“From Rusticus . . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 1.7.3
I think this meditation is for me only. In today’s world when already there are so many distractions. The technology that connected us with the world is the same that disconnecting us from ourselves. And when we are so distracted it is very difficult to develop a deeper understanding for things.
I have always been a person of breadth rather than depth. I try to learn so many things rather than gaining expertise in one. In that way, I am a jack of many trades but a master of none. This way of living has served my purpose till now in life. In my professional life, I was in a junior role where I need not know things at a deeper level. I just needed to finish things given to me and having a breadth of knowledge helps.
In my personal life too, I haven’t been much of a deep thinker. Yeah, I used to spend a lot of time in my head but that is entirely for building the castles in the air. There was no time spent in introspection or learning to think deeply. Perhaps I was scared to uncover things I don’t want to.
But from the past few years, I am realizing the demerits of such a way of living. As I am growing senior into my role, just knowing things on the surface doesn’t help. I need to have a deeper knowledge of things. In my personal life too, surface-level thinking has restricted my understanding of myself and my blindsides and thus has limited my growth here too.
In the past few months, I have taken some conscious efforts to inculcate the habit of deep thinking in my life. In this post, I want to share with you few things that have helped me to develop a habit of deeper understanding and some plans I wish to adopt in the future to solidify this habit. I hope it helps you too in finding your deeper self.
What do I do to develop a habit of deep understanding?
- I keep my phone away from my work desk and also in bed
- Muted the notification of all social media which can distract me. Now I check social media only when I want to not when someone else posts something.
- Started using a To-Do list to track things I want to do
- Started reading non-fiction which opened my mind to so many ideas
What I plan to do further?
- Read a good book on this subject. One that is on my TBR is Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
- Inculcate the habit of daily learning
- Include the use of a planner in my daily routine
There are few things that I have done and there are few things that I want to do. But I am on a journey and I hope to keep improving every day.
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