We are frequently over-scheduled,
over-worked, over-stressed. So, we naturally feel eager for things that promise
to save time. Catering to our needs, scores of apps offer time-efficient ways
of doing things.
Many such apps do save time. But we often
need to choose among several competing apps, each with its own pluses and
minuses. And finding the one app that works best for us takes time. By the time
we settle for an app, learn to use it and get habituated to it, our
technologically innovative times provide some new, better-looking apps. And
again we go through the time-consuming process of evaluating and choosing. If we
aren’t careful, we may end up spending more time in selecting time-saving apps
than the time saved by those apps.
To invest our time carefully, we need to
train ourselves to see things in proper perspective without getting carried
away by the lure of new things. The Bhagavad-gita indicates that clarity of
perception characterizes the mode of goodness (14.11), whereas insatiable
desire and hyper-activity characterize the mode of passion (14.12). So, we can
gain proper perspective by elevating our consciousness from the mode of passion
to the mode of goodness.
For raising our consciousness, we need to
purify ourselves through spiritual practices such as meditation and scriptural
study. These practices empower us to bring order in our inner world, thereby making
us alert and adept. We become alert to catch and curb stray thought-patterns,
thus saving the time lost in daydreaming, absent-mindedness and moodiness. And
we become adept at cultivating and facilitating productive thought-patterns,
thus using all our resources, including apps, more effectively.
If we can get our priorities right and
focus more on spiritual elevation than on technological innovation, our
endeavors for saving time will be far more successful.
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