The Power of Unwavering Focus by Dandapani

Author:Dandapani [Dandapani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Tracking Progress

You don’t improve anything that you don’t track.

~RAGY THOMAS, FOUNDER AND CEO OF SPRINKLR, DEAR FRIEND, AND MENTOR

In the opportunities I described here, I repeatedly said, “Give my undivided attention really well.” Let’s define “really well.” How do I know if I am doing something really well, and how do I know if I am improving at what I am doing? The best and most honest way to know is to track my progress. Though this is nothing new and something that has been part of many people’s lives for centuries, the concept was first introduced to me by my guru. When I was a monk in his monastery being trained by him, he made me track how well I was doing my sadhana (spiritual practices). It was a simple but highly effective self-evaluation process.

Every night when I retired to my humble abode, a ten-by-ten-foot austere concrete structure next to a stream under a banyan tree, I spent a few minutes evaluating all of my rituals of the day. I had a sheet of paper with thirty-one columns (one for each day of the month) and a row for each of my rituals. On this sheet, lit only by a small oil lamp on the floor, I graded how well I had performed each of my rituals. Upon completion of my evaluation, I folded the sheet and tucked it in between a couple of books of scripture that sat at the foot of my futon mattress on the floor. I would repeat this process every night.

At the end of the month I would place that sheet on my guru’s desk in his office. One day when I went to do so I found him at his desk, so I handed the sheet to him personally. I expected him to look at it, but he took it from me, opened his drawer, and placed it in a folder. Many of the things I learned from him were nonverbal. Often, with his incredible ability to focus, he would send me a clear intuitive message. As is the nature of an intuitive message, it is always succinct and clear, and it comes across in a flash though it would take many words to detail it. This message was “You are doing this for you, not for me.”

I realized at that moment it didn’t really matter to him what I wrote on that sheet. The whole reason for this exercise was for me to track whether I was making progress with my practices. Since it was a self-evaluation, I could have lied to myself and given myself the best scores. But this would not have served me well. Truly, the only person who benefited from this exercise was me. It behooved me to rate my performance of each ritual in the most honest way possible. This would then allow me to see if I was making progress.

Since I had just graduated from engineering school, my mind, which was trained in approaching things

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