How to balance work and fun in life? || Acharya Prashant (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Full Video: How to live, and not just survive? || Acharya Prashant, at St. Xavier's, Mumbai (2022) Link:      • How to live, and not just survive? ||...    ➖➖➖➖➖➖  ‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...  ⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates? Join WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va6Z...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work? Contribute: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/contri...   Want to work with Acharya Prashant? Apply to the Foundation here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/hiring...  ➖➖➖➖➖➖  Video Information: 19.10.2022, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai   Context: ~ How to live and not just survive? ~ How to live rightly? ~ What is the right thing to do in life? ~ How to know what is our passion? ~ Can computer overtake humans?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 How do you balance that work and life and fun relationship together?

00:11 You have to start from seeing where your time is actually going.

00:20 See time is not necessarily purely objective.

00:27 There is one thing called the material time that you look at in a chronometer, in a watch.

00:44 You could call it the chronological time.

00:47 And there is another thing that we experience, time in the head.

00:53 As we experience it, time in the head.

00:58 Mental time, psychological time.

01:03 Psychological time does not run the same way as material time.

01:13 Intervals that are boring to us, distasteful to us, dislikable to us, stretch within.

01:21 They are experienced as bigger and more important than they really are.

01:32 So for example, I took around one and a half hours coming to your college.

01:38 I am at Juhu.

01:42 But these one and a half hours appeared longer than one and a half.

01:47 Now if I am not being very objective about my time, I will feel as if of my, let's say,

01:59 17, 18 waking hours and the 14 odd hours that I have available for work, to and fro commute

02:12 has taken away six hours, whereas objectively how much has been expended?

02:22 One and a half plus another one and a half.

02:26 So that's just three.

02:28 But because the Mumbai traffic obviously is not something anybody can relish.

02:35 Because you cannot relish it, because every moment feels like a tax, a burden.

02:44 So internally this expands to six and that's okay.

02:49 That's okay to know that this time is not likable, so it is appearing longer.

02:57 But it is a mistake when that internal appearance is transported to outer calculations.

03:07 Internally it appeared like six hours.

03:09 Now if I take that six hours as an objective figure, as a material reality, then I'll entitle

03:16 myself to say, oh, I have all in all 14 hours available to myself in the day.

03:22 And out of those 14 hours, six hours have been taken away by the commute.

03:28 I'm not deliberately deceiving anybody.

03:33 It's just that I am not mindful of the fact that the experiencer shapes the experience.

03:43 I do not know that.

03:45 The experiencer of three hours can shape them to make them appear like, feel like six hours.

03:54 All that is within.

03:55 The six hours are within, not here.

03:57 Here there are only three hours.

04:01 But the moment I say, oh, I lost six hours out of 14, I have entitled myself to feel

04:07 like a sufferer or a victim.

04:10 Not only that, I have licensed myself to say that a huge chunk, 40% of my time is being

04:19 needlessly spent on something and I'm helpless in that regard because I can't change my commute

04:24 time.

04:25 So what do I do if my academic results are not that good or if I do not get time for

04:30 my co-curricular activities or time for socializing or time for sports or time for entertainment

04:35 and so many other things that a young person wants to have in life?

04:41 The thing is, we ought to be objective.

04:45 We ought to know where it really is going.

04:49 Are we keeping a record?

04:52 Try keeping a record.

04:53 Try seeing where it actually is going and you might find that nobody is actually all

04:59 that short of time.

05:01 Time is there.

05:02 It's just that when time is expended in activities that please us, we try to hide

05:09 that time.

05:12 Because it's our little joyful secret.

05:16 I spent one hour doing something that is very pleasing, but at the same time, not productive

05:23 at all, not useful at all.

05:25 There is no creativity in that.

05:26 There is just a very average kind of or low kind of pleasure in that.

05:33 Will I admit to myself that one hour of my active time, waking time is being taken away

05:40 by that activity daily?

05:41 No, I'll not admit that.

05:43 So that one, objectively, will be reduced to zero internally and three hours of commute

05:53 objectively will be blown up to six internally.

05:58 So the calculations will go haywire.

06:01 When you put the numbers on the sheet, if you're not being objective, you're just

06:06 going by appearances and experiences, you will feel, oh my God, I'm just a victim.

06:11 I'm a poor victim because I'm a Mumbai girl and the traffic is so bad and the college

06:16 timings, they are so oppressive.

06:18 What do I do?

06:19 I have time for self-development, for co-curriculars and I want to visit libraries and you know,

06:23 I want to have a nice little walk on the beach in the evenings and none of that is being

06:28 possible because the entire system is just oppressing me.

06:31 That's not really the case.

06:34 If you will be honest, you will find that significant chunks of your time are being

06:40 taken away by activities you do not even want to admit to yourself.

06:45 All of us are involved in activities that simply, but silently, surreptitiously, now

06:54 at our time, those things are not bold enough and open enough to just come and declare,

07:04 yes, we are going to take away two hours of your daily schedule.

07:08 They will not declare that because if they'll declare that, they will be caught.

07:12 They will say, oh, it's so bad, two hours spent every day gossiping, chatting or scrawling

07:20 reels.

07:21 No, no, no, that's just too bad.

07:23 So what will we do?

07:24 We will act to ourselves, we will pretend to ourselves as if that time does not exist

07:32 at all.

07:33 So those two objective hours will simply be marked as zero within.

07:36 No, that didn't happen.

07:37 Yes, I went to bed at 11 because, you know, I'm a student, I'm supposed to wake up like

07:42 6, 7 maximum.

07:43 I have to reach the college at what time?

07:46 8 time?

07:47 8, 9?

07:48 8.

07:49 So I'm supposed to wake up at 5.30 so that I can leave the home by 6.15 and be here in

07:53 time.

07:56 And how was I feeling in the commute?

07:58 Drowsy, energyless, all sapped out, ready to fall over.

08:06 The neighbor was trying to be extra careful.

08:09 Anytime something can tumble over me.

08:13 Why was all that happening?

08:16 Because did you really sleep at 11pm?

08:19 No.

08:20 11pm is when you declare to yourself that you have gone to bed.

08:24 Till 1am in the night, it was Instagram.

08:32 Is that not so?

08:33 And I'm not saying that offhand.

08:38 The usage statistics of social media among the youth very clearly bring out this aspect.

08:49 Young people are most active on social media two hours before and two hours after midnight.

08:58 10pm to 2am.

09:02 That's when young people are running about on social media.

09:08 Why don't we talk about that traffic?

09:10 There's a lot of traffic there.

09:13 Why don't we talk about the traffic there?

09:15 You know what happened?

09:16 You'd have been in your school at that time and you wouldn't have had a phone available

09:20 to you.

09:22 When data first started becoming available, I'm talking of a situation 10 years back or

09:29 something, these companies, they came up with plans.

09:36 Not that data started becoming available in 2012.

09:39 That was 20 years back.

09:41 But I'm talking of the plans specifically.

09:43 They came up with plans that made data cheaper between 9pm and 3am.

09:54 And it worked for them.

09:57 They also reduced the calling rates.

10:01 So now data is cheaper and calls are cheaper.

10:04 And what are all the young people doing?

10:07 And I do not really suppose that all that data is being consumed in self-development

10:13 and gaining internal illumination.

10:18 How do I say that?

10:20 When I look at the pages, the profiles, the channels, all these things, the handles on

10:28 social media, and I see which ones have the maximum followers, likes, retweets, comments,

10:38 what do I find?

10:39 What do I find?

10:43 The worst quality ones have the maximum traffic.

10:49 Pages and profiles and channels that ought to have been starved of any viewership are

10:58 the ones frolicking in attention.

11:06 They are literally inundated with viewership.

11:17 And all that is happening between 10pm and 2am.

11:25 That's where the youth of India is spending its time.

11:30 First of all, your time is not going into something you'd want it to be devoted to.

11:42 Secondly, you are empowering.

11:45 I'm not talking about you, please.

11:46 It's not.

11:47 I'm talking about the youth of this country in general.

11:50 Secondly, you are empowering all kinds of worthless and very mediocre people.

12:02 And they are turning into your role models, your celebrities.

12:09 It's a double geoparty.

12:16 That which deserves to command your attention is being starved of attention.

12:22 And even viewership is a market.

12:23 If you do not look at it, if you do not look at something, that thing in due course of

12:28 time will cease to exist.

12:30 You know how the social media engines operate.

12:35 If something is not receiving viewer attention, it will no more come up in the search results

12:43 or in the notifications or in the various other things.

12:47 On the other hand, if something is getting popular, it will get more popular.

12:51 It will be shown to more people.

12:55 Figure out where your time is really going.

13:00 There are things you can do nothing about.

13:03 You or I cannot change the traffic situation in Mumbai.

13:08 But there are things we can do something about.

13:11 Let's have a talk of them.

13:14 Otherwise talking of immovables becomes a clever internal ploy to not move even the

13:26 movable.

13:29 Talking about the unchangeable becomes an excuse to not change even the changeable.

13:39 Figure out where your time is.

13:41 And if commuting takes so much time, use that constructively.

13:45 I do not know whether the train or bus or personal thing you are using affords you that

13:51 kind of convenience.

13:52 But if you can read, read.

13:54 If you cannot read, use earphones or headphone.

13:59 Use audio files.

14:01 That's the best use of…

14:03 There have been people who have educated themselves in the course of their journeys.

14:09 There have been people who have written beautiful books in the course of their hospitalization.

14:16 So try to make the best use of whatever situation you are in.

14:21 I do not know whether this satisfies you but…

14:29 Even in jail, some of the greatest literature from the freedom struggle movement, the Indian

14:38 freedom struggle movement, came from the period when our revolutionaries were jailed.

14:46 And you know what they said?

14:48 They said this is really the only time when we are free to write.

14:53 So thank you.

14:55 Now that we are incarcerated here, there is nothing else to do.

14:59 So we will write.

15:01 And they wrote prolific volumes.

15:04 Try to make best use.

15:05 Thank you.

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