Disengagement for Productivity: Why we'll increasingly need it

Today's world is a global village. Everyone who can and afford to, is increasingly connected via internet. This technological encroachment has revolutionized how we spend our time now and how we entertain ourselves. It has shown us ways to learn in a new and diverse ways. It facilitates connections among people and gives a new dimension to social interaction. But there's a latent and inbuilt risk involved in this constant connected mode.

Namely 'distraction'. Our social media today is not only to keep in touch with our friends and family, rather it is a feed of our own choice. We subscribe and return to it to benefit from the channels, pages and services they constantly throw at us. We stay hungry for what's going on in the lives of the people we care, and in the world around. Ironically, we are not satiated in the end. Those modicum of information, that mixture of feeds only leave us more hungry and impatient.

At the end, exposed to information of various kind and nature, which is also insufficient and inadequate to quench our thirst, we grow impatient and agitated and repeatedly visit different sites and feeds for what we often don't know ourselves. As a result, it leaves us bewildered and dissatisfied. This is why disengagement is the name of the game in today's world.

We have to know when to engage and when disengage. In order to retain and increase our productivity and get rid of restlessness and stress that results from 'browsing' through materials and information, we actively should decide to disengage and disconnect to return to our priorities and academic/ professional activities. If we fail to disengage and return to 'life' and whatever we love to do, we will ever deviate and derail our attention, goals and ambitions.

So, disengagement is vital for increased productivity and fulfillment in life and work.    

Staying in one's hometown for a lifetime, and not moving

In today's globalized world, we witness people often relocating to different cities or countries for the purposes of education, jobs and even for 'better living conditions'. It is almost an indicator of your 'success' if you roam around the world for whatever reasons, and bring 'gifts' for your near and dear ones. While gifts are nice ideas and can be brought from home as well, the idea of 'going global' is a reality. However, one might decide to stay, settle, live out his life in his hometown or country, and that too, for very good reasons as well.

First of all, settling in one's hometown enables him to stay with his people, his parents, friends and relatives. If we consider this transient existence of ours, being with the people you care can be all that you would require.

Secondly, one doesn't have to roam around the world to know about it, in this age of information superhighway. As the popular saying goes, 'If you cannot travel, read', so, reading while staying in the comfort of your friends and relatives could bring in more reward and fulfillment to one's life. This way, you can have the best of both the worlds, i.e. stay home and know about the world.

Finally, if one settles in one's own country and community, one doesn't only stays back, he also contributes directly to the development of his own people, something which is priceless for the people and the country, and for one's personal satisfaction as well.

So, one can live, work and live out one's life in any way one wishes to. But the most satisfactory life and living would require his serving his own people and bring about change to his own country and community.                 

At the university: teaching or researching?

'Hope this year will bring peace and prosperity to the much grieve world!' was the Facebook status of one of my friends. He happens to be a PhD. in English Literature, well employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department. And by virtue of his Doctorate, he features in high profile forums and meetings and have been given some lead in the Department as well. But, as the quotation rightly elucidates, he is, in actuality, a very volatile 'scholar' having decided flaws and shortcomings when it comes to using English as a language. 'Scholars' like him are to be spotted quite frequently in Departments, who claim that they do good research. Therefore, people who do research are not always in possession of comprehensive knowledge, threfore those who have a strong reading habit should only teach in the Department, irrespective of their interest in research. 

However, researchers are important assets of a country. Their research creats new knowledge which in turn is fed into industries to value add products and services. Without good researches, mankind would've stuck in the same place, and societies wouldn't have marched forward and prospered. But since the researchers focus on a very narrow field for research purposes, they understandably don't possess a thorough and sound knowledge on the whole subject matter, quite unlike an engrossing and passionate reader who reads for pleasure and sheer knowledge. 

Since a reader's job is to read compulsively, it is more likely that he would take interest in his teaching assignment and read accordingly to deliver lectures worth the students' time. They would be able to explain better, due to their having an upper hand with the field of knowledge in general, and the teaching/ learning quality in the classroom would improve manifold. This is not to say that researchers will not teach, for they definitely will. But preferably to a limited extent. Their main job in the department would be to do research, coach students with their research projects and publish quality research for the consumption of all stakeholders, including the teachers who, obviously, would read and incorporate the new information in their lectures in classrooms. 

This arrangement of people having genuine knack of research doing mostly just that, and people who love reading and teaching doing so, would increase the research/ teaching objectives of the university, and be most beneficial for all concerned. This would also solve problems arising from the requirements that teachers would 'have to' do research even if it's not their first priority, and that researchers are expected to have a holistic knowledge in the field and teach flawlessly in classrooms.

As mentioned earlier, teaching and researching are both equally important and crucial for the success of any higher seat of learning. A good, well informed teacher can motivate and inspire students in more ways than can be imagined. Similarly, a good researcher plays a vital role in producing new knowledge for the society and mankind. Without needing one to have his finger in both the pies, both the teacher and the researcher can contribute for the benefit of students and the society at large.  

Good fences make good neighbors

Robert Frost said it rightly 101 years ago. Truly good fences make good, responsible neighbors who work together to ensure safety and peace for the entire neighborhood.

This is most in violation in today's world and in recent times. If we start from the beginning of it all: Saddam Hossain in Iraq was a despot and a tyrant. He murdered many people unjustly and finally invaded Kuwait and declared it a part of his own territory. He was a mischief and he didn't uphold the sanctity of the fence as a good neighbor.

But the US didn't do that as well, for that matter. Senior Bush ultimately invaded Iraq, for WMD or whatever, in an effort to redress a wrong with yet another.  

The first violator was Iraq, and that was followed by the US and its 'allies'. But the latter didn't stop there. Soon we saw the fall and devastation in Libya, Afghanistan and finally Syria. Saudi Arabia decided to join the party of 'invasion frenzy' as well, by cobbling up an 'Arab coalition' and starting to bomb Yemen.

Had all the parties maintained and upheld Frost's advisory of keeping to their own fences, none of these would've happened today. Now we have a distraught Middle East, and a perilous Europe, with war cries coming from all around.

That indicates the world must've been in the wrong set of hands. It needs a complete overhauling now.   

Helping others

It happened with me so many times.

It has been happening to me since, I don't know when. Every time it happens, I am heart broken. They say, that a friend in need is a friend indeed. My attitude, though, is not quite influenced by this adage; as I must admit I have found helping others to be one of the most pleasurable things in life. I like to help others, am almost obsessed with it and often do it if it is not much of an inconvenience.

That is alright. But the problem is, that when people notice that you are a helping kind, they take you for granted and use and exploit you. They find out that you are a peculiar case of one wanting to help others, and ask for it whenever they need it. I'm kind of tired of appearing to be a 'fool' in their eyes for this behavior.

And I must admit, receiving some reciprocal help is not entirely undesirable to me. I do expect some help from the other end if I can't help it myself. And my poor heart is, as I said previously, broken when I don't get it.

I sit down and think as to why I should be denied something I so generously give to others? Then I realize that the problem may well lie with me. Because I never made a deal, I volunteered to help. I noticed that whenever a person helps another, he conveys through gestures and tacit hints that he would be expecting the same. But I never did that to anyone. In fact, I try to appear as if my helping is no matter at all, lest the other person feels bad in his heart thinking he might be bothering me.

I always try to appear as if my help is no big deal, and that they couldn't done it themselves had they wished. I didn't want the other person to feel uneasy.

But what I get in return is betrayal. Whenever I expect a little help from my beneficiaries, they turn me down on the floor.

And I am saddned. Sometimes I resolve not to help them or any other person in future, and that that was the last case of charitable service.

But I know a while later that it would be impossible for me to do that. I would still be helping others, for the sake of humanity and for the pleasure it brings me. I feel this is the highest religion an man can follow.

And I would bear the denials and ingratitudes, more often, smilingly.

Motivation to live.

Question: Think about having an abundance of money. Describe what you would do with it.



Answer: 

What if I had an unlimited amount of money at my disposal? Let me make a list of the changes I'd bring to my life:

1. I would buy a very big summer house in Bangladesh, somewhere in my hometown Narshingdi. It would have all the wealth of nature infused with cutting-edge modern amenities. I would have horses, cows, goats at my stables and have armed men to secretly guard me and my family. I would have cars and private jets and copters.

2. I would go for a world tour. I would start with Egypt's Pyramids, then to Turkey's Hegia Sophia, followed by Paris, London, Germany, Greece, Spain, Africa, India and Easter Island. I would stay in nice hotels, taste the best food available and roam about extensively.

3. I would buy myself an astounding number of books, with classics and books on Bangla. My library would have early to latest publications on subjects I'm interested in.

4. I would have one of the best sound systems in my house, with original tracks to play.

5. I would drive some cars and eat the best chocolates as well.

That's about it. That's the limit of my aspirations. I don't want any more.

Whatever you do, you only sponsor

How many times have you thoughtlessly looked at the TV screen where our PM is articulating painstakingly-imagined accusations and schemes of plots against the opposition leader? Or, encountered some dramas on screen on any of the private channels where girls more aggressively try to befriend and enter into love affairs with boys, giving you an impression that the producer might have a propaganda behind the entire design of the theatrical?

All I'm saying is that whatever you do, you only sponsor. If you don't deliberately and determinedly part with things you don't absolutely approve of, you are sponsoring it, unintentionally. That's why I have stopped looking at the TV screen even if it's on before my very eyes, and have learned to work despite the obvious sound of jingles of very uncomfortable commercials. For I have figured out, the moment I pay attention, I give my approval to it; and in return, it takes time off my life.

There are some more things that I have recently stopped sponsoring. For example:

1. Looking at people (coworkers, high-ups, local acquaintances) for whom I don't have a personal respect due to their not being up to par. I simply have started refusing to condescend.

2. Avoiding people who I know only look for their personal advantages, and don't care a fig for others. They are like traders; you talk to them thinking you are socializing, but you waste time, for they are only after using you in the most unpredictable way!

3. Watching anything on TV or in my computer which is not related to my work and my cause. Science fictions, fantasies, high-pitch unreal action dramas - these don't help me. They don't entertain me as well. They don't contribute to the materialization of my work and goal.

Instead, I have started to adhere to the following:

1. Pray. I have decided to become deeply and solidly religious. Plus, it also helps me stay away from vices and makes me a better, compassionate and openhearted individual.

2. Concentrate on my work and on things that would bring me and the people I care for, benefits. Reading a book and carrying a book always in my hand and reading even one sentence, or one word - is immensely and unfathomably more advantageous and rewarding than talking to people who simply suck. No wonder, I remember the saying: 'Life is too short to spend even a second with people that suck.'

3. Answer and give attention to my daily biological necessities in full, id est, sleeping adequately (if not more adequately), eating good food, gearing up and exercising to have good, highly rewarding sex, spending time with wife by taking her out or just lying in bed close together thinking of nothing particular, watching news channels on TV or just browsing channels for some time, doing regular stuff on the Internet etc.

I believe if you want to be a good human being and want to enjoy your life fully, you should immediately STOP sponsoring wrong people and things and START working for things that matter to you and your cause.

I also fear that perhaps humans are a little frivolous by nature, and they unintentionally like to while away their time (you find it present in almost all the animals as well - no wonder man is a social animal!). In order to get rid of this frivolity, we need to consciously make choices and be focus on our goals.

I wish you my kind of life, and please wish me good luck in pursuance of the standards and resolutions that I've decided for myself.

Thanks.