Food for thought

Spending hours at work doing nothing ( because there is actually nothing to do ) invariably leads to philosophical questions like 'How can I find work that is truly satisfying?', 'How will I do this for the rest of my life?'. Reading articles and blogs leads to a desire to do something meaningful to serve people who could use some help. Listening to music gets me dreaming about leaving everything and just playing music. But then what follows is a realization that these wont pay my bills, and I will have to suck it up for much longer. When some good work comes along, these thoughts get thrown out the window, and I am more or less satisfied.

On yet another boring workday, I stumbled upon a brilliant article called 'Solitude and Leadership'. It pointed out how the leadership of most organisations just keeps the routine going. People at the top are there not because they are particularly competent, innovative, but just made it there to the top by means of a process. I am not trying to throw light at incompetent management ( I have worked with some useless ones, but also some brilliant people). The point is that most of us end up doing tasks that have very little significance on the overall scheme of the organisation, but just keeps the routine going. Every stage of the organisational hierarchy sucks up to the stage above. But companies make profit, so some people must be doing stuff that count or maybe the sum of our singular contributions works in favour of the company.

The article points out how distractions like Facebook, TV, Youtube, even newspapers prevent us from really concentrating and bombards us with a stream of other peoples thoughts, therefore not allowing your own thoughts to flourish. Solitude is needed to find yourself, for introspection to answer difficult questions about your life. Solitude is needed for concentration of focussed work. Your first thought is always someone else's and sticking to the question, letting all parts of your mind come into play breeds an original idea, and for a leader, a much-needed change in policy or strategy.

What I love about the article, is that it includes deep friendship as a part of solitude. Intimate conversation with people you trust, opening up to them and asking questions or expressing feelings, becomes a part of introspection, and enhances your solitude.

The article provides ample food for thought, which I may not have justified here. This rather preachy and philosophical post is to remind me to make better use of the abundance of solitude I seem to find and enjoy, to work on concentration and to celebrate the amazing friends I have.