Husain Journal

Our minds are incredible, but they’re not always rational. Cognitive biases — mental shortcuts and errors in judgment — can often lead us astray, influencing decisions about money, time, and relationships. Here I’ll break down four of the most common biases, show how they play out in everyday life, and provide practical solutions to avoid them. 1. Anchor Bias What is it? Anchor bias occurs when we rely too heavily on the first piece of information (the "anchor") presented to us, even if it’s arbitrary. Everyday Example: Imagine you’re shopping for a shirt without a set budget in mind. The salesperson shows you a shirt for ₹2,000. You reject it as too expensive, so they offer a ₹1,500 shirt. Finally, you settle for one priced at ₹1,200. Here’s the catch: Your original budget — ₹800 — was never part of the conversation. Instead, you anchored yo...

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” - Seneca It starts as an innocent itch, right? It would just be a quick check, you tell yourself. But one scroll turns into an hour, and the guilt that follows is unbearable. Facebook. It was Facebook for me, but for you it could be Instagram, email, YouTube shots – or any of those attention-sucking tools – that exploit psychological tricks to keep us hooked. Facebook wasn’t adding value to my life — it was draining my time and attention. In an era where every notification pulls us away from meaningful work, protecting our attention has become the ultimate productivity hack. Yet, how often do we let distractions like social media steal our focus — and our time? For me, this struggle hit hard in 2018, when Facebook became a tremendous obstacle to my productivity. I realised I needed a change. This realisat...

I’m reading Miss Anne Sullivan’s letters, which she wrote to her former warden of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. Miss Sullivan has given an account of the progress that her deaf and blind pupil Helen Keller made as she taught her. It never appeared to me that she ever got in a hurry to teach her things, or that she overthought about the complexity of the task handed to her. She went slow. She took one thing at a time, and once it was done, she moved on to the other. Teaching a deaf and blind child isn’t easy. Many would say that it’s downright impossible. But Miss Sullivan didn’t let negative stories play in her mind, and she continued to do the little that she could at that given time. If I had been in her place, I might have thought and thought about the disparity between human beings. Maybe I would have thought that fortune didn’t favour the child, and the world is unfair. I would have got worried over the point whether Helen would be able to learn or not. “I...

Ever felt that you have an irritating traffic of tasks jostling in your mind to get checked off? Emails, assignments, medical, home errands and your to-do list can go on. A mere thought of these tasks is overwhelming. You try to do it all, but you feel that your hands are tied. You feel confused, clueless, and even frustrated. You think deeply about getting it all done, but soon your mind spins up clever excuses to keep you off it. And? The next moment you find yourself putting your feet up and having your favourite drink or watching television or scrolling on the social media. Because confess it to yourself – you know how to distract yourself. You know how to get yourself busy with something easy and dumb so that you can keep your mind far from grappling with the tough. But the revulsion of this escapism? Even though you’re busy in such mindless, low-quality activities, the burden of pending tasks continues to silently scream on you in the background. Has it ever ha...

You or I or anybody can get as successful as he dreams to by doing a simple thing. And, that simple thing is meditation, or being fully present in the moment . Many people think that meditation is the practice of sitting quietly in a secluded corner, paying attention to your breathing and mentally scanning all the parts of your body. It means that you shut off yourself from all external stimuli and internal triggers so to cancel out all the bustle of this ever-speeding world. While this is true, many folks also are of the view that you can’t meditate while you’re Fixed in traffic Engaged in any mentally demanding tasks Having food or coffee However, pause and reflect… Isn’t meditation another name for being fully present in the moment – of pouring the purest of your attention on whatever you’re doing at that specific moment? If you’re having a juice, pay attention to its taste, colour, texture. How it touches your lips, how it slides down your throat, what se...

Mark my word…Your productivity would shoot up and go off the ceiling. You know that life will become a lovely, thrilling dream then. But is it possible? Do humans with the same flesh and blood ever manage to do it? Yes and yes. Armies posted at high risk areas do it. The tiny minority of the best, who know how to make things happen and who are habitual of grabbing it – the achievers – do it. Unfortunately, the rest (the vast mediocrity) don’t do it, because they choose not to. And if we refuse to settle with the rest, we too can work with the best of our potential – operating with 100% energy every single second while we work. Remember, those army men, those successful entrepreneurs, those wildly prolific writers aren’t from Mars. Since we too have the same blood and bones and flesh, it clarifies that we too have the energy to work and perform with our 100% alertness each very second, but we have the lazy habit of slipping into restful lifestyle. Just think t...

And the question without further delay– What if you get only 4 hours a day for working? Not a minute more. 4 hours mean 4 hours – working for a minute more is going to give you a heart attack. Sound foolish? But the truth is that throwing on yourself challenging questions and then letting your mind answer them brings you incredibly closer to success. As your mind kicks around in hammering out solutions, you uncover a cluster of mind-quickening tactics implementing which amazingly ramps up your progress. I habitually ask myself challenging questions. By the time I get their answers, I hit upon an eye-glittering treasure trove filled with gems that can speed up my progress manifold. Recently I asked myself: How am I going to work if I have only 4 hours a day to focus on my writing? The following solutions bubbled up to the surface. And though I primarily focus on ‘writing,’ you can replace it with ‘work’ or to whatever you want to fill the blank with. 1. Putting...

I think and talk enough about how to improve myself. I do the same about shedding my unproductive activities. It’s not that I’m not implementing what I’m reading, but it feels that there’s more that I need to do to ramp up my improvement further. I also feel that brooding all the time about improvement and success can turn counterproductive. I must have days when I should write only for pleasure. Writing can be a great pastime to entertain my mind. These days I have written quite a bit, and now I’m feeling like putting it down for some time, maybe for a day. Today I don’t feel like writing on my blog, but the word that I have inadvertently omitted needs to be put back because it’s rendering the entire sentence meaningless. Had it been a typo, I could have afforded to go without changing, but it’s a clear mistake, and this is the reason why I have to set it right forthwith. No matter however much I strive to write lightly, it happens that I feel a heaviness in my heart when it...

“Your worst enemy cannot harm you As much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, No one can help you as much, Not even your father or your mother.” Lord Buddha A simple thing that can turn us highly productive is that we must train ourselves to guard our thoughts. If every moment we’re guarding our thoughts optimally, if every moment we’re true in doing justice with our cognitive capabilities and blessings, the success we dream about isn’t going to evade us for that long. The problem with us is that we’re lazy, rest-loving folks, and doing justice with our blessings is no easy feat. This is because we have entangled ourselves in bad, unproductive thoughts, and therefore we find ourselves backing out when it comes to using our blessings optimally. The ugly truth is that we have chained ourselves in clutter and frivolity: The clothes we want to wear at the party Why is she hanging around with that guy so often…is there a romantic story brewing up? He never ...

Certainly, we’re of a hasty temperament. And “Hastiness,” Imam Husain said, “is a kind of stupidity.” To curb the rush of my mind, I meditate by using the free version of an app called Headspace . When I play the body scan session of this app, I feel relaxed and well-grounded in the present. The instructor will ask you to think about a photocopy machine. As the light whizzes back and forth through the paper in it, similarly he will ask you to imagine a light is passing through your body, scanning every part of it from head to toe. Actually, oftentimes there’s a voice in my head which tries to race ahead of the present time. This voice disturbs me because it doesn’t permit me to focus on my present. As a consequence I can’t enjoy and saver the bliss of the present moment. But when I meditate, it reminds me to come in my natural unhurried speed, and unloads the burden of doing more than it’s required of me. The effect is that I get unburdened, and then I’m fairly successful in...

Am I productive or just busy? Am I using my potential to its best? Am I using my time optimally? If I were to take an important exam at this time, would I have been working with the same energy? Well, regarding the first question, I think that I’m not working as productively as I should be. And so far the remaining 3 questions are concerned – I admit it with a ripple of regret that it’s a resounding no. I accept that neither I’m using my potential at its best, nor am I using my time optimally. And oh yes, if I were to take an exam at this time, I would have been working with razor-sharp focus. Results would have sprang forth in a different style then. The overlooked fact … Even though we refuse to take it down our throat, the truth still is that every day, every moment of our work is an important exam for us. You know why? Because – What we do at this very moment ultimately adds a brush to the final picture. The sooner we chew in this morcel, the sooner we’ll begin to ...

Firstly, I didn't know the craft of separating the wheat from the chaff and shed equal importance to everything. But the Pareto Principle dictates that in all the fields, 20% is responsible for the 80% of the result. Less than 20% clothes in our wardrobe we wear more than 80% of the times. Less than 20% apps of our phones we use more than 80% of the times. Less than 20% of our acquaintances we talk to more than 80% of the times and so on. I’ll quickly brief you about the origin of this principle: in 19th century an economist named Vilfredo Pareto discovered that less than 20% peapods in his garden produce more than 80% of the peas. He further found the same 80/20 pattern applying on other fields: less than 20% people own more than 80% of the world’s wealth, less than 20% of the employees do more than 80% of the work, less than 20% of people make the decisions for more than 80% people and so on. The same 80/20 pattern reigns when it comes to preparing for our exams. If yo...