Good morning friends
A few days ago, there was a sudden change in my plans and I had to reach somewhere much earlier than I had anticipated. Obviously, this affected my entire schedule. There were many chores that I had to complete before I left home. So I started ‘attacking’ them in a hurry but soon realised that I am making a lot of mistakes while doing my routine work. I was dropping things, spilling liquids; which needed a lot of time to clean. I saw that in fact, I was spending more time doing the chores than I usually spend.
As soon as I realised this, I took a pause, I breathed out deeply a few times, and said to myself, “ It’s okay if some of the chores are left unfinished. I can always do them after coming home.”
With this attitude, I once again started working ( not ‘attacking’ the work this time ). And do you know what happened this time ? As I proceeded to do my tasks calmly, in an orderly fashion, without anxiety, without hurrying, I could finish them all before I left.
I am sure some of you must have noticed the same phenomenon of ‘Hurry affecting efficiency’ with you or your family/ children. What exactly happens in such situations?
Whenever we start hurrying, anxiety builds up inside us ; we are worried whether we would be able to complete the task in the stipulated time or not, we are afraid of what would happen if the jobs remain undone, and then we start making mistakes, as I did. Normally, whenever we do some routine work, there is a certain rhythm to it. And when you do the work in that particular rhythm, things get done very smoothly. But when we are anxious or tensed, or stressed out, we are in a hurry and this hurry affects the rhythm, and causes us to make mistakes. So, a job which would take, say 10 minutes, needs at least 15 minutes. As a result, slowly, the stress starts building up even more. And when that happens, we make more mistakes, and we take even longer to finish our routine chores.
In simple household chores, this would not matter too much. But at times,the stress of completing a particular task within a time frame can lead to irreparable mistakes. We have heard many examples of the wrong cheques or letters being posted ( leading to disastrous results ). We know that at times we enter in the wrong figure or the wrong account numbers during online transactions….. all these can be traced back to the degree of anxiety or tension that you were going through while doing the task. We all know that when we’re anxious, our concentration suffers, and this leads to decreased efficiency.
The stress can lead to unpardonable mistakes at times, in very important tasks like accountancy, engineering, medicine, et cetera. Some fields like the air traffic control, which need instantaneous decisions, are extremely vulnerable to mistakes because even an apparently small mistake can lead to a major disaster in these fields. And that’s why it’s very important to do any job calmly, in an orderly manner, without anxiety and without hurrying.
I know a friend who is a very good driver, he always drives very calmly, in fact, it’s a pleasure to sit in the car that he is driving. But I know that on one occasion, when he was extremely disturbed by sickness in a close family member, he was hurrying to the hospital and he got involved in a road accident, which would otherwise never have happened. Obviously the stress was telling on him.
There is a saying in Marathi, अति घाई संकटात नेई meaning, ‘ If you hurry too much, you may land in trouble or danger’
Author G.K. Chesterton has said, “
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.”!!
I hope that you don’t hurry so much that it takes a long time for you to get the job done !
Love,
Anjali Bhatawdekar
