The speaker, fifteen year old Aadi Sai Vijai Karan is a winner of the Young Achiever's award 2021 for contributions made by 4US byUS, a non profit organization , founded by him . The organization connects accomplished mentors with children from underprivileged families so that they receive sound guidance for securing a good education. Aadi is also a published author having written the book "The World as I see it" which gives a teenager's perspective of the world.
Speaking on the topic of "Surviving in the 21st century as a teenager". Aadi said that there are umpteen number of activities in a teenager's life. So much so, it is a challenge to use time effectively. As for example the teenager may be discussing with friends about partying, frequently opening and closing fridge doors to spending one hour on Netflix and then panicking about the essay/math work that needs to be done to watching you tube, watching stand up comedy shows of Kenny Sebastian and so on. The speaker said that deadlines push you and are important for getting any work done. It would be a struggle to complete things in the absence of deadlines. He said that this aspect is discussed in detail in his book "The World as I see it".
The villain that comes in the way of rational thinking and being productive is the mysterious voice in the head that may tell you " Let's watch one more video before we start the assignment". Thirty minutes later you find that there are as many as six assignments pending and time is not enough. The voice in the head now says " There's always a tomorrow and the day after and the day after that". The youngster today wants to do something for which he can see immediate results (quick, easy and immediate), what is called as instant gratification. Therefore a you tube video is likely to be more attractive than other activities to satisfy your immediate need for entertainment. But then two hours later, you find yourself feeling incredibly guilty for having put off important work.
This brings us to the question as to whether mobile phones need to be policed by parents. The speaker answered the question in the negative. He said the trick is first acknowledge that instant gratification is real and then embrace it to convert it as an ally instead of seeing it as an enemy. In order to satisfy the needs for instant gratification one can split a goal into smaller milestones and as you reach each milestone you are happy and have a sense of accomplishment. This will also propel you to pursue the goal with more vigour. Aadi gave the example of his own book writing project. He had at first set small goals of writing one para, then two paras, one page, three pages and so on so that the initial achievement satisfied the needs of instant gratification and then he was able to set higher targets. Before, you know it, you have completed the book!
In the above strategy, the matter that is most important is to be crystal clear as what your goals are while setting them. As for example " I am going to take notes everyday", " I will learn Python/Java/Korean language in the next three months". The goal setting should answer the question with clarity " What are we doing? and Why are we doing it?". Once this has been done, take action and consistently do it until the goal is achieved. The onus is on you; you need to keep motivating yourself.
The experience sharing by the teenager, to my mind is not just relevant to teenagers.On the contrary, these days all of us irrespective of age are bitten by the instant gratification bug and we would all do well to try out the tips suggested and see how the phenomena can be used to our advantage to get more work done, instead of fighting it. The modern challenges require modern tools for tackling them!
