In Search of Excellence

In a recent interview to thewisdenCricketer, Sachin talks about his state of mind when he plays at his best.  He says that he bats at his best when he is still in mind and body, when he clears his mind and doesn’t think about past or future and lets his natural instincts take over. I believe these are powerful lessons from the little master to all of us, regardless of our profession.

Here is the part in the interview that caught my attention:

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After two decades playing international cricket, how has he so ruthlessly accumulated these runs? “The secret to batting is to stay still and just react to what the bowler has done,” he says, making it all sound simple. “You have to be still both in your mind and physically. It is so important that your mind is not full of a lot of thoughts because your reaction time is not going to be good. You have to keep your mind blank.

 ”The toughest thing is to clear your mind. The mind always wants to be in the past or the future; it rarely wants to be in the present. My best batting comes when my mind is in the present, but it doesn’t happen naturally. You have to take yourself there. I am not able to get in that zone as often as I would like, but when you are there you don’t see anything except the bowler and the ball. You have to allow your instincts to take over. Trust me, your instincts are 99% right, but you know, the older I get the more I realise how important your breathing is to good batting. By that I mean, if you focus on breathing and relaxing, you can force yourself into a comfortable place to bat.”

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Last week, I had lunch in New Jersey with Anjan Lahiri (President and Co-CEO, MindTree). We were talking about our families, how he has settled in Bangalore, the school his daughter goes to etc. He talked about how kids learn and how we learn many things from being around them. He narrated a funny story. One day Anjan was watching his wife tie his daughters shoe laces. He realized that the knot was a little different. When he tied the knot the same way, his shoe laces would stay tied. All of us (at least I do), face this problem of the shoe laces coming untied.

Although that was a very small part of our lunch conversation, the thought of tying shoe laces the right way stuck with me all day. I found a Wikipedia article on shoelaces:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoelaces

It has a section on ‘Shoelace Tying’. I use the most common knot; ‘the bow’, which is basically two half knots. There are two kinds of half knots. Two consecutive right over left half knots (or two consecutive left over right half knots) is called a ‘Granny Knot’. A right over left half-knot followed by a left over right half knot (or vice versa) is called a ‘Square’ or ‘Reef Knot’. I (and I am sure; or hope most of you J ) have always used the ‘Granny Knot’. My shoe laces come untied every now and then (about once or twice a day). For the last 4 days I have used the ‘Square’ or ‘Reef Knot’. The shoe laces have not come untied even once.

All you have to change is if you put left side lace over right side lace for your first half knot, put right side lace over the left for your second knot (or vice versa). It is that simple.

Sure, thank me if you face this minor nuisance and I have helped you avoid it. But that’s not the point of this article. How many other minor irritants do we tolerate like this in our daily life; not only in our personal grooming but at our home or at work? How keenly do we observe people, events, and surroundings and learn from it?