This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

When I look back at my life, a total of 31 years that I have lived, there are two different periods that really stand out.

These are the phases when I experienced maximum personal growth, in intense doses. I worked amazingly hard and marveled at my own ability to get things done. I was a productivity machine.

Unfortunately, though I always wanted to be that way, I never really could be that way at will. I may have had bursts of productivity, but that incredibly high productivity day in and day out, every day, for at least a year? Even a quarter? Never happened again.

Recently I decided to bring that back in my life. How? I will tell you in a bit.

But has this happened to you ever? That you had a crazy period of very high productivity and sustained that for months, and things changed in your life like never before after that?

The first time it happened, it was the year between high school and law school.

I wanted to go to a top NLU. I had got through to NUJS before 12th boards but through the waiting list. I decided not to opt for it. I had recognized by Achilles heel. My English just wasn’t up to the mark.

I had studied in West Bengal board schools, in Bengali medium. That meant we began to start learning English in class VI. The level expected from us was really, really low. If you could write a paragraph of English sentences on your own, even if full of mistakes, it was enough. My vocabulary was poor. My knowledge of grammar was nascent.

I cleared the law entrance exam, even though in the waiting list, thanks to good maths, logical reasoning and amazing general knowledge. However, I had no idea how much I scored in the English section. Also, the fact that I cleared the exam at all was a miracle, because it used to take me a lot of time to read the question and the options and then to understand.

I used to read one word at a time and used to have to read the sentence twice to understand what it said, and sometimes just had to guess what some words meant, so poor was my reading comprehension.

I decided that I will not go to law school in this way. I will give myself one year to master English. I enrolled myself in a not-very-sought-after night college in the English Literature department. My parents advised that this is a necessary thing to do to avoid a “gap year”.

I was interested in Shakespeare classes, and the principal of the college used to take these classes. He had some fame, and that is why I had zeroed down on this particular college. I also began to like History of English Literature, so these were the two classes I attended for a while until it was time to give exams.

My entire day, otherwise, was dedicated to preparation for law entrance.

I used to meditate before sleeping. I used to visualize the day of the exam and imagine myself sitting in the exam hall, ready to go just waiting for the exam to start. I used to imagine the desks and the benches. I used to imagine the environment. I used to imagine solving questions at a breakneck speed.

I used to dream about what to prepare and how to prepare in my sleep.

I used to wake up and meditate again. I used to imagine I am sitting on a mountain top. And everything was calm and quiet.

I didn’t know much about meditation back then. I just did whatever I could.

During the rest of the day, I used to work like a machine.

I used to memorize a dictionary. Every new word I learned, I would create a funny sentence with that word (a mnemonic technique) so that it is committed to my memory. I will also write the word and the sentence into my notebook.

I would practice past years’ papers like a maniac. I would redo them, again and again, trying to solve the same papers faster and faster. I accumulated over 30 past years papers of different law entrances that I could find. I used to read up every GK book possible. I would read huge fat practice books in a matter of days.

I was unstoppable. My determination knew no bounds. I wanted to prepare more, more and more. I wanted to be prepared for anything and everything.

I trusted nothing. So I even prepared for how I will deal with wrong questions, stupid questions, out-of-syllabus questions, and even a jumbled up question paper.

I used to be in the top 5 of almost all all-India LST mock tests.

And every day, before sleep and the pre-sleep meditation, I used to read a book I used to get from the British Council Library.

I immersed myself in law entrance preparation. I immersed myself in learning English.

My only entertainment used to be watching English movies, which was also for learning English. I stopped meeting any friends and doing anything else apart from basic workouts at home to keep my body invigorated.

When I gave the exam, it was a cake walk. I gave the exam like a machine. There was no doubt, there was no hesitation, it was like a knife through butter. I ranked as the 2nd topper after the test.

Life offers a lot of distractions and challenges. That year, I had razor sharp focus, because I had no way to turn back. I couldn’t go back to night college. I could not take another year of break. Enough was enough. I had to make it. I gave it my everything.

Nothing could distract me. It didn’t matter what my relatives said. It didn’t matter what my school friends were doing. It didn’t matter “what will the neighbors say”. There was only one purpose in my life, and I lived it with passion and vigor.

This happened one more time after I quit Trilegal to start iPleaders. In the first 3 months, we sold courses worth almost 40 lakhs. And then we focussed on building the courses, knowing that the money will hit our account after a year.

I used to do enough freelance work to pay the rent, formally embraced poverty (it’s a relative term, one man’s poverty could be luxury for another), simplified my life to focus on only one thing, build an amazing business law course and deliver everything we promised.

Life was simple. I would do 50 push ups every day. Go for a run at the end of the day if I had the energy. I would sit at my laptop and type away. Review what my co-founders made. Talk to people over the phone trying to recruit our first employee or garner support for our work. Write for the blog. That was it.

After some time I started saying no to all freelance work so we could devote 100% time on only one goal.

A very small team. A very focussed direction. The course we created that year was unparalleled. It was our best selling course for the next 5 years.

The only entertainment was going for a coffee and medu vada at a local streetside cafe. We started living in faraway Navi Mumbai, where we had no friends, and hardly anybody ever came to meet us. I would hang out with my co-founders and the kittens in the flat that doubled up as our workspace as well as living space. Rarely, we would visit a bar around the block to break the monotony.

That was perhaps the best time of my life. Very productive. Very dangerous, living on the edge, as there was a constant threat of abject failure hanging over our heads. But we were young, naive, broke, committed and worked like maniacs with a purpose on our mind.

After a few months, things started turning around in our favor, and we could see the success. And then we moved to Delhi, ending one of the most productive streaks of my life.

How to bring the magic back

I was wondering, how can I bring that magic back in my life? Can the rest of 2019 be that way again? Can I live with a single-minded focus and move mountains?

After some introspection, I identified what I need to do.

#1

Unwavering focus and a clear direction

I am going to live with one purpose. This year, that will be putting an amazing team in place and training them. I have some amazing projects lined up. One is to put the entire standard legal education curriculum online, on iPleaders blog and LawSikho Youtube channel. Then building a team of writers who churn out amazing content on the legal industry and legal every day, taking the number of such articles to 100 per month. Also kickstarting the Soldiers of Justice project. All of these lead to one single thing: becoming the world’s biggest and most respected legal content and education destination.

#2

A simple life

At the heart of effectiveness is simplicity. More simple and clearly laid out your tasks are, more things are likely to work. Just to give an example, if you are battling a difficult personal life, feeling depressed about things, or living in a cluttered environment, it may be hard to have the productivity of this level. You would have to ruthlessly cut clutter and distractions from life.

Family members creating trouble? Co-workers, who keep disrupting your work? Clients, who keep disturbing your rhythm? Tell people to take a step back. If they don’t, block them out. Completely cut off. Distraction-free work will provide you ten times more benefit than people who keep interrupting your flow.

#3

Saying no

There would be a lot of temptations. There would be good-to-do things. You have to say no, no, no to everything so you can focus. I said no to money from freelance work. I said no to socializing which I absolutely loved. I said no to parties. I said no to comfort. And that kept me on track through thick and thin. It’s also important to say no to new ideas you may want to chase.

What would your life look like if you lived with a purpose?

Take up a challenge today – live on a purpose for a year. If you lived with a single-minded focus for a year, would your life be the same? How will it change?

In one year, you could become 10x better at contract drafting. In one year, you could know more about transactional law work that people do in big law firms and take at least 3 years to learn. In a year, you could learn enough business law so that a General Counsel would want you on his or her team. We have made it possible through our courses.

Enrollments close tomorrow though.

If you can’t commit a year, at least commit 3 months. Take a small step towards the big change in your life. There are some breakthrough 3-month courses also for which enrollment will close tomorrow. Here you go:

Diploma

• Diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws
• Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
• Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance and Investment Laws (PE and VC transactions)

Executive Certificate Course 

• Certificate Course in Advanced Civil Litigation: Practice, Procedure and Drafting
• Certificate Course in Advanced Corporate Taxation