Focus
Focus
Again, today I wasted some 5 hours on internet without knowing what I learnt, observed or understood. It’s not the only day it happened; it happens too often. And it’s only now I understood what at the heart of the problem is. It’s a "Focus problem. It’s a problem of not knowing what actually you are looking for; what point do you want to get to? I bet you start anything without knowing your focus and you will end up without knowing your achievement. The reason is you do not know what to do; which activity should precede or follow which one. You just fling arrows in the air with the hope of hunting. The possibility of getting something solid with this approach is that much as getting a bird hunted with an arrow hurled blindly in the open air.
Last week Faisal (My MS class fellow) told me that he had gone to library in the morning with the hope to read a lot. He said that he could not go beyond the several opening paragraphs of four books. When asked why he told that he did not understand what to do as there were many books and scores of chapters in each book. "I cannot read all the books and all the chapters"…. "What topic to study first?"… "Which book is important one to be studied first? These questions arose in my mind. "Then knowing my limitation that I cannot read all the things at once (which of course is everyone’s limitation), my interest started to fad", he said. At the end, he said he got nothing.
The above example of Faisal suggests that going too ambitious without knowing your objective (Focus) will lead you nowhere. Starting too many things at same time is an example of losing your focus. One should first point out to himself that this is the specific thing he is going to do. Tell yourself "I will first read and understand this specific topic and then go to the next.
One great advantage of learning from a teacher is that he gives us a focus. No matter the teacher is effective or not in teaching, he establishes our focus on topics. Any topic he touches upon seems important to us and then we try to understand it. If you are given all the books that are taught in MBA and given the same time as any MBA graduate have for the completion of MBA, it will be a lot harder for you to get the same knowledge level as others will get with the help of a teacher. This is not to say that we cannot create focus without a teacher. The only purpose of saying this here is to tell ourselves that what role focus plays in our lives; to tell ourselves that we have to get it with/from any source.Remember, if you do not know where you are going, any way will lead you there.
Attaullah Shah
Thursday, April 21, 20053:25:10 PM