Happiness Express

by Khurshed Batliwala

  Just study the list and you will remember about 30% of it.

  Study and write out once what you remember and the figure jumps to about 40%.

  Write it three times after studying and your recall could be more than 50%.

  How is this happening?

  Remember ‘dendrites grow for exactly what you do’?

  When you simply study the list, reading it over and over again for 10 minutes, you only become better at reading it over and over again! Not remembering it.

  When you study the list for 5 minutes, and then write out what you remember, you are creating connections in your brain to REMEMBER!!! Do it thrice and you strengthen these connections even more. You remember more because you practised remembering, not reading.

  Challenging the Brain

  Have you ever had a word, name or an answer to a question on the tip of your tongue and you simply couldn’t remember it?

  Your brain goes into a tizzy when this happens. Fragments of things you want to remember dance around tantalisingly as your brain fights to recall them. If it succeeds, there is a sense of triumph. A feeling of achievement of a job well done and there is a chemical party in your brain as it celebrates this feat, and makes a note to itself to remember this fact. More connections are made. More relevance is added. That information becomes even more crystallised in your memory.

  If you simply remember what you were trying to, all this doesn’t happen. . . So, to ensure you don’t forget something, you need to try to remember it just at the point when you are about to forget it. When you challenge the brain like this, it will create memories that will last a lifetime.

  Multiple delayed practice sessions like this will mean that you will keep more and more of that information with you for longer and longer periods of time.

  Your new forgetting curve will look like this:

  This is Hermann Ebbinghaus’s gift to us. Through years of painful experimentation on himself, he had figured out how soon we would forget and concluded that if we practised recall just at the point of forgetting, we would remember more of it for longer periods of time.

  ANKI and the Spaced Repetition System (SRS)

  SRS is about putting all this into action. You can create a DIY kit to accomplish this, but there is an amazing piece of software that will do exactly that. It will save you the bother of making physical flashcards, drawing pictures, etc.

  ANKI is the software. It is free to use, has more than 400 add-ons by third party developers, and is my go to application when I want to work on something and keep it in my head. You can use ANKI to learn new languages, coding, or anything else.

  You begin by creating flash cards. You can add images and sound too.

  During your review sessions, the software pops them out at you and you check if you can remember or not. If you do remember, the software will test you again in a later review session, calculating for you the time in which you are most likely to forget that piece of information. If you don’t remember, it will show it to you again on your next session.

  The entire calculation of when you are most likely to forget a fact is done by the software. The fact that this piece of software is absolutely free to use, with no strings attached at all, is a tribute to the generosity of the developer Damien Elmes.

  If you are serious about wanting to learn and remember things, download ANKI, thank God for Damien, and get to work. Just google ANKI Spaced Repetition System, and it will throw up pages where you can download the app from. It’s quite easy to use ANKI. However, if you require help, there are multiple online resources that will show you how.

  Remember that to understand around 80% of any language, you would need to know only 700-1000 words. With ANKI, SRS and about 30 minutes a day, you could learn these within a period of 6 months to a year. Your new year’s resolution could be: This year I will learn a new language!

  For more on language learning, ANKI and SRS, refer to Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. It is a fabulously written book.

  One last thing about remembering. For me, when I teach something to others, I remember it better and for longer as my brain makes all sorts of connections every time I teach. I understand things differently and with more clarity. Once you have learned something well, teach it to others. They thank you for it, you feel great about yourself and, most importantly, that bit of knowledge gets pretty much wired into your system. You are going to remember it for a long time.

  By the way, Anki is the Japanese word for memorisation.

  Happy Ankiing to you!

  Chapter 11

  PROCRASTINATION

  There was this subject called Number Theory. It should have been an engaging wonder-filled romp, but because of the horrible teacher who was assigned to us, it became a monotonous, dull grind. His lectures would be long and tedious. His assignments even more so. Naturally, I kept putting off doing the assignments. They accounted for only 20% of the credit for the course and I was pretty sure I would get enough marks to scrape by. The teacher was a sadist, though, and a few days before the exam casually announced to the class that students who had not submitted all assignments would be barred from writing the paper.

  It was most inconvenient to say the least. I would have to slog through his pathetic questions when I would rather be working on other things. Even with the hammer of doom hanging over my head, I still kept postponing. . .

  Does this sound familiar?

  Procrastination is defined as ‘the action of delaying or postponing something’.

  It sounds quite innocent.

  ‘Will do it later.’

  ‘We have plenty of time.’

  ‘There is no hurry.’

  But do you notice when most people say these things? It’s when they don’t want to do what they are postponing in the first place.

  Your brain is hardwired to do two things:

  It does it’s best to save you from pain.

  It does whatever it can to move you towards pleasure.

  You are feeling bored, irritated, frustrated or angry with something you have to do, and you simply don’t want to do. You know that at some point you will have to do it, yet you keep postponing it. This is your brain at work. It will conjure up all the reasons it can to make you avoid it. These reasons will sound plausible and absolutely logical. Most often, you are too weak to fight them, and you will end up not doing what you needed to do.

  I enjoy playing the piano. There is no instrument quite like the piano. I love its sound. I love that I can make beautiful music with it. The only thing I don’t like is practising scales or doing the exercises. Going up and down the keyboard. . . again and again. . . on and on. . . I know that practising dramatically improves my playing. But it is tiresome and laborious. And so I don’t do it as often as I should. Until I come across a piece that I really want to play and my technique is simply not good enough to tackle it. Then I become regular with the scales for some time. Just enough so I can play that particular piece of music. Confession: a few times I give up on the piece. It’s too much work. I get a great recording and listen to it instead of doing those scales.

  Come across something you don’t like doing and your brain goes, Oh no! Not this please. Pretty pleeeeeease. It’s soooooooo borrrrrriiiinnngggggg. I don’t think we need to do this. Can’t we do something else instead?

  Why scales? There are so many lovely things we know how to play. Forget about the scales. See, people in the house also get up and go away when you start the scales. Let’s not do the scales. We will manage somehow. . . and so on. And the scales don’t happen enough times. So instead of becoming an absolutely brilliant pianist, I have settled for mediocrity. The piano is a very relaxing hobby for me, and I have made peace with this.

  Number Theory was another ball game. Not submitting those assignments would mean flunking the subject, and the possible termination of my master’s degree. I had already flunked too many times and I was still postponing my work.

  Can you believe it? I was a
ctually getting ready to forego my degree!

  When Number Theory happened to me, I was already an Art of Living teacher. I was teaching people how to meditate and was soaked in the wonder of my budding spirituality. Number Theory and meditation didn’t quite gel. . . at least as far as my addled brain was concerned. It came up with an amazing story.

  What difference does it make if I get a master’s degree or not?! Who really cares. I know I am going to be dedicating my life to teaching the Art of Living series of courses. What use is math then? Why torture myself like this? I have already decided what I am going to do with my life and math doesn’t have much place in it.

  And, then, the clincher! I can always tell people that I went to IIT. I don’t have to tell them if I made it out of there. If anyone asks me what qualification do you have, I will simply reply that I went to IIT to do my M.Sc in math. No one is going to ask, did you actually get the degree?

  I was totally convinced in my head that the degree made no sense anymore. That I was just wasting time there in IIT when I could be out in the world teaching people meditation. Before doing the final opt out though, thankfully, I felt I should tell Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar about my plan. I was 100% sure He would say, yes, yes. Go ahead and teach courses.

  Off I went to the Bangalore ashram to meet Him. At that time, there were not the crowds that surround Him now, and we could easily meet Him and chat with Him about the goings-on in our lives.

  I sat down in front of Him and started my spiel. I said, Gurudev, I want to give up my degree. And, to my surprise, He started laughing and giggling. I wondered what the joke was. He kept looking at me and laughing.

  After a minute or so, He very gently said to me, how can you give up something you don’t have? Go back and finish what you started. After that you can become a full-time Art of Living teacher and travel the world and teach people meditation. Get that degree. I want you to move from success to success. Not from failure to failure.

  With those words ringing in my ears, I went back to IIT with a completely different mindset. When I knew there was no exit option, and that I had to get that degree, things inside me changed. I have to admit, though, I still procrastinated those assignments till the last minute, but I finished them and passed the subject. And eventually got the degree. I can now tell you that I went to IIT and got out of it! I made it a success and have since then moved from success to success.

  Procrastination is not simply delaying stuff for doing later. It is you convincing yourself that you hate doing it, so you will do it later. If you hate doing it, typically, unless you have your arm twisted, you mostly don’t end up doing it. This can prove to be very expensive.

  One assignment not done quickly becomes two, then five, and suddenly you have a backlog on one subject. Which could add up to the point you start to feel you are not made for this, and you want to leave it and move on. Only you don’t move on. You move backwards. One failure will breed another, and you will find yourself in a hopeless spiral of botched-up attempts, ever twisting downwards. Careers and lives have been wrecked by this bane called procrastination.

  Failure and Mistakes

  There is one more reason we procrastinate. The ‘What if I fail?’ or ‘What if I make a mistake?’ are immobilising thoughts. There is a deep-seated fear in almost every one of making a fool of themselves. This makes them prefer to not even attempt something they feel they won’t be able to do, or that they perceive they are not good enough at doing.

  Failure simply means, ‘This is not the way to do it.’ If you truly want to succeed, you will have to give yourself the permission to fail. I am not saying you should fail. Don’t get me wrong. Just have the permission to fail. This will banish the fear of failing from your mind. If you fall down, pick yourself up and do it another way. And another way, and another, and another until you get it right.

  You are welcome to make as many mistakes as are required to get to where you have to get to. Just don’t make the same mistake over and over again. Progress is all about making new mistakes and learning from them.

  We keep putting off doing things we don’t like for as long as we can, but the things that we are not good at, or think we would not be good at, we almost never end up doing.

  Procrastination is indeed the Dark Lord of all vices, and I feel if you can conquer this one, mostly everything else falls into place.

  S.T.A.R. Technique

  Dealing with any Dark Lord is tricky business. Dinesh and I developed what we call the S.T.A.R. technique to vanquish this particular Voldemort from your life.

  Make a list of at least three things you know you should be doing, but you are not. Don’t read further until you have done this.

  Start Now

  This is the first, most crucial and critical step. It’s very interesting how we resolve to start doing something from Monday. Or on the weekend. Or on the first of next month. Any day or time other than now. You want to lose weight. You know you need to exercise and watch what you eat. You don’t do it now. Not today at least. You will begin on the weekend. On weekdays too much is going on. . . and the brain goes into its loop of creating a fantastic story of why it will be so much better to start exercise on the weekend.

  Of course, if it is the weekend, the story changes. Weekends are for rest and relaxation and to get over the stress of the week. Definitely not a time to exercise or be picky about what to eat. . . and so on. And so you postpone exercising and restricting your diet. And keep get bigger and bigger.

  Don’t wait for the first of the month. The 26th is a good day too. Don’t wait for the weekend or a Monday. There is nothing wrong with a Wednesday. Don’t wait for 10:30. 9:17 works just as well. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Today is great. Don’t wait for later. Right Now Rocks!

  Chose any one of those three things you wrote. Make a beginning right now.

  Is it too big and overwhelming? You don’t know where to start? Which brings us to. . .

  Take small steps

  If you want to lose weight and become fitter, maybe it is not a good idea to start with 108 Suryanamaskars twice today. You may not get out of bed for a week after that. But you can do four. Do that. You can walk instead of using a bike or a car when going to buy groceries from the neighbourhood market. Do that. You can climb the stairs instead of using the lift. Do that. You live on the 25th floor? Ok, don’t climb all the way. But you can climb to the third floor? Second? Do that. And you can definitely say no to all that sugar and white flour. Please do that.

  Don’t focus on the end result. If you are 20 kg overweight and want a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, you will give up the moment you look at yourself in the mirror.

  Take baby steps. Focus on the process of getting there.

  You have been postponing that long, tedious presentation you need to make? I am not saying you sit down and finish it off right now. All I am saying is you make the first three slides right now. You can do that, right? Do it!

  How much time should you give to this? Well, it should be a minimum of 20 minutes to a maximum of an hour. Start with 20 minutes. Tell yourself that you will do nothing else other than this work for 20 minutes. Get up now, set an alarm for 20 minutes and take those baby steps towards any one or two of those three things you have been procrastinating.

  You are inspired to start as you read this. Then your phone beeps a WhatsApp notification. As we saw in an earlier chapter (Brain 101), the brain is not designed for multi-tasking. If you attend to that notification, you will find it very difficult to go back to what you had decided to do. Make sure you are distraction-free for those 20 minutes that you will dedicate to this work.

  A drop of water is nothing. But then, a waterfall is just billions of drops of water. . . Start with a drop and build on it, and pretty soon you will be amazed at the deluge inundating you.

  Work for at least 20 minutes. Then you are ready for the next step, which is really easy.

  Add a break

  Whatever it is you are w
orking on, take breaks. The part of your brain that does focused work is notorious for its limited attention span. For most human beings, the mind starts wandering after about 20 minutes. Definitely after an hour. After working on anything for an hour or so, move away from it. Do something else. Preferably something that you don’t have to focus too much on. Take a bath, play with your dog, or go for a walk.

  Remember the focused and diffused modes of the brain we discussed earlier? It’s paramount that both modes are used for efficient learning to happen. People who sit and work for hours at a stretch without a break are wasting their time. It’s never about how long you work. It’s always about how much you have accomplished. Slogging for hours together on something will make you inefficient and unproductive, besides killing off your creativity.

  Add frequent short breaks. Use them to do things you like to do and which don’t require too much focus (playing Candy Crush or surfing Facebook requires an inordinate amount of focus by the way), and you will be astounded by the amount of work that gets done. A few rounds of pranayama or a session of meditation are superb ideas for breaks.

  And the R? That’s my favourite!

  Reward yourself

  Congratulations! You just did a little part of something you had been procrastinating. This is a humungous step. The Dark Lord has met his match in you and you deserve a reward. Go on and get that reward. It could be anything—a short shopping trip for retail therapy, a nibble of some delicious dark chocolate, a quick phone call to a good friend. Just see to it that the reward does not counter the goal. Don’t eat a box of gulab jamuns after walking for 20 minutes if your goal is to lose weight.

  The reward is very important. We procrastinate because our brains are convinced that the activity in question is boring, tedious and painful. If, at the end of the activity, we get a treat, and this happens consistently a few times, the wiring in the brain changes. It will start associating that activity with pleasure. Remember, the brain steers you away from pain and pushes you towards pleasure. In just a little bit of time, you will find yourself looking forward to that activity and the need for the reward will fade away. You don’t reward yourself for things you like doing, do you?