We upgrade our devices all the time, but do we think of upgrading ourselves? How do we become better, more productive, more learned with the passage of time? While there is no shortage of advice in books, videos and podcasts, the bottleneck is always us – there is a reluctance to change existing habits. As is said, we can lead a horse to water, but cannot make it drink. A question I ask myself constantly is: what can I do to improve? Are there learnings from others which can help me improve?
Many years ago, I had read in a book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen that it is important to keep one’s mind free from the clutter of things to do and thus a system is needed to write it down. That helped create my note-taking system. In conversations after the 2014 elections, I realised that to understand why India is poor and what needs to be done, I need to learn about classical liberal and public choice ideas, and set about doing that – by reading about Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan and Milton Friedman. In 2020, when I returned to Netcore after shuttering the Nayi Disha project, I set about understanding digital marketing via conversations with CMOs. I had always thought about writing a book, but never got around to it – until I was approached by a commissioning editor, which then encouraged me to write the Proficorn series, as a precursor to getting the book done. Most recently, I started listening to music with noise-cancellation headsets to create an envelope of quiet to help me think better.
We are creatures of habits and changing anything takes effort. It is easy to stick to the status quo simply because we are so used to it and doing anything different disrupts set processes in our life. And yet, we must edit ourselves. Like great authors do through multiple drafts to create the final perfect book, we must also make some edits to our lives in search of the better.
There is much that I have to do. I have thought about creating a more active digital presence on Twitter and LinkedIn, but worry about the fragmentation of my time. I have thought about taking time off to travel and see new places, but I keep thinking I will do it next year. I know I have to make a better system to organise all my readings and writings, but don’t know where to begin. I sometimes go into panic mode when things are different from what I expect them to be, and that is when I make mistakes. I have been told by a friend that in conversations, I have a tendency to interrupt the other person because I cannot wait to get my point across which is impolite and which is a behaviour I need to modify.
The process of creating better versions of us is never done. What is important is to start with a recognition of the flaws which need to be corrected and drawing inputs from others about best practices that we can incorporate. New, improved versions of us are a good contribution to make to the world.
