Don’t let 10% of noise spoil other 90% of symphony

I distinctly remember my early days of musical instruments classes where-in we were getting trained on Harmonium (a keyboard instrument). Harmonium is made up of wood and metal frame, so is not as smooth as electronic keyboards. During the training it always used to happen that one or the other key wouldn’t operate smoothly and it used to bother me during the composition. I used to constantly nag about this one not-so-smooth key in my instrument to the guru and it had become a ritual. One day as I was about to start my nagging again, my guru said – “Don’t let 10% of noise spoil other 90% of symphony”. He very patiently made me understand the depth of this statement - I was draining all my energy into focusing on that 10% of noise instead of honing my skills on the other 90% of Symphony. He even took my instrument and played a harmonious composition with such flair as if the not-so-smooth key didn’t even exist.

Today, maybe after a period of two decades I had this déjà vu moment again, but this time on the professional front. I and a manager from my team had been working on a long running problem without a solution in sight. We had had brainstorming around the problem multiple times, however we realized that this was a sticky one. Today again he was about to get started on this problem and I just stopped him and said “Don’t let 10% of noise spoil other 90% of symphony”. He just took a pause to absorb what I said and I myself was astonished to have uttered this statement which was decades old. As it sunk in, his subtle smile conveyed to me that he understood the message. We both somehow felt much lighter as if the baggage we were carrying was off-loaded. Even though in actuality it wasn't but we were at peace that this problem didn't deserve the amount of energy we were putting in. We then continued chatting about the various aspects around this statement.

Identify the noise - We all are faced with multitude of problems in a day, however while working on those we seldom take a step back and try to categorize them between noise and symphony. Due to this at times we invest and continue investing so much of time and energy in solving something which is just minuscule in grander scheme of things. So, its extremely important to perform due diligence on the need and timing of a solution for every problem.

Symphony is what matters - Perspicuous vision towards the symphony is what matters. Any disturbance which can impact the symphony needs to be addressed with utmost attention. Pursuit of perfection is a journey but in-order to maintain adequate focus on big rock items, minor noises need to be filtered. Do not let the minor noise correction consume so much energy that actual symphony starts going out of tune.

Continue practicing to reduce noise - When my Harmonium guru played the instrument there was absolutely no feeling of any shortcomings. This level can only be achieved via continued focus and practice of the skill. Honing of skill can gradually reduce the noise substantially and when perfected can even overcome it to a level as if it never existed.

Astonished by the beauty of life experiences yet again! What I was taught in a totally different context gave me learning for other frontiers as well.