Many a times I am invited to various
institutions and asked to deliver motivational speech to the gathering of
students and youth. The organisers often think that an IIM Professor must have
some secret ‘tips’ or keys to success up his sleeves that can transform the
audience overnight. But it’s a fallacy to expect that a onetime motivational
push will transform a person and change his/her life altogether. At best it can
be a spark of fire that can either whimper away soon or ignite a temporary zeal
towards a particular aim. I would therefore begin with a few caveats. First,
the strategic advice that I will present here in this article will only impact
the reader’s life or working style if only he or she inculcate them as ‘working
habits’ in the long run. After all it is said that there is no shortcut to
success. Second, these are not my entirely original ideas, rather a collection
of insights that I received from my father and some prominent teachers who has
influenced my life.
Working Habits: Starting Early
Let us define the term ‘working habit’
first. It is generally defines as “physical or mental effort directed towards
doing or making something.” My late father Prof Md Fokhrul Islam(1) used
to mention it all time in our childhood and told us to develop working habits
early in life. He used to get up very early in the morning for Tahajjud prayers
and wake us up early in the morning. As young kids (me and my younger brother)
used to hate it so much to get up from bed so early, especially in the winter.
My father obviously did not force us to join him in Tahajjud(2) but
very discerningly start his prayers reciting Quran so loudly that it was almost
impossible for us to continue lying in bed for long and ultimately we had to
get up and join him on way to Masjid for Fazar prayers. Often in this context
he used to tell us that a key to success in life is to develop working habits
and if we want to succeed in anything we must consciously work towards
development of such working habit such as waking up early in the morning
through sustained efforts. He used to further explain that once developed such
habits will become a part of our daily lives and later it will not be as
disdainful as it seems in the beginning. This one working habit that I got from
my father is to my mind is the single most important habit that a student must
develop in order gain a leap forward in studies and profession. My father used
to explain that by waking up early every day say two hour earlier than others
we would gain a 730 Hours of extra time in a year and there is no syllabus or
course that could not be mastered in that amount of time. If one gets up at 7
am every day, he/she must try to develop the habit of getting up at 5 am. But
the bottom line is to develop it as a habit rather than what we usually do
during the exam days. Getting up early only during exams and studying hard is
not the point rather getting into a long term habit formation is the key. Now,
even if there is no exam preparation and it’s a holiday one must not forget to
get up early and used the time as a habit by doing something light. My father
used to say just read books, magazines or do whatever we like during that extra
time in the morning so that the habit gets into our body clock. After years of
practicing this working habit let me tell you that it is a tested formula. I am
a terrible time manager as I indulge in a lot of multitasking and I tried so
many books and training on time management – but I failed to benefit from any.
The only thing that helped me to survive is this working habit of getting up
early every day that my father taught me. I would like to pass it on to our
next generation as I feel guilty of being a so called ‘modern’ father with
English School kids whom I see getting up ‘late’ in the morning and struggling
to catch the school bus with a fretting mother constantly at their back. If
this generation of parents with Tahajjud is increasingly becoming a rarity, it
falls upon us individually to develop this working habit with the help alarm
clocks ourselves.
One Thing a Day
Modern times are times of distractions
as information/media channels have increased manifolds. Gone are the days when
we used to have only a black and white TV as the only diversion in our lives
(that too only in a few families in late 1980s). With the advent of Internet
and social media coupled with business strategies like Jio free
broadband, todays youths are in a more challenging times to concentrate on
something. Parents are worried as they find their kids increasingly glued to
their Facebook, Instagram or Facebook while the young ones take these things as
an essential part of their existence. But, how can we develop something good a
beneficial working habit from these ‘distractions’. Again I will draw something
from my father. He gave us two small notebooks one day and asked us both
brothers write ‘one thing’ that we learnt that day. He insisted that we write
‘something’ that we learnt from somewhere that day. He used to tell us his
childhood stories of how in the absence of any additional books at home besides
the textbooks, he used to pick up pieces of papers from the road on his daily
trips to schools and search for a new word! My father used to walk a few miles
every day from his village Kabaribond on bank of river Longai to his school
(Patherkandi Model Higher Secondary) in Karimganj district in Assam. He used to
come back from school with those waste papers and search a new word that he did
not know and look for their meaning in the dictionary. That’s how he built his
vocabulary. Now a days I often fund students who are otherwise talented in
their studies fumble for words while speaking and making a mess of their
presentation or interviews. The solution is use your innumerable access to
modern gadgets and applications like Facebook but develop a working habit of
maintaining notebook to write down “one thing” – one word or one new
idea/information that you encountered through the day. My father used to say
that in that way we will gain at least 365 unique words every year and if we
started English in Class V by the time we graduate we would have 3650 unique
words in our command. Consider that with the fact that even Shakespeare is said
to have introduced only 3000 unique words. This target will be achieved much
earlier today our students are exposed to English much earlier.
One thing a day (one unique word and a
new idea/information) is therefore the second working habit one must develop in
order to boost their success. Once it is a habit, you might even drop the diary
/ note book thing, but at least think about what one new thing you learnt
before you sleep. But, Ii would rather insist on a notebook as it will lead to
better retention capacity in terms of spelling and dictionary meaning that you
would consult to find the meaning of that word. So, do indulge in your Internet
surfing, Facebook interactions but it must add to your working habit of
learning a new thing every day. Otherwise no amount of smartphone savvy
attitude will help you in making that impression in your interview, writing or
speaking.
Note them Down
We are exposed to many oral
communication everyday – our class lectures, TV News programs, religious
sermons or even special speeches in various events by eminent speakers. That a
lot of information that flows around us every day but how much do we retain
from these information or use them effectively in our lives? In fact very
little. Even the most impactful lecture is wasted soon because it is not enough
to understand the ideas, one must also be able to remember them in detail after
several weeks or even a month. We love to hear when someone is speaking and we
do also pay enough attention to other words when we like them. But, sooner or
later we tend to forget them or do not remember them when we need them. This
‘listening only’ habit must be changed and a more effective working habit
should be developed that is of “taking notes”. Always carry a small notebook or slip pad and
a pen or pencil in hand even when you are watching say a TV serial. Make it a
habit to jot down a word or two when you are listening or watching something.
In professional life, never go to a meeting without a notebook and a pen – it
will save you from a lot of memory disasters later. As we all know but fail to
practice that taking notes encourages concentration and makes memorization
easier! With this practice, you'll be able to develop a working habit that will
give you the full benefits of active listening.
While you are developing this working
habit of carrying notebook and pen almost everywhere, try to remember the three
golden rules: notes should be brief, faithful and organised. During a lecture,
it's impossible to write everything down and it is not necessary. Enjoy
the TV show or a movie you are watching at home or attending a Waz Mehfil (Islamic
religious sermons) in your locality - note down the main idea words that you
hear. You can also transcribe the ideas that help you understand in your own
words. Once this working habit is fully developed you can easily note down just
the main ideas and articulations. You can use your own abbreviations also to save
time, as long as you can recognize them afterwards. As you have to use the
notes later, accuracy and readability is second important rule. Reread your
notes later from the previous lecture / event and you can add any relevant
texts t them or look for further information in books, dictionaries or on the
Internet. This way you'll be able to stay "connected" to a series of
ideas / learning items for a longer period of time and perhaps for the rest of
your life. Last but not the least you should “organise: your notes. It's important to be able to easily recognize
the points / ideas you have noted down and to understand their contexts later
as to where the discussion of each idea begins and ends. This is why it's best
to divide your notes into paragraphs or even bullet points, draw rough flow
charts. When several concepts are being listed, structure them in a numbered
list in your notes.
Active Reading
One of the most recognised weaknesses among
today’s youth is the absence of reading. We often see many talented students
with very impressive marksheets. But during interviews when we ask a simple
question like what is the last book that they have read 98% of them fail to
name a good book or discuss its contents.
Often they will mention a pulp fiction or a trash novel like Three
Idiots but even in that book they won’t have any ‘deeper’ understanding. It
shows very poorly on the personality of a person who doesn’t have a single book
that they read with interest. The person may be a first class engineer or a
doctor but without a working habit of reading they often cut a sorry figure in
an interview / interaction where someone is looking for a ‘complete
personality’ rather than just a degree holder. In a very competitive world
where everybody carries impressive marksheets it will often lead to the finer
details of a person’s interest that will give him/her an edge over others. So,
one must develop the working habit of reading. It is not necessary to read a
lot of books but one must develop a habit of “active” reading. Just as with
your ability to concentrate, your reading will be affected by the conditions you’re
reading in and your personal inclination to reading at the time you choose to.
Set a time for regular reading (besides all that you read as a part of your
course / profession). Pick up a book that is a classic and understand why it is
a classic. Imagine how you come to know about a blockbuster movie that is being
released and how you expect a lot of things in that movie as you learnt from
the trailers you watched earlier. You enter the cinema theatre or sit in front
of TV with a lot of prior interest. This watching is different from what you
watch without any plan just to pass time.
Active reading demands that prior knowledge (like trailers) or
expectation to play in your mind while reading a book.
In the absence of a habit of active
reading, readers will set to read books like tome-pass and may not stop until
they've finished the very last word of the last sentence in a book. However,
effective ‘active’ readers will ask themselves questions before, during and
after their readings. They want to be more informed, they do background
reading. To fully understand a text, you need to prepare to read it. Active
reading means understanding the author's message. Again, reading can with
noting down the key words and information that will help you link the text to a
central idea or a plot. The secret to mentally annotating a text while reading is
finding a balance between sections you are reading and the rest of the book.
Visualise for Effective Learning
Many people
continue to wonder what makes the really successful professionals in life and
how they distinguish themselves from the average ones? Why do some students who
do so much hard work and seem to study all the time but just get average
results? It is the same in the professional career also: some seem to get
promotions faster apparently without doing lot of hard work killing themselves
while others just survive in the workspace. Some people link it to IQ and
genetics or are some other God given talent. The truth is that success in life is
not so much determined by sheer intelligence and academic excellence but by
‘effective learning habits’. Developing a working habit of learning demands
effective visualisation with analogies and examples. Visualisation skill is the
first step in developing effective learning. Say you are learning about power
and functions of the prime minister. In learning this part of the course you
must also visualise through facts/examples of how a Prime Minister is working.
You must carry along a scenic visual of how a Prime Minister is taking various
decisions. Learning by virilisation help us to understand and remember an idea
for long time. It also helps our expression and we can pass on our ideas to
others easily. It helps writing our exam answers well or explain a point at the
interviews.
It must be
remembered that all information gets into our brain through the sensory
pathways: Ears, eyes, skin, nose, and tongue. Successful people realize that to
learn something, it must be experienced and in the absence of a fast hand
experience (say you are unlikely of be a Prime Minister to understand the power
and function of that position), you must take the recourse of ‘visualisation’
adding what you watch on TV, read in newspapers and books about the Prime
Minister. This will help your understanding of the subject / issue much better
and gradually you will add this as your working habit to visualise with
suitable examples about anything you say or read.
Start Developing
Working Habit Today
A million dollar
question now arises in your mind that you are already entrenched into some
habits and it seems extremely difficult to change them (say to get up two hours
early from tomorrow). Is it possible to change your habits or develop new
working habits now? The answer is a definitive yes. Through some strategic
changes in your life style and a serious intent you can develop the few
extremely successful working habits that we discussed above can be cultivated
by anybody at any stage of their lives. If you’re serious about doing things
better than you are now – in other words, if you want to develop some of these
working habits – then you have to start small. Like any typical habits like brushing
your teeth, taking bath initial actions shall be small enough that you will not
even think about them later. Once developed you will simply do them
automatically. They are tiny actions taken daily that slowly become consistent
behaviour associated with your personality. If you want to form new habits, the
best way to start would be to make tiny changes like putting the alarm clock
say 15 min earlier than your typical wakeup time. Every week you reverse the
time by 15 minutes and you will see that our brain could quickly learn and automatically
repeat a habit easily. A few months later you will see that you are in fact
waking up two hours earlier!
The typical mistake
is to get super surcharged as soon as you one gets an inspirational lecture or
read an impressive how-to-do book and get high on a sudden flow of motivation.
Invariably he/she will fail quickly and a sense of lacking in willpower emerges
as a justification. The correct approach is how we learnt swimming: to play in the shallow water first overcoming
the fear of drowning slowly, then gradually going deeper until we internalise
the skill as a habit for life and we can then swim whether are ‘specifically motivated”
or not
In Charles Duhigg’s bestselling book, The
Power of Habit, he highlighted the 3 R’s of Habit Change.
According to him every habit we have — good or bad — follows the same
three–step pattern:
-
Reminder (the trigger that initiates the
behaviour)
-
Routine (the behaviour itself; the action you
take)
-
Reward (the benefit you gain from doing the
behaviour)
Charles Duhigg’s “Habit Loop” in The Power of
Habit
We often think
about our life goals and get lost in the bigger than life pictures. We also
think about the things as impossible that we can only achieve when the time is
right or when we have better resources or when we finally catch our big
opportunity. We often we get obsessed
with making dramatic transformations in our lives that we fail to focus on a
few small lifestyle changes through the working habits. Professor B J Fogg of Stanford University,
said very succinctly explained the idea in these words:
If you plant the
right seed in the right spot, it will grow without further coaxing. I believe this
is the best metaphor for creating habits. The “right seed” is the tiny
behaviour that you choose. The “right spot” is the sequencing — what it comes
after. The “coaxing” part is amping up motivation, which I think has nothing to
do with creating habits. In fact, focusing on motivation as the key to habits
is exactly wrong. Let me be more explicit: If you pick the right small
behaviour and
sequence it right,
then you won’t have to motivate yourself to have it grow. It will just happen
naturally, like a good seed planted in a good spot.
Small but powerful
habits, if they are repeated, internalised and sustained can make our big
dreams a reality. As it is said that dream big, but start small. Knowing how to
make changes in our life style and develop good working habit is not enough,
but we must include them as new goals into our life. It is obvious that making
changes in our already hardened habits is a challenge, our internal inertia, a
tendency to maintain status quo in life often deter us setting new life goals
and take us back into your old habits. Using the strategies discussed briefly
above will sure help you developing these highly successful working habits.
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NOTES:
(1) Late Prof Md Fokhrul Islam (1939-1991)
was born in Patherkandi, Dist Karimganj (Assam). He taught Economics at Cachar
College, Silchar and later became the Principal of Lala Rural College,
Hailakandi. In 1978 he was elected as an MLA from Patherkandi and later served
as a Deputy Minister of Education. He was the Chairman of Assam State Madrassa
Education Board for two consecutive terms.
(2) Tahajjud (Arabic: تهجد), also known as the "night
prayer", is a voluntary prayer performed by followers of Islam before
dawn. It is not one of the five obligatory prayers required of all Muslims,
although the Islamic prophet, Muhammad (PBUH) was recorded as performing the
Tahajjud prayer regularly himself and encouraging his companions too
(Wikipedia).
