Listening to Dave Allen of Getting Things Done fame, on Leo Laporte's TWIT Net at Night show, I was reminded of a Mind Like Water. It's a concept in Getting Things Done, of emptying and capturing everything from your mind, so that you're in the Zen like state of having a "Mind Like Water" so calm you can deal with anything, and a system that captures and deals with anything that comes your way, keeping you in the Mind Like Water state.
Once you've captured everything, you put the Projects/Actions into the context of when you can do the action; @Home @Laptop @Airport. As Dave Allen points out, you wake up in the middle of the night worrying about something, which is the place you can least do something about what you're worrying about. He reckons if you capture the thing that's worrying you, into your Getting Things Done system, and put it into a context and time when you can do something, your mind will let go and let you sleep!
I'd forgotten that a Mind Like Water is really the aim of Getting Things Done. So on Monday, I gave it a go. Instead of re-setting the Getting Things Done system from the bottom upwards, I kept asking myself all day, if I have a Mind Like Water. I created a gap for where I was and getting to a Mind Like Water. Even when I thought I'd filed everything, captured everything, I checked if my mind was like water. It wasn't. So I kept on working out why not, until I got to a point, maybe temporarily, of A Mind Like Water. Yippee.
It's funny, but you get there, it may be temporary and brittle, but what now? Do I actually have to do some of these actions!! What I found, is once my mind was totally clear, I was doing actions that I've been putting off for weeks and months. So whilst not perfect, the system and Mind Like Water is re-generating long term projects which you could say are Non-Urgent but Important.
Let's see how I go, and how my state and system handles something urgent or hassling. I'll Handle It and What is the next action!
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