Dr Abhishek Goyal shares his personal experience.

Hours have vanished, marked only by the steady blink of the cursor on a complex design schematic. My world has shrunk to the pixels on my screen – a landscape of P&IDs, logic diagrams, endless data sheets and meetings. My mind is running hot, processing calculations and tracing connections.

It’s a grind. A mental marathon. My brain, a high-performance engine, is redlining. I am hunting for a brilliant solution, but all I am finding is noise.

After all this, what I do is – take a tea or coffee break – a five minute lifeline I assume.

And what do I do ? I grab my phone. I trade the complex noise of my work for the chaotic noise of a newsfeed and the social media feeds from my friends and family. I swap one form of mental clutter for another. I think I am taking a break, but I am just switching frequencies from a focused hum to a frantic static.

I've been putting the most sophisticated instrument – my own mind – through a jarring, unproductive cycle. And I wonder why that tea break is not as refreshing as it was 10-12 years back.

What if those five minutes were my secret weapon?

Forgetting the mindless scrolling. For just 300 seconds, I have started to perform a real system diagnostics. A conscious, deliberate recalibration of my most valuable asset.

It looks like this:

• Disconnect the Inputs: Put the phone down. Turn away from the screen. Let the constant stream of data stop. Just for a moment.
• Run the Diagnostic: Close my eyes. Take one deep, slow breath. Then another. Just notice it. Don't judge it.
• Access the Core Processor: Let my mind go blank. Stare out of the window. Watch a cloud drift by. Allow the background processes of my mind, the ones drowned out by the noise, to finally surface.

This isn't empty mindfulness talk. This is high-performance mental engineering. It’s creating the precise conditions for insight to strike. It's giving my brain the space it needs to connect the dots you've been staring at for hours.

Remember: The solution to your toughest design challenge isn't hiding in someone else's LinkedIn update. It’s waiting in the quiet space you create for it.

Tomorrow, you should claim those five minutes. Don't just take a break. Stage a reboot. Your next breakthrough will thank you for it.

Dr Abhishek Goyal is a Medical Graduate with a Post Graduate Degree in Management from ISB, Hyderabad, currently working as a Director EIP. Have taken up some challenging projects (like 3D Stockpile Inventory Management System, Center it Gravity for Wagons at the Tippling Station, Truck Unloading System, IIoT based Ash Management System and others) in the last 12 years and taken them up to execution. Have taken full digital control of the company’s brand image. Awarded with the Young Entrepreneur Award in 2018. Philanthropic activity involves an honorary service as a General Physician at a Charitable Clinic.

My Journey can be summarised as – “From the Heart of Medicine to the HART of Engineering”

Connect with me: abhishekgoyal1@gmail.com 

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