IITD Talk: The Path of Action

The role of action is very sig­nif­i­cant. Action-ori­en­ta­tion can help young­sters in a big way. Deci­sive action is that, where you have decid­ed this week, this needs to be done, you just, roll up your sleeves and get it done, then that is out of your mind space. That does not mean the over­all goal is done. But, what­ev­er needs to be done at the cur­rent point in time is done, it is like, you have an assign­ment tomor­row and you have post­poned or pro­cras­ti­nat­ed till the last minute, you will see you will not be able to sit in class, nei­ther can you get out. Sit­ting here you will all the while be think­ing about that, even when that is at hand, you will all the while be saying,”This is there, this is there, this is there…” That is a very inef­fi­cient and inef­fec­tive way to approach work. It is sim­pler to just see, “Okay, this, this…for this, I need to do that, and you do that”. To that extent, to the extent of your effort and your back­ground, that you have already built up, any­how the result, what you broad­ly require will hap­pen. That is the effec­tive way towards suc­cess. Oth­er­wise, you will nei­ther be here nor there. This is the path of action. So that becomes crit­i­cal. It is not too much about phi­los­o­phiz­ing. It is about get­ting into the act. Just do it!… You sim­ply do it. You have thought about it, this is what needs to be done, and you do it. Say for exam­ple, two months down the line, you have exams. You plan ahead, “Okay, this is how much I need to put in effort, for this kind of result”, Let us say, you have that sort of an idea.. All that you need to do is exe­cute that. But in the process, you might encounter, “Okay, at this time, I can do this, I can do that„ I can do this, I can do that…Oh! So many choic­es. What do I do?” That might also hap­pen. But when that hap­pens, at that point in time, what all can you do? If it is some­thing seri­ous, you can do only one thing. If it is not so seri­ous, or if is that which does not require so much atten­tion, you can jug­gle. So it depends on the qual­i­ty of the work. So jug­gling things, you can jug­gle. Those that require intense focused effort for that peri­od of time, you will need to allo­cate that time and get it over with. Then you will see, actu­al­ly, it is a great life. And towards that, one very impor­tant thing that helps is for exam­ple, morn­ing you wake up and do 18 Surya Namaskars. You will see you will get into the groove of action. You will just get things done.” Abhi nahi, baad mein…abhi nahi baad mein…abhu nahi baad mein…” This if it does not come out of lazi­ness or lethar­gy, it is called strat­e­gy. But if you are in a posi­tion to get some­thing done and if you don’t do it, then that stalls your progress. That will stall it. It will occu­py the space here and eat it there. It will be like – “Oh..I have not done that…I have not done that…I have not done that…” You will not be able to do any­thing peace­ful­ly.