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~~~~~

Video Information: IIT Kharagpur, 04.02.2022, Greater Noida, India

Context:
~ How to get rid of procrastination?
~ How to be free?
~ What is freedom?
~How does suffering help the one?
~ How to realize one's true strength?

Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00 Namaskar Acharyaji. So the question I had was that when you are with your friends you
00:07 tend to do some things that you know are just a waste of time. You still do them to get
00:12 temporary enjoyment and miss out on a lot of things. This eventually leads to procrastination
00:20 and due to procrastination there is a lot of pressure that is created on deadlines especially
00:26 for students who are in college. Deadlines are something which triggers them. On the
00:32 other hand, enjoying your time is also important. So how do we maintain a balance between enjoying
00:38 and managing the deadlines, overall time management?
00:44 Managing deadlines in context of what?
00:48 In context of everything like in terms we are in college, we have assignments, there
00:54 are exams, exam is also a deadline to complete a particular syllabus. Even at workplaces
01:00 we have deadlines to achieve a particular target.
01:05 So you are asking how to adhere to the deadlines while simultaneously enjoying what you are
01:13 doing. You see a deadline is required only when you are in a system, a corrective system,
01:32 an educational system. The presence of a deadline simply means that you are still not mature
01:44 enough to do things on your own in a timely way. So the first thing that you need is acknowledgement
02:02 that you are still not there in terms of loving what you are doing. Otherwise a deadline
02:10 wouldn't have been needed in the first place or even if the deadline would have been there
02:16 would have been irrelevant. In spite of its presence it would have had irrelevance. We
02:28 are made to work in deadlines precisely because without deadlines we won't work. We would
02:38 simply procrastinate as you said. So you have to accept the deadlines and you have to accept
02:51 it knowing that the deadline is useful to you. You have to humbly admit that the deadline
03:00 is not just an external imposition, it is actually your internal requirement. You need
03:08 the deadline. It's not somebody else's whim being foisted on you as a deadline. So now
03:21 I know that the deadline is indeed helpful. Now I also humbly admit that I am not yet
03:33 somebody who can work purely on her internal inspiration and do something or read something
03:45 or learn something just on her own. Then instead of feeling resentful towards the deadline
03:55 you actually feel grateful. Thank God the deadline is there otherwise I wouldn't have
04:00 learnt at all. Think of so many things you would have missed learning had deadlines not
04:07 been there. Right? Is that not so? In fact probably 90-95% of our knowledge comes riding
04:19 to us on the back of deadlines. Does it not? So many of our achievements we are so proud
04:27 of wouldn't have been possible in absence of deadlines. Translate deadlines into discipline.
04:37 What does discipline mean? It comes from the same root as disciple. What does disciple
04:44 mean? A follower, a student, somebody who wants to learn. So deadline is related to
04:50 discipline and discipline is related to love for learning. So if you have love for learning
04:58 you will respect deadlines and when you respect deadlines then it will become possible to
05:05 enjoy the deadlines. Then it will not be an either or situation. Then you will not ask
05:12 how do I enjoy the work while adhering to the deadlines. Then adherence to the deadlines
05:18 itself will become a thing of joy. Why so joyful? Because I have a deadline to meet.
05:27 Then you will not say that once the deadline has been met then I will go out and party
05:31 and have some joy. No. I am joyful in the process of meeting the deadline because I
05:37 know what the deadline means to me. The deadline means love to me. So I am joyful. What am
05:45 I doing? I have to finish this assignment by midnight and I am so joyful. Without the
05:52 deadline this thing wouldn't have happened at all. And respecting the deadline tells
05:59 me that I am a sincere, authentic individual. It tells me I have love for learning. It helps
06:11 me have some self-respect. The more I stick to the deadlines the greater is the self-respect
06:19 I cultivate and you see this is how paradoxical it is. You can stick to deadlines only when
06:27 you have some humility and the more you stick to deadlines the more you find your self-respect
06:34 is deepening. Are you getting it? So enjoy even as you race to meet the deadlines.
06:53 I didn't get the point like how is it related to our self-respect?
07:00 What do you respect yourself for? What do you respect anybody for?
07:05 What the person is. If the person is sincere, true, authentic,
07:11 dedicated to her development, won't you respect her?
07:17 You are that person when you meet the deadlines. So won't you respect yourself?
07:23 Sure, but I have another follow up for this. So basically we have deadlines. So deadlines
07:32 is on other hand imposing work on yourself. Like there is this particular task A, I could
07:39 complete it very nicely within one day, one and a half day. But same task I have two to
07:45 three tasks at a time. Like at a time I have three tasks. So if I don't have any deadlines
07:51 on my mind, I will do that whole day peacefully. But when I have the deadline there, I wake
07:57 up, I wake up with the pressure that I have the task, I have the deadline. In the pressure
08:03 of doing all the three tasks, I'm not even able to do one task properly. Or maybe in
08:10 the pressure of even one task deadline, I mean, deadline just create pressure on myself.
08:17 And it's like neither can I sleep and every time I wake up, it's with something loaded
08:21 like this happens.
08:23 Why are the three tasks pending at the same time?
08:31 Even if there is one task, like it's just a thing that I have that thing in mind that
08:36 when there are deadlines, like I can do a task normally, but when there are deadlines
08:40 that thing…
08:41 If you could do it normally, normally as you said, normally, all on your own, then
08:54 don't you think you would have probably already finished it by now? Why would you wait for
08:59 the last hour or the last day? Surely nobody puts you on a deadline of one day. Whenever
09:08 submission dates are there with respect to assignments, you get what one week, 15 days,
09:13 sometimes two months. So why would you be staring at the last day of submission? Had
09:23 there really been love, you would have completed it well ahead of time and submitted it already.
09:33 This means you need the deadline. This means that it is just an imaginative fancy that
09:41 you would complete it even in absence of deadline. You remove the deadline and you find you will
09:47 do nothing at all. Or maybe you will do one thing, claiming that one thing is your true
09:53 love, whereas the fact is that you need to know five other things as well. Maybe without
09:59 knowing those five other things, you cannot even know that one thing you claim to be in
10:03 love with. So I am saying two things here please. One, when you are really mature and
10:13 really independent, then you don't need deadlines at all. Two, if you are not yet that mature,
10:22 then deadlines are something you should actually love because deadlines are aiding your journey
10:29 towards learning. A day will come when nobody will give you deadlines. A day will come when
10:35 you will be all on your own, you know, and when you are all on your own, then usually
10:41 what do you do? You give deadlines to yourself. And that's a good thing to do. That's a good
10:48 thing to do because human beings are never going to be perfect. There would always remain
10:53 that lazy ego within with all its fake excuses, looking for alibis to procrastinate, hide
11:01 here, do there something, some mischief, some nonsense with all its absurd arguments. So
11:07 you better put paid to all that by giving yourself a hard deadline. This has to be done
11:16 by this grateful stop. Thank you.
11:24 [Music]

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