Cerebrate Weekly: Mastering one thing at a time
We all have been in state of disorderliness in our life. Things look messy, disorganized and without direction. An overwhelming majority of people are in this state in the entirety of their life in almost all areas.
Then there are a few who then after being hit by the self-improvement enlightenment ideas, takes a radical approach to revive themselves. This involves improving every area of life.
With good intentions, we set target goals for each area, hoping for a quick overall permanent lifestyle change. However, we soon come to the realization that even with strong motivations & commitment to hard work, there is hardly any collective improvements.
This idea of mastering many areas of life somewhat looks counterintuitive. Many people including myself have been victims of this wrong strategy.
What we find from both revelatory & scientific teachings is that the best strategy to adopt for life style change is : ”Change Your Life Without Changing Your Entire Life“ (James Clear)
James Clear, the author of Atomic habits, writes “The counterintuitive insight from all of this research is that the best way to change your life is by not changing your entire life. Instead, it is best to focus on one specific habit, work on it until you master it, and make it an automatic part of your daily life. Then, repeat the process for the next habit.”
The Workplace Problem: Multi-tasking ineffectiveness
According to a research presented in the book “The One Thing”, the average person loses 28% of their workday to “multi-tasking ineffectiveness”. This 28% loss in a single day cumulates to 13 weeks lost in a year. And if you extend the math over to an entire career of 40 years, do you know how much you have lost? An entire Decade.
Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: As Cal Newport describes in his book Deep Work, we often confuse our busyness with productivity. He writes “The absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back towards an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.”
According to a Stanford study multitasking is overtaxing your brain and preventing you from concentrating. In test after test, researchers found the brain functions best when it focuses on “one string of information at a time”.
Cal Newport further highlights on this : “Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, focusing on one task at a time, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output”.
Wisdom in gradual revelation of Quran
In the spiritual paradigm too, we find similar approach.
Yusuf ibn Mahak reported: Aisha, the wife of Prophet Muhammed, may Allah be pleased with her, said,
“Verily, the first verses to be revealed were from the shorter chapters at the end of the Quran. In them is mentioned Paradise and Hellfire, until people were firmly established upon Islam and (then) verses of lawful and unlawful were revealed.
If the first verse to be revealed was ‘do not drink wine,’ they would have said, ‘we will never stop drinking wine.’ And if the first verse to be revealed was ‘do not commit adultery,’ they would have said, ‘we will never stop committing adultery.’”
Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4993
Wisdom in gradual learning of Quran
The Prophet Muhammed ﷺ Said : “The heart of the son of Adam changes more quickly than a pan of rapidly boiling water.”
Also Abu Abdur Rahman reported: The companions (of Prophet ﷺ )would learn to recite ten verses from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. They would not take another ten verses until they understood the knowledge and deeds they contained. They would say, “We learned sacred knowledge and action together.”
Source: Musnad Aḥmad 22971
💬Quote of the Week
🧭Weekly Compass
📺Video: Incremental Change vs. Radical Reform: In this lecture on Social Justice, Sh. Omar Suleiman explains the Prophetic model of social reform when injustice is present.
📃Article: The Art of Journaling by Ryan Holiday.
🧠Food for Thought
📖Read & Rise
📧 Newsletter: Read the past issues of this month’s Cerebrate Weekly:
💉Weekly dose of Inspiration
Egyptian Man with 15,000 Books : Hamdallah is an 82-year-old man who hasbeen collecting books for most of his life, gathering some 15,000 books in a small room which he turned into a library in his house.
🛠️ Tools for Thought
ToDoist: is a simple Task Management tool to organize you tasks. As the Brain is to create ideas & not to store it, with ToDoist you can take out all ideas from Your Head to To-Do List To Regain Clarity.