A case for productivity!

What is the one thing you like most to do when you get up in the morning?

When i asked this question to a batch of 20 young and energetic students of undergraduate courses, i did not have the slightest of idea as to what is in store for me.

The initial answers were politically correct and less frank.

"I pray to God for this beautiful day."
"I take blessings of my elders and parents."
"I make a to-do-list for the day."
"I meditate."
"I exercise."
"I revise my lessons of the previous day."
"I devote my time to the pre-class assignments for the day."

Then came some frank and off the cuff replies.

"I go to washroom."
"I check my mobile for any messages or missed calls."
"I switch on some music."
"I just pick up daily newspaper."
"I pick up the book that was left incomplete the previous night."

Then it was time for some mischievous ones.

"I give a missed call to my best friend."
"I look at the watch and go back to sleep."

And then came the answer that has prompted me to write this blog post.

"I get up and keep sitting for some time without doing anything. I just sit there for half an hour."

This answer in itself was not very shocking but the reaction was. More than half of others began to second this answer and wanted to replace their initial replies with this one. And this prompted me to probe a little further. I asked them to give five minutes and analyse themselves as to how much time of the day they spend doing 'nothing'. Some questions came up for clarification and we set up some ground rules. One rule said that watching a particular programme on TV was NOT doing nothing but sitting there and changing channels purposelessly will be doing nothing. Another said that lying in bed trying to sleep is NOT doing nothing but lying just to kill time will be doing nothing. Some more such rules were laid down to include all the periods of inactivity.

After some time, final answers started coming in. They were in the range of 2 hours to 8 hours. This exercise was certainly going to produce something. The overall average of 21 persons (including myself) came to 4 hours 57 minutes 9 seconds. This much time we tend to spend without doing anything in particular!

A lot of discussion followed. To sum up, we could not reach any conclusion about this time being a waste or not. Some of us present there very strongly believed that this time was important to retain our focus and concentration at other times. And we also found out that there was no proof of any noticeable variation in the general efficiency levels of people belonging to the two extremes (inactive for 2 hours or for 8 hours).

Of course, it is very important to optimise the available resources. The final outcome is always a function of availability of resources and the optimum utilisation thereof. And i remember having read somewhere, 'The best gifts in the world are free!" This might be the reason of a very common observation that natural gifts are mostly subjected to sub-optimal utilisation. Productivity is one such principle that must be applied to every situation we are in. This can very easily be a universal principle to measure efficiency and predict effectiveness!

Coming back to the thought experiment conducted in the class, the sample size was too small to propound any final trend. I request the readers to introspect and provide us their valuable inputs by way of comments. I sincerely hope that we might discover something that might throw some light on this angle of human behaviour!(Notwithstanding the fact that productivity is a guiding principle in all situations)