Skip to content

Tag: alibaba

One at a time

One at a time

Published September 30, 2021

Sometimes there’s just too much to focus on. Like the rabbits that Jack Ma talked about once. He said that if you’ve got a room full of rabbits and you need to catch one, most people start with the rabbit closest to them. If that runs away, then they switch to the next nearest one. Momentarily another rabbit comes into view, and then they run after that one. And then another one. At the end, they are left with no rabbit.

The better way, is to just focus on one rabbit all along.

This can be extended to our daily ‘things to do’ checklist as well. We could focus on one newspaper, one podcast, one TV show, one book, one scripture, one chapter, one YouTube channel etc. Even within these, say one specific online course that we like, the focus can be on doing only the 10 minutes it requires per day. That would make it easy to execute as well as track.

If this is implemented with discipline, it can work wonders in the medium to long term. But if not, then at the end of the month, on one fine weekend, we are suddenly saddled with hours of work to catch up on, which then leads to anxiety and feelings of incompetence. 10 minutes a day. That’s all it takes. It’s a fine line!

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment
The greatest discovery of all-time

The greatest discovery of all-time

Published June 10, 2020

Károly Takács, at 28, was Hungary’s top pistol shooter. He was the favourite to win gold at the 1940 Tokyo Olympic Games. But a grenade accidentally exploded and blew away his right hand – the shooting hand. He wallowed in self-pity, right? Nope, not Károly! He just focused on training his left hand instead! He went on to win golds in the next two Olympics, shooting with his left. Unbelievable? Yes, but true. Imagine how hard it would have been to be in his shoes.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma was rejected by Harvard University 10 times, and also by several jobs including KFC. Stephen King’s first novel Carrie was rejected by 30 publishers before being picked up. Wilma Rudolph – the ‘fastest woman on earth’ in her time – wore a leg brace, suffered infantile paralysis but later won 3 Olympic golds. Edison failed 3000 times before making the first light bulb.

And us? No, we are too scared to fail, and even more scared to try! We feel we bear the burden of the earth on our heads. That a single misstep would cause everyone to take notice, and curse us into oblivion. We are so focused on ourselves and our shortcomings that we never realise one thing. That everyone is so immersed in themselves that they do not really care about us!

Give this a thought – do you remember what clothes your friends and families wore 2 weeks ago? 1 week ago? 3 days ago? Or what kind of bags they were carrying? Or what they said? Hardly! The world has moved on, but we stay rooted to that one insult someone threw at us…way back in kindergarten!

Oprah Winfrey said “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” There is even a book called Attitude is Everything! We would still be in darkness if Edison had stopped after the first try, or even the 2,999th. We can never give up – because we each might be the creators of a lasting legacy for future generations to come. It is the least we can do to repay our ancestors – for giving us the tools and technologies we are blessed with today.

It is human nature to be condescending to others, and so others will continue to sneer and laugh. But we need to concern ourselves with only our own attitude – the right attitude. Because even the impossible then becomes possible.

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment