Don't Think...Just Do It!

when we are doing some activity, typically there are two parts to it at the psychological level. the first is the actual activity itself, while the second is the mental activity representing the awareness one has of the former.

just to expand on the latter, it's a kind of meta-activity. when engaged in any activity, we experience, to different extents, certain consciousness of what we are doing. it may include thought patterns like why am i doing this, how am i doing this, how good am i working on the task, that people around me are observing me, what they would be thinking about my behavior, whether i should be working on the present activity in a different way, how much time has elapsed, and so on.

i have come to make an important observation with regards to the activity and meta-activity. it strikes to me as so important that i couldn't help but write it down to identify it clearly - to remind and reinforce it to myself later, to share it with readers, and to seek reaffirmation, clarification and further insight from the more learned. moreover, i guess it's really nothing new - for the experienced and high performers it might just be common wisdom. nevertheless, it's the following.

we maximize our "performance" on an activity if and when we are able to completely eliminate the meta-activity component, and focus our entire energy on the activity itself.

i personally have had feelings about the above on countless occasions, since i have this particular personality trait of analyzing stuff and oneself continually, occasionally to the extent that it starts to interfere with the main activity. to this extent, it clearly is an undesirable thing. and i'm pretty sure that i'm hardly unique in exhibiting this trait - every individual experiences it, to varying extents, at different times. the above observation hit me yesterday while i was at a game of sport. and with profound clarity. after much rounds of unimpressive performance, i observed that i might just be engaging too much of mental bandwidth on "how i am playing". that very instant, following my instinct, i cut out the meta-activity part, immediately switching over to simply playing the game, and forgetting about everything else. and you guessed it right, i was playing dramatically better.

the idea is to literally get lost in what you are doing, to get engrossed in the activity so completely that everything else is just shut out of the mind. i guess this must be, at least in part, what they call "zen" in the buddhist literature. it's like literally loosing consciousness of the self while working at something. well, i guess it's time for me to read some stuff on Zen Buddhism :) ^_^