The Fallen Pen

He took a piece of biscuit from the coconut cookies packet, put it in his mouth and flicked his fingers to dust off the small sticking baked particles. Along with that, his pen left his grip and went flying across the room. He hadn’t yet put down a word on paper – which shone blank white on his desk. But, he wasn’t more superstitious than he was lazy. His cupboard drawer was nearer to him than the pen on the floor, so he strained himself a bit, pushing the chair slightly towards the drawer and pulled out another one. Now there were seven left in the packet. Later in the evening, when he picked up the fallen pen, he found that the small ball at the top of its tip was deformed. The pen now only wrote at a certain angle.

Please help myself

 I have a huge backlog of “Important” things to be done.

Last month I did a book-club course on “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. Though I am normally averse to all kinds of self-help books, I took that up because I wanted to have a first-hand experience of reading an entire sample. After all, it isn’t fair to criticize something with limited knowledge. Anyways, there are two reasons why I don’t like self-help books and get skeptical about someone who I come to know does. One being that I think it is better to live life on your own terms, go through the ups and downs, learn from the experiences of people around you and find the solutions to your problems yourself. Make your road to success, based on what you think is the best way. Of course, no one can start from a void; we need inputs and guidance from around us to make up our own model of the world and understand how we fit in. As such, there is no dearth of wise advice floating around wherever we go – in the form of pithy statements, sayings hung on walls, posters telling us the meaning of life and not to forget, all the lessons in moral science and self-righteousness that were heaped on us in schools. My own tendency is to observe and act. I hate it when people tell me how to act in a certain way – just because they thinks it’s right for them, doesn’t mean it’s right for the entire world. No, I’m not against people sharing their experiences; it’s just when they get preachy and judgmental that I am repulsed. And that is what most of the self-help books do; at least the ones that I have had the chance to glance at, though I could never go through an entire one for the said reasons. The other thing that makes my stand against such books stronger is when I see or meet people who read them and gush about them. Their problem is that they just read, never act. They admire all the supposedly bright ideas and ways to live; they appreciate the punch-lines and so-called deep insights of the author. What they don’t realize is that almost all of it is what they know already, and the thing to do is not just read them, feel enlightened and put the book aside, but to act on those ideas.

All said and done, I felt that I was developing a bias towards this genre of books without having a good exposure to the things I’m criticizing. So I went for the “7 Habits..” with an open mind, ready to accept the clichéd and obvious things it had to say, and also take away any novel ideas that it had to offer. Now, after reading it through, one thing I can say is, however commonplace or repeated the ideas it tries to present may be, it does a very good job of presenting it all in words. The author has provided numerous examples from his own life and others’, has formulated frameworks and has effectively explained terms and concepts of social psychology. Well, I believe that is what books of this genre usually do – put down in words all that you already know, and I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Just that I still stand by my notion that people after reading are busier praising the ideas in the book rather than practicing them.

Now to come back to the first line of this post, I have lots of important tasks which I have to do, which I should actually have done long back. Steven Covey in his book explains a phenomenon that was interesting to read and observe it actually happening. He marked tasks as Urgent, Not Urgent, Important and Not Important in a 2 by 2 matrix. He says that to be effective, one must focus on the box that contains tasks that are Important, but not yet Urgent. I agree, and admit that that is what I haven’t been doing. The result is that soon these tasks move into the Important and Urgent category and subsequently create a crisis. I have to prepare my Mid-Year script which is due in the next 3 days and which will take a lot of time and which I haven’t started on yet. I have to apply for the L1 Visa, apply for a business card, mail the prometric guys for my SCJP certificate, call the courier guys who have my demat password, work on the Training Portal documents, do R&D for browser compatibility. Oh and also, fill in my expenses pending for the last six months, decide on some tax-saving investments to make for this year, pay my LIC premium and so on. This is a long list of Important tasks, of which some have turned urgent, and some might soon become so without telling me when. So I’ll just try to follow my advice – practice what I have read. Wish me luck ;)