The past 18 months…
I recieved an email from someone on the asterisk-biz list who reacted to my current quotes in my sig.
“I think you learn more from disappointment. But I think that success loses its sheen after a while and you begin to see that there’s no such thing as absolute success, that there’s always failure and there’s always disappointment and there’s always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums. They’ll be filled up. And if you try to fill them up with ego or a kind of immediate gratification, you’re going to short-shrift yourself and you’re going to lose the opportunity to find out what happens when you give the loss space to fill itself and let life kind of come in and fill the cracks. ” - Michael J. Fox
“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” - Thomas Edison
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love” - Rumi
He checked out this site and asked if I had made any progress on the workflow posts I had made.
My reply to him was lengthy; and ended up becoming as much of a state of the Rizwan as I’ve written recently. It’s incomplete, missing important details, entire parts of philosophy, citations, and editing. Certain people aren’t credited nearly as much as they should be.
It would take me days to properly write this - and it’s a worthy task, but not today. I’d spend too much time over the specific word choice, and how it would be interpreted, and how it might affect other’s thoughts of me. Today’s writing was flow, and heartful - and is included below.
I’m working on more of a focus, spiritual workflow right now than a strict task workflow; if only that until I establish a better workflow, no combination of GTD and Omnifocus will help. There’s a little bit more written at my Livejournal blog; but most of it is similar to below; such as http://rizwank.livejournal.com/2010/08/27/
I’ll take an opportunity to riff for a moment as I wait for this DNS server to reboot. (Going to probably repurpose this for the blog anyhow - thanks for prompting it. =) )
Reading GTD introduced me to the concept of ‘mind like water.’ Responding with the appropriate amount of energy and focus.
Inquiries into Inbox Zero led me to reading Merlin Mann. At one point, he notes that if you’re struggles to organize tons of X, the problem may not be your organizational system but that fact that you have tons of X. (And that you have to keep expending energy trying to find new organizational systems.)
The idea of “doing less” is patently fearsome to me. I’m 29; and I can still quote Breakfast Club - “When you grow up, your heart dies.” The idea of not accepting every invite, being everyone’s friend, and taking every buisness opportunity caused chills.
And then I read “Better”. http://www.merlinmann.com/better - my take away : Do less, better. I’m an engineer, photographer, gamer, entrepreneur, costumer, mild non-conformist, and a born philomath - but the thing that enables all the other parts of me was my engineering; and I could do better for myself by being better at a few core things, (and a jack of some trades) rather than being a jack of all trades. This is also the change I feared most about getting older; assuming it was made out of fear, inadequacy, or apathy - rather than a considered decision of a human being realizing that days are finite.
Add in Seth Godin’s ‘Dip’, (Or Merlin Mann’s ‘Creative Suck’, or the ‘Resistance’ in the Artist’s Way, perspectives from ‘The War of Art.’) - and the idea that there are spectacular returns for actually being focused; diminishing returns happen at the middle of the time series; it takes off again on the far end.
Add in a practice of meditation, particularly Mindfulness Meditation - integration of mind and body; an acknowledgement of their innate interconnection; and the fabulous benefits of forcing the mind to not think… even for just a moment. From that comes more Eastern writings - Rumi in particular. (Muhammed and the Huge Eater, as an example); and realizing the beauty in metaphor and the wisdom from past centuries that I’ve simple ignored - and the value of feeling alongside of thinking. My psychiatrist introduced me to the ideas, and it’s been hugely influential.
The Michael J Fox interview on NPR that led to that quote came at just the right moment, when I’d been spending lots of time thinking about expectations and it reinforced my attitude that adversity is best treated as a source of learning - not even just to avoid it in the future, but to know myself better.
Watching ‘Dharma and Greg’ with my girlfriend led me to observe Chuck Lorre’s Buddhist transformation (http://www.chucklorre.com/index.php?p=2), and led to a lot of reflection on my behavior; and an appreciation of Zen. New thoughts on awareness, suffering, judgement.
Scads of articles on focus and scientific studies on multi-tasking remind me that we’re just bad at it - even myself; who once prided myself as being a very efficient multi tasker. The best resource (beyond all the above mentioned) is http://zenhabits.net/archives/ - particularly focus.
So where have I ended up - not having executed on these growing ideals as well as I would have liked; but compassionate with myself for the attempt. I struggle to learn to learn to say ‘No,’ to stop seeking the approval of others, to stop letting a trained rational and logical sense from keeping me from listening to what I actually feel rather than what I think, to take time for myself; not for entertainment, but for quiet and peace, and allow the intuitive mind space to breathe. My RSS Reeder still is overwhelmed with flagged entries and unread entries; but I’m learning to slowly let go and just delete feeds. My email is still a nightmare. My task list is still a nightmare. My Instapaper account is filled with articles about focus that I simply have to make the time for; but I haven’t learned how to do that yet.
But I write occasionally, take notes after appointments, and skim my musings to myself to remind me of what’s truly important and who I *want* to be.
I’m building a list. The things that are important. The people that are important. And learning to say no to the rest. Until then - obligations and projects that make me feel alive will continue to get pushed aside by petty wastes of time; and the people that truly enrich me will continue to get crowded out by everyone else. I’m going to try to be stingy; not with my wealth, but with my focus and attention. And to take a Sabbath day.
So; I haven’t come to any conclusions as to a workflow; but have realized that the system has to change before a workflow can be erected.
Mirrored from The Second Order Effect.
There may be additional comments there.