts about how I am trying to de-clutter my life by removing all the Apps in my phone. The mobile phones and the Apps on them are so addictive that they drive you away from your dreams and aspirations.

However what I realized today, while reading a post, that this is a problem which is being faced by so many people globally. When something reaches a scale like this, its as bad an addiction for the overall generation.

I guess people will realize this situation and start taking steps, like me, to stop these perpetual distractions and live a more productive life.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Realizing your dreams

Affirmative action, dreams

While I was growing up and during the time I was doing my engineering, I used to be enamored by the space shuttle. I used and still marvel at the amazing piece of human engineering to take people into space and get them back.

While there have been engineering lapses, which led to accidents and the program had to be stopped eventually, you cannot doubt the conceptualization of this whole program.

I used to wonder if I will ever be able to see a space shuttle up and close. It was a dream for me.

In 2019, I had the opportunity to visit Washington DC. We landed at the Dulles International Airport . Very close to the airport there’s a museum where they have now housed the retired space shuttle Discovery.

When I used to see the launch, I would think that the shuttle would be a massive structure. But when I saw it from so close, it didn’t appear to be so huge. Which makes the reusability an even bigger feat.

When I had planned my trip to DC I had not envisaged that I would get an opportunity to see the space shuttle. While researching the Smithsonian and other museums in the DC area, I came to know about this museum which was a little distance from Dulles.

Since we were coming from an international flight, I was wondering where we could place our luggage. That’s when one of my friend and her husband pitched in. They picked us up from the airport, dropped us at the museum and took our luggage in the car to do their work and came and picked us up after two hours.

The point is that if you dream and take action then the universe also conspires to help you achieve a lot of your dreams. Never stop dreaming….you never know what all you may achieve.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Alerts are the new Apsaras

Distractions, dreams, Focus, Goals

In Hindu mythology, the king of the Gods, is a God named Indra. In his court he had some very beautiful ladies with magical powers. Generally the Apsaras were involved in entertaining Lord Indra.

Lord Indra is not part of the Supreme trio of Hinduism- Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv.

Lord Indra is depicted to be a God who is very insecure. So he is always worried if the demons will dethrone him. He also gets very insecure if any Rishi goes deep into meditation / trance and is able to get more powers than him.

So whenever he used to find any Rishi on the verge of becoming more powerful than him, he would send one of his Apsaras to perform their magic and somehow break the trance / focus of the Rishis. Once the focus is broken they will have to restart the process of acquiring the knowledge for which they had gone to meditate.

On the other hand the Apsara was given the target to some how seduce the Rishi and keep him from going to seek the knowledge which would make him more powerful compared to Indra.

When I was listening to one of the stories of the Apsaras yesterday, I realized that in today’s world, the alerts on our cellphone do exactly the same job. They seduce us and divert our attention and break my focus. Once my focus is broken, it takes me another 40 odd minutes to get back to focus and that too if there’s no other distractions.

Further these Apps try to keep me engaged as long as possible with some or the other offer or information. The longer I am involved with the App, the longer I am kept away from doing my work which can help me achieve my goals and become more powerful.

So since time immemorial distractions have been created to keep people from achieving the enormous potential they have. Today its technology that’s doing it.

Till next time then….let’s go for dreams.

Carpe Diem!!!

You just said YES – You just said NO

Affirmative action, dreams

On my smart phone, I used to be inundated with different kinds of pings every few minutes. Initially they were all sound and visual alerts.

Now I have these two bad habits. One I get distracted extremely easily and two I keep saying Yes a lot. I think the second one has to do more because of my stupid EGO. Anytime someone talks about how valuable my input is, I end up saying yes. With Alerts on your cellphone its a double whammy.

The Alerts first of all disturb you and take your attention away from whatever you were doing and second , quite a few times you end up reading the message the alert is showing (which means you are saying yes to reading the message) because it seems to be something important.

About three weeks back or a little more, I read the book Indistractable by Nir Eyal. One of the things with all these Apps that you use on the phone is that the moment you down load an App, by default the settings allow Alerts to appear. Initially there’s one App , then another and then there are another 20 and all of them are pinging you. You don’t realise the damage these innocuous things cause.

Coming back to the book, Indistractable, Nir, simply asked to go to the settings and to switch off the alerts. It took me less than 3 minutes to switch them off – if you. know where to go and do it. Initially for the first few days I was very anxious that I might miss out on something important when the phone didn’t ping.Over a period of the next one week, I got used to my phone not ringing. Now I watch for my SMSes or WhatsApp messages every 3-4 hours. Nothing before that. For some specific sender’s, I have got the alerts still active, but of rat e rest its gone.

What I realised was that each time I saw my phone , I got pulled into something or the other and then before I know, I have already spent another 10-15 minutes on non-essential activities.

Each time I was saying YES to looking at the alert and then the news and then something else, I was saying NO to my concentration, I was saying NO to finish what was important rather than what was urgent for someone else.

This doesn’t mean I have become super effective. Hardly. But this has taught me to start eliminating as many things which cause me to say YES to things which are so called urgent.

At the end of the day, you are, the results you produce. If you end up saying YES to these unnecessary items, you will end up saying NO to getting your results. You will not be able to chase your dreams because you will end up chasing multiple rabbits going in all directions.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!