Grit: A trait more relevant now than ever before

In this age of instant gratification, our attention span has reduced to only a couple of seconds beyond which our mind craves for the next interesting post, picture, video etc. And this has slowly crept across to other parts of our life without our knowledge-most of us find it hard to read something more than a few minutes, a slow-paced movie generally bores us out after a couple of minutes, we abandon learning a new skill and forming a new habit as it takes more than a few weeks (let alone a few seconds). And this has made our lives miserable-boredom plagues our generation easily, our wellness have taken a back seat owing to time required to build a fit body, our ability to learn something new has become a chore and the list goes on. So the question is: how do we improve our quality of life against this prevailing backdrop of highly transient concentration-the answer is GRIT.

What is grit?

As per the Cambridge dictionary:

Grit is the courage and determination despite difficulty

In our case, the above-mentioned difficulty is the lack of enduring focus required for learning something new. Being accustomed to the culture of micro-focus, any new task requiring dedicated practice and discipline will prove to be hard for our mind but it is only through perseverance against such resistance that we can get ahead of the initial mental block and start learning something new. In short, Grit is the only way we can overcome any minor hurdles to achieve what can prove to be beneficial for us in the long-run. Grit is the only way we can brave through the detrimental conditioning our mind has been subjected to through constant exposure to short-form content and instant (& endless) availability of the same.

A few ways we can start improving the grittiness of self are:

(1) Focusing on what you need over what you want.

(2) Practicing something hard like learning a new skill or forming a new habit each day.

(3) Opting to consume an useful (not necessarily something enjoyable) long-form content (video or text like a book, the latter being better) each day.

(4) Practicing discipline through limited consumption of short-form content (esp. the ones meant for entertainment).

(5) Stop procrastination.

Hope these tips prove to be useful for you in the long run. Signing off for now.

See you tomorrow!!!