One practical benefit of Karma Yoga in the life-as-we-know-it is that things tend to get done faster. Which means you start taking less amount of time to do the same things. In the nice managerial language, your productivity increases, in the machine kind of language, your efficiency increases. Whichever way you like to look at it, things getting done by your hands take less time, that’s the bottomline.

It’s not very difficult to comprehend unless you believe you are perfect. You are not perfect. Nobody is perfect. But you can always believe so. Anyways, that’s besides the point. Let’s move forward.

Let’s say you are debugging some piece of code. If you are lucky, it was written by you. If you are lucky, there is no time pressure on you. If you are lucky, the code is well commented. If you are not lucky, there may be hundred other conditions which will make it difficult for you to debug the code.

Though the typing is done by your hands, the files are opened in an editor, the core file is opened using a debugger etc, ultimately, all the debugging is done by your mind. Yes, mind. Did you observe what your mind was doing when you were debugging the code? You may discard the question as nonsense saying that the mind was debugging the code when you were debugging the code. However, let’s not jump to conclusions. Next time you debug some code, try observing what your mind is doing. It is doing more than debugging the code. In fact, it is doing much more than debugging the code. It is thinking about the time pressure that is on you to debug the code and how many people will scream if you fail to debug it in the given time. It is thinking about lunch that you haven’t caught for sometime. It is thinking about the other 10 items on your to-do list. It is thinking about your daughter’s fever for which you need to take her to the doctor. It is cursing the guy who wrote such a buggy code. It is cursing the documents that don’t clearly mention the design. It is cursing the company because it hasn’t given you good work to do.

You see, your mind is doing so many things other than debugging when it is debugging. All these “so many other things” are involuntary actions of the mind which are going on and on just like that. They never take permission from you. They never say, Mr So and So, can I use some of the time slices of your mind so that I could be run. No. They just happen. Like traffic noise on a crossroad when you are trying to talk to someone on phone.

If it was possible to remove all this background noise which is taking away so many cycles of your mind, won’t your debugging finish faster?

Karma Yoga helps you keep yourself calm and composed. Not dull! Not disinterested! Calm and composed. And when you are calm and composed, whatever you do gets done faster. Some people are born that way but anyone can achieve this state. It is just some training of the mind. A difficult training though but possible for everyone.