adopting mentors

... I tell you, the real economics for you are that you should wear khaddar. You should spin and spin. Spin in order to make khaddar cheap. That is discipline for you. It will enable you to create your purity. Sit at the spinning-wheel calmly for half an hour and watch the transformation of your heart. I can quote to you instances of many men and women, of brilliant administrators, one of whom was a member in the Bombay Executive Council. He is as old as I am. He learnt spinning only a few months ago. He said: 'After I began spinning at the wheel, I have somewhat got rid of my insomnia. I returned from office tired, sometimes at midnight and, then, I was dozing, thinking of many problems which I did not want to think of. Now I sit at the spinning wheel and spin away. Immediately comes the all-refreshing sleep - the sleep of innocence.' Find out for yourselves what it can do. Find out what it cannot do. 

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

Multi-focusing is the process of pouring all your energy into one project for a short period of time and then switching to another project and focusing on only that. 

In his book Focus, Leo Babauta divides all work-related activities into three categories: Creating, Connecting and Consuming. Connecting involves activities like responding to emails, tweeting and social media, replying to comments, etc. Consuming is any activity that involves research, absorbing, learning. This could mean reading books, blogs, watching movies, listening to podcasts, and so on. Connecting and Consumption activities can be combined, but should never be combined with Creating. 

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

A collection of data is not information. 

A collection of information is not knowledge. 

A collection of knowledge is not wisdom. 

A collection of wisdom is not truth.

Fear makes us lose our awareness. It can make us cowards as well.

We believe what we want to believe. 

Don't float for too long. Choose something that you like, that you're curious about, and follow it. 

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. 

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people. 

Why should I give them my mind as well? 

The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. 

The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study into the students’ own hands. It is not the piecemeal merchandising of information; it is the bestowal of keys that allow people to unlock the vault of knowledge on their own. It does consist of pilfering the intellectual property amassed by others through no additional effort of one’s own; it would rather place people on their own path of discovery and invention.

What students get from a good teacher is not instruction. What they get is a demonstration of someone’s view of life…you teach a way of perceiving the world.