Why Vain CuriosityWastes Your Time—and How to Break Free
“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius Earlier, it was Facebook. Before that, Orkut. Then email. Even the daily horoscope. And now? It’s Groww. The stock market. I feel a regular itch to check my portfolio—whether my shares have gone up or down. I know this urge is a waste of time. Monitoring the market’s tiny daily movements doesn’t help. Experts say the same, and their reasoning is solid, grounded, unarguable. And yet? I still give in to the impulse. I keep checking, even though I know it steals my time and attention—leaving less room for real, productive work. But if productivity is my aim, I must be ruthless about weeding out habits that hold me back. If I clearly know that a certain activity doesn’t contribute to my growth, there’s no excuse for continuing it. I need to kill my base impulses, however intense they feel in the moment. Doing that would fr...