Trial Day 4: Random Reading from Random Books - December 30th 2024 Getting Things Done-David Allen

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Trial Day 4: Random Reading from Random Books-Getting Things Done-David Allen



 The “Mind Like Water” Simile

In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax. Water is what it is, and does what it does. It can overwhelm, but it’s not overwhelmed. It can be still, but it is not impatient. It can be forced to change course, but it is not frustrated. Get it?

The power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused “pop” at the end of the whip. That’s why petite people can learn to break boards and bricks with their hands: it doesn’t take calluses or brute strength; just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind to being open and appropriately responsive is the key.

 Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a mind like water.

 Can You Get into Your “Productive State” When Required?

Think about the last time you felt highly productive. You probably had a sense of being in control, you were not stressed out, you were highly focused on what you were doing, time tended to disappear (lunchtime already?), and you felt you were making noticeable progress toward a meaningful outcome.Would you like to have more such experiences?

 If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open for everything.

—Shunryu Suzuki

And if you get seriously far out of that state—and start to feel out of control, stressed out, unfocused, bored, and stuck—do you have the ability to get  yourself back into it? That’s where the methodology of Getting Things Done will have the greatest impact on your life, by showing you how to get back to mind like water, with all your resources and faculties functioning at a maximum level. A challenge for many may be the lack of a reference point as to when they fall out of the productive state. Most people have lived in a semistressful experience so consistently, for so long, they don’t know that it could be quite different—that there is another and more positive place from which to engage with their world.

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