Two GTD Keys for Creating and Completing

Years ago, a friend added to my understanding of the fundamental duality of our universe by sharing this observation: "There are only two problems in life: you know what you want and you don't know how to get it; or you don't know what you want." This proposes only two solutions: (1) focus, then (2) organize and allocate your resources. Intend and execute. Create and complete. Make it up, and make it happen.

Most of the techniques and tools about productivity have focused on the responsive side: how do I best deal with all the things I have to manage, or the tasks I need to handle that have been generated prior to this moment? This focus on organizing tools makes sense, because how we can handle the results of our inspirations encompasses many more concrete options than how we engage in the creative process to begin with. There are always better computer programs to support architectural design, better paint for a specific technique on the canvas, and better smart phones and software for tracking our appointments and tasks.

But what about producing the inspiration for a building? Or the artistic expression that seeks a medium? Or the choice of this or that profession that generates my appointments and tasks? On this "make it up" side, a plethora of leadership, creativity and life-management treatises continues to flood bookstores.

In truth, you cannot be maximally productive without ensuring your focus is optimal, as well as your procedures and tools for manifesting it. Being productive means you have to produce something, and that means achieving closure on some commitment. But this comes in many forms. There's your commitment to pick up bread on the way home from work, and the one that says you need to fulfill your destiny on the planet. And a whole bunch in between.

And though the investments of our focus are multitudinous and wide-ranging, being productive with our energy requires that they somehow tie together. If you stop to buy bread on the way home and that activity is not in alignment with what you're here to do as a human consciousness, then you're not being productive at the highest rate. If it is the best thing for you to be doing, given all the possibilities, then you are. But if buying bread makes absolutely no difference to how well you manifest your life purpose, you'll need to ensure you don't unproductively wrap yourself around some inappropriate concern.

All of which is to say that if you think being more productive is simply about getting more organized, or setting priorities or goals, or working harder, you've likely missed the whole picture. Each of those activities could, at any moment, be the thing that will make most difference for you in moving along the continuum from feeling a victim of life to being more in charge. So if you know clearly what you're doing, then efficiency is your only improvement opportunity. But do you really know what you're doing? Perhaps that frontier holds the key to your greatest progression. And perhaps it's both. I don't know many who have each of these two aspects of the life experience totally nailed down. Some people have a neat, organized life, but a gnawing frustration that something better awaits them beyond their tidy universe. Many others allow themselves to engage in commitments they are woefully negligent in managing day-to-day. The savviest admit to openness to a new level of both: how much clearer can I be about what I need to do, and how much better can I get at doing it?

If this informs your overall approach, a marvelous synergy appears. As you get more efficient, you'll get more inspired. And as you get more turned on by what you're doing, you'll automatically have more juice to put it in motion quickly and easily.

Any functional solution to managing yourself, time, a corporation or a country, comes down to a combination of both sides of this equation. Both aspects—outcome focus and action engagement—are essential. The reason there seems to be an unending stream of time/business management and leadership "principles" is because few account for the whole picture. Most of the proffered keys to productivity emphasize either the "know what you want" or "know how to get it" component. But if you don't give appropriate weight to each, no problem: you get to remain deeply involved in the duality of our universe.

by David Allen
from Productive Living ~ David's Food for Thought ~ "There are only two problems in life"
(This article originally appeared in Wired U.K.)

QUOTABLES

"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific."

-Lily Tomlin

"You're at your best, when you're focused and you're serious and passionate about what you do, but at the same time you can relax and have fun and be confident."

-Derek Fisher

Alignment After Action

Normally we think to align or balance self before taking any concrete actions. Early morning meditation/yoga, healthy consumption, music, reading/writing something inspirational, are some examples. More objectively, it is action that brings us to these self-empowering aligning activities in the first place. A combination of initiative, effort and concentration that allows us to break through the occasional difficulties and awkwardness... as with learning to read, write or ride a bike.

This requires a willingness to endure and experience whatever arises, inwardly in the realm of thought and emotion as well as outwardly in facing and figuring out the task at hand. The understanding is that benevolent and divine grace descends the higher realms onto the physical, only when full attention and concentrated intention is given to the present task at hand. First the friction, then fusion, then unlimited bountiful creation. Total absorption, leverage, alignment, and grace in action comes with simply showing up (being there), diving in and persevering to get the job done.

Gradually, overtime, the sense of alignment and flow comes more effortlessly, naturally, as certain muscles and skills are built and developed in an unending evolutionary creative process. There exists prior to action a spontaneously aligned meditative state (Being), a fresh beginners mind that is open receptive aware, accepting and surrendered to the reality of what is. It is this inner calm center that initially provides us the pure potential state necessary for facing the daunting tasks at hand and all that one must master in a single work day, including negative thoughts and difficult emotions. However, it must be remembered that all worldly activity comes naturally and easily only with a great deal of initiative, attention, hard work and practice.

Joel David Zenie

The Emperor

Seek not to rule nor to be ruled over by others. Every man is his own authority who makes his own rules, boundaries and parameters; but only after choosing to stand alone and reject all outside authorities.

JDZ

The Art of War History Channel Part 1

"Know your enemy and know yourself and in 100 battles you will never be in peril"

"To win 100 battles is not the height of skill, to subdue the enemy without fighting is"

"Avoid what is strong.. Attack what is weak"

SUN TZU

Peaceful Warrior Edit (Part 2 of 3)

"A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability... he's about absolute vulnerability, and that's the only true courage"

"A warrior acts, only a fool reacts"

"There is no stopping nor starting, only doing"

Finding your own North Star

Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean Everybody Isn't Out To Get You

Don't look now, but a lot of very powerful people are trying to stop you from reaching your North Star. Unless we deal with them, you might as well call off the whole trip. The conspirators who marshaled against you are the very people who exiled your essential self in the first place, the ones who put your overgrown social self in complete command of your life. Right this minute, they are rallying to keep you from making positive changes. Who are they? Everybody, that's who. People in general. Society at large. The whole six-billion-member kit and kaboodle we call the human race.

You think I sound a teensy bit paranoid? Hey, I didn't come up with this on my own. I have many, many informed sources. My clients have a very firm grasp of what Everybody thinks, and they share the information with me almost every day..

Ah, yes. Everybody seems to know what Everybody thinks. It's fascinating to get a bunch of people together to ask about Everybody, because, though each individual is convinced that he or she has a finger on the pulse of some universal Zeitgiest each of their Everybodies turns out to be a very small slice of the human pie. Your view of Everybody is completely different from my view of Everybody, which completely from, say, Saddam Hussein's view of Everybody.

In fact, everybody's Everybody is composed of just a few key people. Our social nature makes us long to fit in with a larger group, but it's difficult to hold the tastes and opinions of more than five or six individuals in your mind. So the resourceful social self creates a kind of shorthand: it picks up on a few people's attitudes, emblazons them on your brain, and extrapolates this image until it covers the entire known universe. The vague compilation of folks you call Everybody is what psychologists call "the generalized other".

No matter how deeply your essential self longs to find the real love, the real mission, the real meaning of your life, your social self will not let you embrace these things as long as Everybody disapproves. The social self isn't opposed to your reaching your North Star, per se: it just won't allow you to proceed toward it until you get Everybody's permission. Actually, the social self would prefer that you don't do anything, anything at all, until Everybody kneels down and begs you to do it.

The social self wigs out when you begin to listen to the essential self, because the latter immediately begins to suggest that you do things your Everybody might not like...

Essential Self: I hate this job.

Social Self: Don't you dare quit! Do you know how that will look on your resume? Everybody will think you're a complete failure.


Remember, your social self is just trying to keep you from getting hurt. Everything it says may be partially true. What your social self doesn't know is that 1) very few people actually feel this way; 2) these people are not like to be the best source of information about your ideal life; and 3) there may be a whole bunch of other people who would actually praise and accept you for doing exactly what feels best to your essential self. By installing a hypercritical social group as your definition of Everybody, your social self may well be keeping you from the Everybody who will applaud and support your quest for your North Star.

The way to solve this problem isn't to reject or condemn your social self; it's just doing its well-meaning best. No, we're going to give the social self exactly what it wants - Everybody's approval - while also allowing you to take directions from your essential self. This is the only way to find your North Star, but you may not like how we have to go about it. See, you want the Everybody you have now, the people whose influence landed you in your present life, to approve of your essential self. This will happen right after Hell becomes the official Olympic ice-dancing venue, and you may have that kind of time, but I don't. I'd rather take the quick approach by exchanging your present generalized other for a whole new Everybody.

Finding your own North Star (pp.59-61) by Martha Beck

Bruce Lipton - 2011 Tapping World Summit