Just came across a cool little article on Personal Planning. Good basic advice in there. I have been making strides to get myself, and my life, more organized of late and it has been grand. No more cruising through the day forgetting to consult a mental to-do list. Now I keep those lists in an ordered repository that I check often. Out of mind, and into sight. That’s the way to get things done!
Archive for October, 2006
SUPPORTING SUPPLIES
16
Oct
Gifts that support our dreams rock.
Just recently I got a couple of super sweet gifts for my birthday. One was a Moleskine Large Plain Notebook. Another was Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2007
I hope I am right about which is which.
IF I HAD A HAMMER – The Illusion of Dependence on Tools
13
Oct
In any area of life where we acquire a set of skills, techniques, or tools it can be easy to become lost in the skill and loose the original creativity that drove us to the learning in the first place.
What good is a carpenter without a hammer? What good is a carpenter without carpentry?
What good is Bruce Lee without his amazing kicks? What good is Bruce Lee without martial art?
What good is the Buddha without his teachings? What good is the Buddha without enlightenment?
We, each of us, is a creative force in potentiality. And that creativity is stuck inside until we learn a method for getting it out, and acquire the techniques and tools to make it happen. When the artist gets too focused on the techniques and tools however, the creativity gets stifled there.
In martial art we find creativity in conflict. But we can become stuck in the hand positions, foot work, and snazzy tricks we learn. In a self-defense situation, in its rawest basic structure, we have exactly two choices in our response to an attack – collapse or expand. Collapse can take the forms of freezing or physical collapse. Expansion can take the forms of ‘flight’ or ‘fight’. But, at the base level these are your two options – collapse or expand .
In martial art we aim for expanding. This is where different schools diverge wildly. Bruce Lee would expand his foot right through the attacker’s face. O’Sensei (founder of Aikido, which I study) would expand to join with the attack and lead the attacker away, down, or into a pin. The techniques of martial art (which ever one catches your fancy) are absolutely essential , without them you have no refinement of the use of your tools, but they are only a means to an end. A way to expand creatively in dealing with a situation.
Just like the difference between a painter who has never learned painting formally and one who has years of tutelage and guidance. They can both express their creative urge in the medium of paint, but I am willing to bet the trained painter will do a better job of it.
In Aikido, by my thinking, the basic method is to reach out to touch our attacker, and to keep moving. What options we have then are predicated by the tools we have learned and perfected, but without first touching and moving we have nothing.
The tools are critical, but they are not the aim.
GETTING ORGANDIZED – Finding Ways to Keep Track of it All
11
Oct
I have long struggled with getting my life more organized, and making sure I don’t let things fall through the cracks. For me it is an uphill battle. My mid-term memory has never been that reliable. And, I suffer from a basic lack of education in this area. My best attempts have involved keeping notes in a pocket sized notebook.
I have toyed with the idea of getting a PDA, like a Palm or some such, but have had serious doubts as to whether I would actually use it. I have also dismissed the idea of a planner like the Day Runner because of it’s size and clumsiness.
In surfing some of my feeds today I came across the Computer Zen site entry on Personal Systems of Organization, which lead me to the Hipster PDA (and it’s wiki), and to the D*I*Y planner, and to the Moleskine Hack wiki, and to the GTDTiddlyWiki. Obviously I have some reading to do for today. But my initial reaction is – EUREKA!!!!
I do not know yet if this all will lead to me finally getting more organized about getting things done, but I do know that it will improve my currently sub-par system.
Two Guidelines for Writing
09
Oct
There are several good guidelines to writing that I keep ignoring. The first is to not talk about your work when first drafting. Stephen King in his book On Writing
The second piece of advice is – once start the first draft of a project, get it done as quickly as you can. I meander, pause, and procrastinate. This makes the work either very incoherent, or helplessly wandering.
I need to not do these two things. Here’s to not doing them anymore.
