Read to Lead

    1. How often have we found ourselves to be extremely busy without getting anything substantial done? With so many tasks that need our attention, we often try to resort to multitasking without getting any results. How many times we have been tempted to check on our phone for latest notifications, messages on social media feed only to realise that we may have spent much more time than we ought to have spent. 2. Everywhere we look we find distractions, that compete for our attention and focus and the result is that we are not able to fully use our cognitive skills to produce good quality of work. Cal Newport who is an associate professor of  computer scien ce at Georgetown University has brought out these very problems that plague us in an age of information overload, in his book “DEEP WORK”.   He introduces us to the idea of deep wor k, which is:  “ Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive...

STILLNESS IS THE KEY I want to begin by telling a story. This is about my short football career. Not that I was particularly skilful in that sport. However, my lack of skills was more than made up when I became the default defender in lower string football teams in my Squadron during my training days. I was big and bulky (a kind word for overweight) and my body could take punishing blows that came along with the job description. Forget the football, target the opponent was all I knew and all I did and quite frankly enjoyed the same. It was in my fourth semester during a football match that the usual melee of players of both teams. To make out who had the ball was quite impossible. I and my fellow defenders were watching the ball from our half as the game progressed and hoping that the strikers score a goal for the team. Without much thought, I moved ahead into the opponents half and as if on cue saw the football racing towards me. All I knew that I had to take the shot...