OT: I wonder if anyone else keeps looking at the line drawing above and seeing “Zen Family Circus” (complete with a Zen Jeffy). My once-beginnerly mind has clearly been polluted by Bil Keane.

Zen mind Forget all. Be a beginner. Much of the personal turmoil that surrounds me can easily be traced to…

Technologist Douglas Johnston says that to make his organization system effective, he had to strip it down, simplify and approach things with “a beginner’s mind:” I had to leave this mind-clutter and baggage behind, at least temporarily, and forget …

Be mindful–of yourself, of others. Turn off the TV. Sit silently and attempt to empty your mind. Do not pick up a magazine, or put something in your mouth. Try to gain a sense of I-ness. Now you may begin the task at hand.

When all your tasks seem daunting, and you’d rather list them over and over and assume your GTD system is to blame for all these problems, trust me, it’s not to blame. You are afraid. It’s okay, all people are afraid. Now you need to have faith. Faith in yourself, and in others. It will be hard at first, like a baby learning to walk. But over time your faith and courage will build. And when a new task, problem, obstacle faces you, you’ll know what to do. You’ll know just where to put it in that organization system. And the system will work, because it came from within, from your own motivations, rather than imposed from the outside, as an attempt to rationalize away your fears.

At least, that’s how it’s been for me, trying to GTD.

Douglas Johnston over at “A million monkeys typing” has an intersting approach to organization and GTD. The Beginner’s Mind: “Often we must come full circle –to return to the very beginning– in the efforts to renew ourselves. To do this,…

Provocative post! But it put my mind to critique, thinking that truly getting organized works best in a closed system, one with boundaries. Something can’t be empty unless it’s a container. Air, for instance, isn’t empty. Water isn’t empty. You cannot organize air or water unless you contain it. You can empty the air from a tire (a closed system) or the water from a bucket (a container).

But, at the root, however, do we try to organize ourselves as the closed system we really are? I don’t think so. Rather, we organize our little ponds because we are goaded on by oceanic expansion. We want more…and more. We are closed tires who want to be unboundaried atmospheres.

As a student of my own mistakenness, I’ve always erred in past by using organizing as a way to “make room” for even more stuff to organize! “Oh look! Now that I’m organized I can take up yoga, spend more timing on business planning, learn French, floss everyday, do X, Y, and Z!” This is an “organic” system of proliferation, of growth, of expansion. The problem is that it demands ever more discipline, study, and vigilence to maintain the pre-existing organizational system. The acquisition mania, whether for things or things to do, goes untreated.

So, like, the vilest temptation arising after a thorough cleaning and tidying of one half of our two-car garage, is the seductive thought of a second car. Filling up the container like this stressing the organizational system.

The approach I’m trying to take now combines some simple GTD “containers” with attempts to reduce of the number of things contained. If empty mind is truly the peace we seek then the best outcome of the organization effort should not be freedom to do more things with our time, but the freedom to do less.

Empty mind would have it that there is nothing to organize. Ultimately, of course, I will fail. But in our epoch of accelerating amassments, I’d venture that we need to recognize “reduction” as a mission-critical synonym for “simplicity”.

The ultimate end here would be just to sit, like Buddha, then sit some more.

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Getting simple

What I advocate here is not to exist in a perpetual state of “Beginner’s Mind”, sitting like Buddha beneath the bodhi tree –this is not practical for most of us– but rather a need to clear away the clutter and return to our original face, free from the baggage of a thousand different ways to handle our lives. We need to start there, again, I believe, and try to see what our life and situation actually demand. It’s essentially starting from point zero, then building up the system and discipline to face things effectively. Hopefully, that will amount in a significant reduction in one’s convoluted and complex organisational strategies, one that is far more simple and more intuitively followed within our imposed boundries. Defying those temptations to “fill the container” (an excellent metaphor) is an ongoing struggle, but one that should be much easier given the occasional return to the Beginner’s Mind and its wiping of the board: the question ultimately to be answered is, “What do I really need?”

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I am trying to use this trendy, new-ish organizational methodology called Getting Things Done (GTD). It’s been growing in popularity among geeks that I respect. I first discovered it through 43 Folders, a really great site for Macintosh and GT…

I’m always overcommitted. Have been for years. So when the geekosphere started getting excited about David Allen’s Getting Things Done, I sort of watched from afar with curiosity. I finally read the book, and spent some time thinking about…

Very interesting article, which I stumbled upon while researching how I might return to paper data-keeping in view of perhaps having to abandon my longstanding Palm handheld usage.
I’ve always taken more pleasure in using a fountain pen than in using a palmtop, so I guess in a sense I’m halfway there.

I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments here, so perhaps somebody has recommended the classic “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. It was my first “serious” introduction to the Zen way of living. I like it so well I’ve read it, I think, four times, and I keep a photo of Suzuki Roshi in my living room.

Thanks for a most interesting site that I’m tickled to have discovered.