I was eagerly watching a close contest in Indian Premier League (IPL) this week.
My 7-yr old son, who is not that keen in cricket, watched my enthusiasm and asked a question: “Which team do you want to win?”
Since the teams that I normally support more were not involved in that particular match, I replied: “It doesn’t really matter, let any of them win”
He looked puzzled and questioned: “ Then why are you watching this game with such an interest?”
While I really struggled to make him understand the fact that you can enjoy the game of cricket without caring about the outcome. He didn’t look convinced at all.
A couple of days before, I had questioned why he is not playing the Wii games for last few days; he answered: that was because he always get defeated in the game!
My suggestion to him in both the cases was – there are many cases where there a need to enjoy the process itself (watching the match as it turns out, playing the game – even when you end up losing) without giving so much importance to the end or outcome.
Of course I could not use the terms like ‘process’, and ‘outcome’ with him – or else either he will walk out on me or will spoil my entire evening in an attempt to explain that in simpler terms!
But the bigger realization I had at that point of time was : How many times we ourselves fall into the trap of giving all the importance to the outcome and none to the process.
We tend to ignore the experience and learning the ‘process can give, irrespective of the outcome.
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stop reading some book midway – in a belief it is not going to help anyway (in the current objectives –professional or personal) and move on to another book
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judge a training program from the outcome (certification success etc) alone
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feel guilty of blogging or writing articles so many times – as it does not add any ‘revenue’ or ‘business outcome’
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regret sleeping one hour longer as that one hour is unproductive
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stop exercising as it doesn’t show the weight reduction that was expected
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stop visiting temple/church/mosque or the respective religious places – as there is no visible benefits or outcome from it
The list can go on and on…
The point is – children are not alone in the trap of focusing and giving importance on outcomes, it is a problem with all of us, and we don’t realize what we miss by doing that.
I had stopped travelling in trains (unless absolutely necessary) as I found it boring, or non-productive or simply waste of time.
Then I was forced to make a couple of trips in train – and the realization about the benefits of the ‘experience’ started occurring to me. Enough time to observe the people, interact with them, learn from them, make contacts, observe the nature and places around, observe the business of small time vendors, experience a peaceful time with self, and so on…
To summarize: many a time, (of course not always) the intangible or indirect outcomes that we receive by going through the process might be much more worthwhile than the expected end-result itself.
