None of the diplomas/degrees can help you to become an educated being. Unfortunately in our society, education of a person is measured by the degrees he has earned. There are a number of degree holders, like you and I, who are compartmentalized in their field of specialization. We do keep ourselves updated on new technologies, new inventions and discoveries in our field of work, and the current happennings around the world. But not all of us take efforts in educating ourselves at personal level. Our social and economical system preconditions us in a manner that we stop thinking about growing and improving ourselves.
Becoming an educated being means more than simply knowing things. It relates more to how you apply what you know in your daily life even in mundane activities. It means to be able to deal with changes in life and sometimes become the cause of the change. It means to get out of the closed box thinking and open your mind to things not common to you.
Education never stops. In everything we do there is a lesson, it is upto us to recognize and learn it.
Schooling is not necessary to become an educated being. But it definitely provides (or used to) a rich environment to facilitate it. If you go to school just to attend classes, do assignments, and get grades then you are wasting your time. I did. School is not just about grades and degrees. It is a place where you get an opportunity to interact with all sorts of people. You can learn a lot from the experienced ones and shape your personal growth. The other advantage of going to school is that you learn to handle yourself even in unpleasant situations and trust me there can be many. The reward is not the degree, but the person you become at the end of it. The purpose is to learn how to learn.
You are becoming an educated being if you have a desire to learn new things. You are constantly looking to improve yourself in all possible ways. You are always burning with curiosity. You have high self esteem. You don’t have the fear of not being smart enough. You know that you are worth in this world and have the ability to learn anything that is needed to fulfill your purpose.
Being educated means that you can think. You have a mind of your own. You don’t follow the crowd. You look at the problems and ideas differently. You know that there is more to life than job and money, and that’s you. It is all about who you are and what you become.
So, are you one of the well-trained, highly skilled labors or an educated being?
For last couple of months I have been struggling to overcome procrastination. I can relate my procrastination to my ABD (all but dissertation) status. And it had became a habit for me. I was putting off everything for ‘tomorrow’. It was affecting my life in every possible sphere in every possible way. But now it seems that I am overcoming it gradually. I have not achieved full control but I am on my way. It is not a one day shot. There are some natural stages that I went through before getting some control over it which I’ll tell you now.
Realization: Do you realize that you are procrastinating? Most of the people I have seen do acknowledge that they know that they procrastinate (a lot). That’s good (not the procrastination part), atleast you are aware of what’s happening. But it adds to another problem. It is frustrating when you know about it but are not able to stop it.
Like one of my friends, let’s call him D, who wanted to quit smoking but even after trying for 2-3 years he was just not able to quit it. Though he realized that smoking is injurious to health (physical and mental), he couldn’t control it. It seems that cigarettes controlled him. Same was the case with me. Procrastination was controlling me, my time, and my productivity. I was like a prisoner who desired freedom but was compelled to follow the orders. But atleast I (and D) realized that there is something wrong with it and something needs to be done.
Practical solutions: I tried to overcome procrastination by employing some practical solutions. I used to spend most of my weekends watching TV. Also almost every evening of mine was spent watching Friends, Everybody loves Raymond, Seinfield etc. Finally one day I just shut down that box for good. I am also an addictive web surfer. I used to spend hours infront of the screen googling and browsing through webpages. It was an easily available natural distractor. So, I stopped casual surfing too in an effort to reduce my distraction time. But nothing worked. After some time I was back on the same routine (though I could reduce some TV watching).
Similarly, D also tried different things but in vain. He would quit every other week and start again after couple of days. Reasons varied but everytime he knew he shouldn’t be starting it again.
The reason for such failures can be attributed to the lack of a strong motivation to be able to give it up. We did realize that we have a problem but were not determined enough to solve it. In other words, we didn’t fully realize the negative effects of our habits, may be because there are no short term negative effects. If it doesn’t hurt you in short term, it is less likely you’ll quit it. We tend to be more reactive to things that have short term effects (gain or loss doesn’t matter) than that have long term effects.
Eye opening moment: Finally, there was one weekend when a number things happenned. I won’t go in detail but in that weekend I realized that if I don’t work towards my Ph.D. any harder in order to graduate soon, my (and my close one’s) life would be doomed. I could see myself failing professionally. I visualized how it would affect me and my close ones and believe me, I didn’t like what I saw. That time I knew I want to overcome procrastination no matter what. And since then I have considerably reduced the time killing activities. What helped me most was that image in my mind of what would happen if I don’t control it. Also, I posted a quote by Viktor Frankl on my desk saying, “To life he can only respond by being responsible.” This quote always reminds me of my responsibilities as a human being and I tend to work more aggressively towards my goal.
D could also quit smoking, completely. One day there was an ad asking for student volunteers for some study on effects of smoking and each volunteer was being paid something over $100.00. This caught D’s eyes and he volunteered (for the money of course). Those people took some tests and showed him what healthy lungs look like and how his lungs have deteriorated in comparison. They also gave him an estimate of how many more years he would live if he continued with the same frequency of smoking. That number and the picture of his lungs were engraved in his mind that day. After that whenever he smoked, that number and the picture would haunt him. He even started the reverse countdown. So, finally he decided to quit it completely for good (of course, with the help of some of the practical solutions he had used earlier but this time there was stronger motivation and he was more determined).
From all this, I find that there is nothing impossible but we cannot make it possible till we really, really, really care. A person can be successful in whatever he attempts if he is sincere to the cause. We find things difficult because either we are not sincere in our efforts or we don’t realize the after-effects (long/short term and positive/negative effects).
Life is too short to be wasted in doing things that you don’t want to. Unless you realize how much damage (personal, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) it is causing you, you won’t quit. So one of the way to overcome such negative habits is to:
Visualize what will happen if you continue with it.
Visualize what will happen if you quit it.
Try to draw a picture bringing in contrast between the two situations.
If there is a drastic and positive difference, you will be able to quit.
Else re-work on your visualization abilities and go back to step 1.
I said I gained some control over procrastination but not full control because there are many more things that I need to re-organize to overcome it completely (that would be a topic for some other post). I still do put-off things, like right now instead of working on my project I am writing this post but I am glad that it is some-what constructive procrastination.
What distinguishes experts from dropouts and amateurs?
Drill. Persistence.
How experts become experts? Through hard work and practice. So where do you stand? To make things easy for you, let me show you a graph by Creating Passionate Users. Now where do you find yourself?
It was a lightening jolt for me when I saw that graph for the first time. It makes you think about your attitude towards important things in life. It reminds you to keep working on improving yourself and excel in every aspect of life, something which I was forgetting gradually.
It is so easy to get trapped in that comfort zone where you can get your work done in a suboptimal way. Once you are satisfied with what you know and where you are, you become stagnant. And that’s where experts get ahead of you.
Do you think you are too old to learn anything now? Or you think you just can’t do it? Well, then you are putting limits on yourself. Remember it is never too late to become an expert.
Whenever this question is posed to me these days, my reply is, “I am XYZ doing PhD in ABC university working with Prof. KLM.”
Is it really who I am? Is my affiliation to some popular brand like my university or my advisor, or my company defines me. As far as I remember, couple of years back my answer was different. But it was another definition of me affiliated to some other popular brand.
Even most of my friends would define themselves based on their job title in some reputated company like, Infosys, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Google, TCS, etc. I think it gives us some sense of personal accomplishment by associating ourselves with such popular brands.
For last couple of days, I have been reading about personal branding as proposed by Tom Peters and Rajesh Setty. According to them, everyone needs to think about making a mark for themselves and stand out in this world. It is not easy but it is not difficult too.
Identifying your strengths is the first step towards personal branding. What is it in you that distinguishes you from others? What makes you proud of yourself? When your colleagues talk about you, do they refer to you as some software engineer/project manager, or as a person with some unique qualities and characteristics who has something valuable to offer?
Second step is to make yourself visible to others. There are a number of ways to do that based on your interests. Join communities of like-minded people, do some voluntary project, offer free services to people in need, and atleast start writing an online blog. See how Steve Pavlina and Seth Godin (and many more) have made a brand of themselves. But they are popular not because they have a blog but because of what they offer. When you have something to offer that has some value to others you automatically get recognition for it.
It doesn’t matter what your current position is or what your interest is in? What matters is that whether you are passionate about anything to an extent to become the best in it. You can make your mark if you offer quality product like Ramit Sethi’s ‘I Will Teach You To Be Rich’. There are others, like the curious duo Jim and Steph, and Dave Cheong, who are making themselves visible in this online world.
The key is to live your passion. But then you’ll ask how to earn your bread and butter if you just follow your passion. Well that’s a valid argument. Many of my friends have the same argument. Definitely you need to be practical in this real world but also you need to be a visionary to be able to see yourself doing what you like most in next 5, 10, and 20 years. You don’t need to quit your current job or whatever you are doing right now. But try to get yourself out of the vicious loop of corporate ladder and redefine yourself. Don’t abandon your passion, live it side by side. If you are a SAP consultant but like to write short stories, why not become a writer too.
As Tom Peters said you are the CEO of Me Inc. It is upto you how you make a brand of yourself. You are responsible for what you offer. So it better be unique and the best available out there. And most of all: keep growing and become an educated being.
