Plan today !

 Today is one of those days where I am going to write for a period of 60 minutes. As and with silence, to me it is scary. Silence really is scary to me. It takes me out of my comfort zone but I am well aware that the real growth will happen beyond the comfort zone. The area which is hard, the area that is difficult, but that's exactly the area where we need to be in stillness. I have some friends coming over and there's a certain excitement for them. I'm going to take the 30 day challenge from Cal for no social media. Instead we want to replace it with positive activities. We've spoken about that topic about no social media from a quite long time. Today we want to discuss how does no social media really benefit you and the problems you will have when you quit. 

## Hard and discomfort

Whenever we start something be it anything, whether it's going to the gym or whether that's stopping social media all together. The first few minutes or the first 3-4 days are going to be hard. Uncomfortable and distressing. You will be distracted. Your mind will wander. You will not have anything much to do. But slowly and steadily you will discover the joy of staying off. You will start playing sports more, you will start reading more, you will socialise with your friends more. You will start going out more often. You need to survive the first 3-4 days without it. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be challenging and it is meant to challenge you. 

## Start small

During the initial days of the challenge you want to start really small. Don't try and spend one hour in silence while you write. Don't. First strategies what you want to write. For an example, you might want to write something about quitting social media. You want to outline what you want to write about. Maybe start by a simple habit of listening to music. I know silence will be hard at times. But start by listening to the music you want. Don't go to the extreme silence. Don't go to extreme noise, just somewhere in between. Then you fill in the void by reading great high quality books. Fill in that void by cleaning your room. Fill in the void by going shopping and buying important things that you need. Stopping social media will help you by forcing you to plan better. You won't have an easy escape mechanism.

## Social media

So when I talk about social media. There's addiction. Why do I say that social media and addiction are related? Any type of addiction whether that's cigarettes or alcohol take you away from the underlying feeling of either loneliness, sadness or hunger, or something that's beneath the surface. On the other hand, when I talk about social media, it is the way to be social without really getting the benefits of a social being. We are humans and we are social people. The more we think about it, we need to be social. If we try to dismiss this feeling by being active on social media, we are forgetting our root of connecting with other people. We need to connect with other people and have a really good conversation with different types of people. If social media tries and solves the problem, it's trying to solve a very surface level problem and in fact trying to numb a problem. We need to be in contact of people in order to solve the issue.

## Benefits come slowly so be patient

When you quit social media, and you start reading books and start moving in the direction of the work that you really wish to do. You will recognise that you will start getting more and more clarity out of what you want in life. Social media won't cloud your judgment. Nothing in the world will distract you too much. In fact, during this challenging time, you will not see any benefits. It's like the exponential curve that stays a flat line for a long period of time until you see the steep upward slope. So benefits of this process will come slowly. It won't come this quickly. So well, stay patient and let the process get you benefits when it has to come in. 

## What kind of benefits should you expect? 

When you leave social media completely, at first you would not see any benefits. In fact, you would find it extremely hard to navigate life around. However, as time passes by, you will see that you are now becoming an expert in different fields. Maybe you want to learn finance. So you start learning finance and become a master of that. When you stop using social media, life will force you to plan out your days, thus making you calmer and more strategic. You will also become more responsible and you will procrastinate less in life. You will be able to stay in the zone for a longer period of time. You will also become more thoughtful. The final and the most important of all, you will be able to become more stable thus resulting into more calmness and structure. You will achieve things that you might have dreamt of. 

## How do I start? 

Now when I talk about where do we start here. It's easy. Stop using the phone and start getting that feeling of anxiety. It's hard. It's difficult. But you got to stay with that discomfort and pain. Now when you're in that discomfort and pain, you will realise that you want to do something in that time. For an example, you might have to plan every minute of the day. Without that planning it will be extremely difficult to live a life beyond the daily grind. After all, what we want to be thinking is not just in one month, we need to be thinking in scales. We need to be thinking long term not just short term. But well that's where you start. You need to think in long term. Do those things that will benefit you in the long term rather than in short term. Buy a calendar. It's okay whatever it costs. If you like a physical calendar, buy that physical calendar. If you like something else as a planning tool. Do that. Make sure you are planning every minute. 

## Lapses

The truth is we are all humans. Unless you're an AI reading this. We are humans. We will make mistakes. We will have lapses. We will have issues controlling ourselves from social media. We will have problems coming back to the rhythm. For the next 30 days, that's why it's quite important to hold yourself accountable. The way you hold yourself accountable is through metrics. Take a sheet of paper and write today's date and say that's your day 1. Count 30 days from that particular day. For example, let's say today is April 4th. Let's for simplicity sake take May 4th would be the timeline where we are going to have this challenge. During these 30 day period just observer yourself falling. No need to reset the timeline. Just note what you did, for example you might have opened instagram or Facebook or twitter during the time. Tell yourself it's okay, but just be self aware. Carry a notebook with you. It's easy after the first few days honestly to maintain the rhythm that you are in. 

## What is the typical day going to look like for you

There are going to be blocks of time reserved for certain activities. For an example, there are going to be blocks of time reserved for gym. Let's call it 6-7pm. That's it. Now that activity is meant for gym and you are going to do that daily. Now that is something moving you towards your goal of looking healthy and fit. What are other activities that you need? Maybe there are activities during the day that you wish to complete. For example when you're working, you're just working till 5:30. That's your time to work as hard as possible and make it count. There might be time blocks for cooking. There might be time blocks for eating, etc. Right? So that's a typical day for you. However, it's quite important to plan out your whole day minute by minute. Even if it does not go as per plan that's okay. What we want to do is to make sure that we have planned it out. Sometimes you require to do the tax filing, for example, it's April and you need to do the tax filing. That's important. Plan that out. Sometimes you require to get your DL updated. Get that done. It's important. Sometimes it's important that you pay your bills. Go and do that. Sometimes you require to go shopping. The idea is that when you have all of these things written down, you are going to remember them better and make sure you get to those things.

## Stopping social media gives you benefits like these

Like I said, once you start planning out your day, you will start to see the benefits in the next 30 days slowly and steadily. It won't come immediately. You will feel much more in control, you will speak better. You will write better. You will know what to do when and go about stuff well enough. Because you are paying your bills, because you are going for shopping because you are going to the gym, different aspects of your life will be covered. Now when you cover different aspects of your life, naturally you will feel happier and much more stable in life. I know it takes time to get there. But once you get there, there is no going back. You will have the space to write and read also. But as I said, start planning each and every minute of the day. Feel the hard things and do those things well enough. It's going to the hard. Never said it's easy, but you will feel a great deal of calm when you get there. You will see more success in life. You will see more opportunities thrown to you in life. You will see the benefits of a greater good in life. You will thoroughly become a better version of yourself. So it's almost 4:00 pm now, for you, it might be something else while you're reading. If the day is over fine, plan for the next day immediately. If the day is not over and for whatever amount of time you have left, make sure every minute of your day is planned. 

## Magnifying glass

So when you look at a magnifying glass, what do you see, they say a magnifying glass can burn a piece of paper if you keep it at the sun. However, if you keep moving the magnifying glass, do you think you will burn a piece of paper, most likely not? Why it has to be kept steady. It has to be kept stable. So when I was learning more about focus and how to increase focus in one's life, I had learned that you have to write five distractions that can block you from focusing on a particular task, and then write five solutions to it. That gave me a great deal of focus in life. When you plan, you will naturally increase the focus in your life too. After all, you won't be thinking of something else when you are doing something. For example, when you are coding, you are not thinking about sports. Because you know sports will be taken care at the time of sports and now at this point in time, what's important is coding. Even Ms Dhoni believes strongly in planning. If you don't plan enough, you won't succeed enough. So start to do justice for the money that you are getting in your  field. All of it will come when you are planning. You will also be able to produce whatever you want when you have a planned life. 

## Brain is a network

We should always try and connect the dots with different things in our lives. For an example, when I talk about our brain, it's nothing but a neural circuitry. So you got to connect different dots with different things. For an example, you might have to connect dots with physics and coding at times. You might have to connect dots with sports and coding. So when you're away from social media, you will be able to think of creative solutions as well. You will be able to think in terms of not just one aspect but multiple aspects of life. So start doing planning is what I would say at this point in time.

## Interest and curiosity is built when you're good at something

When you are good at something that's where interest and curiosity is built. For an example, when I talk about certain things like coding, I am good at it, I have experience, I know certain things that's why I enjoy it. I know how to write code and that's why I enjoy it. Similarly, I enjoy the activity of cricket, because, it is mildly challenging that I face different bowlers but at the same time, it's enjoyable because I am really good at it. So be interested and curious only comes to you, when you are good at something. Being good at something means you have to do a planned effort. Like they say, flow and deliberate practice is not the same. Deliberate practice is when you are making an effort and its unenjoyable, however, flow is when you are just involved in the task and activity and its enjoyable. 

## Plan for 10 minutes benefit for entire day

A lot of people want to get straight into work. For example, new software engineers like going staight into development. They don't take time for design. They don't take time to go through the design and understand everything thoroughly. They just go for it. While senior engineers like designing. They like understanding different challenges. They like recognising the challenge and then moving according to it. They are someone who thinks and thinks and plans. Then lets Claude or someone do the work. That is the right approach. It might take them 10 minutes to design and plan. But that will save 1000s of minutes of rework. So it is quite important to design before you start coding. Similarly if you plan for 10 minutes everyday, you will save thousands and thousands of hours. The benefits will come eventually not in one day. But start planning today is what I would leave you with.