As eloquently stated in the Kung Fu Panda movie, Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery and today is a gift and that is why it is called “present”. Well, almost all the spiritual studies tries to communicate the same in a different forms. There is a profound message behind it. Let me explain it in my own words and relate how it helps a strategy person to be more effective.

The moment you think about what is going to happen or/and what happened, then you lose 100% focus on what is going on now. It is very similar to Markov’s theory (ie. Markov Decision Process or Markov Chain). Markov had this great insight that when you hear a music, the melody of current note of the music only depends on the previous note. In another example, let us take a lotus pond with full of leaves. Let us say there is a frog on a leaf and the frog constantly jumps from one leaf to another. The next location of the frog (x+1) only depends on the current position (x). Markov’s stochastic process theory has been extensively used in the inter networks. That is, the tcp/udp packet which looks for the next hop (using the routing table) only depends on the current node.

Only the current state matters to go to next step of the future state.

I can imagine some of the logical minds are wondering, how could an IT strategy person not use yesterday’s information and tomorrow’s approximation. If you were wondering, that is very logical.

The moment you live 100% of the current second, that event will become part of your life and information gathered will be part of you. The information gathered during that second will be integral of your thought process. You do not need to put an effort to think and recollect it. It is just a part of you and it naturally comes to you with out an effort.

Truly living the present in other words is living with no mind. Mind is a negative phenomena. No mind is a positive phenomena. No mind does not mean do not use the mind. The moment you live with no mind naturally (no mind can be attained by using drugs too and that is why, you see some people bring out their true nature when they are in drugs like alcohol) then you attain bliss. There are lots of techniques available (like meditation) to attain no mind naturally. Once, someone lives with no mind naturally (with out using drugs and with out putting an effort) they can use the mind whenever they want. The mind will become like your body parts. If you want to run, you can run and if you do not want to run, you can simply sit and rest your legs.

Mind is a self image created by the environment about self and environment. Dropping the mind and seeing things as is, helps to drop the self and preconceived notions. Everything will be viewed objectively and there is no room for emotions. Understanding things “as is” objectively is very critical to the IT strategy person to study the current state and expected future state.

To figure out the future state, the mind will be asked to be functional to study, predict and approximate the future.

Understanding this profound subtle message helps a strategy person to be very objective and it is required by strategy person more than any one in the IT organization. Understanding and using this spiritual knowledge not only helps the strategy person to be effective, it will help the organization to be successful to attain the over all goal.