Enlist yourself for the good stuff here
authored, with loads of love & thought, by Pranjali Pratik
Can you think of a time when you were listening to an audiobook or a YouTube video in the background while doing something else? An interesting idea, or a thrilling moment in the story almost made you stop in your tracks and single-mindedly focus on what was being said. For a few moments, your primary activity at the time had to take a backseat.
Has this happened to you?
The mind may be an infinite resource, but the amount of mental energy we can expend over a period of time is finite. This is what makes it hard to focus equally on our primary task along with the thrilling story. The climactic build up of the story in the audiobook has us so emotionally invested that we have to physically stop doing other things, even though the organs and senses being used in the other task are completely unrelated to listening.
The Nobel Prize Winner, Daniel Kahneman, talks about this idea in his very highly recommended book “Thinking Fast and Slow”, describing the rate of mental drain caused by a task as “Cognitive Load”. Things that require concentration take a greater toll on our mental energy than those that can be carried out almost passively. This drain is termed “Ego Depletion”.
Quick note: Ego here isn’t what we colloquially use to describe arrogance – “He has such an Ego”. Here, “Ego”, as a psychological term, refers to our sense of self.
Our conscious self is who we are, and who we want to be as projected through our actions and choices. Upon mental exhaustion, we lose some of the control over our actions which can often lead to irrational, ill-advised actions that we may come to regret.
Join us in Episode 9 to understand these concepts better, and to also find ways to avoid mistakes made in an “Ego Depleted” state.
You can also check it out on YouTube! It’s only 12 minutes long.
“An empty mind is not the devil’s playground, as is popularly conveyed by that Hindi saying, “Khaali dimaag shaitaan ka ghar hota hai.”
In this episode, we try to drive home the point that it’s actually an empty mind that’s divine.
Strange? I promise you it will make sense after listening to the episode.