Dear Jeyamohan,
I thoroughly enjoyed watching your video regarding the three golden rules for effective action. I have recommended this video to my students. Although various self-help books and guidebooks on taking action are being written today, it is my firm belief that true value lies only in the words spoken by someone who is genuinely engaged in action—someone who has achieved success through their own deeds. Therefore, I specifically and strongly recommend your insights to my students. It seems to me that the principles you have distilled from your sphere of action will prove immensely helpful to the younger generation.
Today, there are several factors that act as major impediments to effective action. I would like to highlight three of them.
The first is the entertainment factor that surrounds us today. This proliferation of entertainment encourages young people to remain idle. Internet-based entertainment reduces them to mere passive spectators. In the era of reading books, the reader was actively engaged; they would exercise their imagination, reflect, and strive to comprehend. However, those who merely watch videos do nothing whatsoever and fail to truly internalize anything. They are simply passing time while feeling empty.
The second factor consists of the various online games, gambling applications, and lending apps available on the internet. Even the stock market has, in many respects, transformed into a form of gambling today. Gambling offers a certain mental stimulation—an intensity—that mimics the sensation of productive action. However, it leads to absolutely no skill development. Instead, the brain remains active in a sterile manner, without acquiring any new knowledge or expertise. Even seasoned gamblers often face massive financial losses—precisely because there is nothing substantive to be learned from the process. It relies entirely on chance. This, too, constitutes a form of inaction.
The third impediment to action is the phenomenon of “dreaming.” The media today feeds the current generation with grandiose, larger-than-life dreams. Everyone aspires to become a Sundar Pichai or a Sivakarthikeyan. Yet, they fail to recognize their own limitations—nor do they ever put them to the test. They labor under the misconception that one can only take action if one harbors a dream of such monumental scale. While it is perfectly fine to harbor such grand dreams, the actual starting point must invariably be a very ordinary, foundational task. Someone aspiring to become a Saravana Bhavan-style entrepreneur, for instance, must begin their journey as a server in a hotel. She remains oblivious to this fundamental truth. Consequently, people merely cling to their dreams, content to simply bask in the fantasy of them. Only on the day they liberate themselves from these three delusions will they be truly capable of taking meaningful action.
— Karuna Rajamanickam
