John_Lewis
Registered
This is a fascinating topic and is central (or is it peripheral!!) to much of GTD, I think.
It reminded me of playing golf, to which I had a few years of addiction some time ago. As any golfer knows, golf can be a most frustrating game; it seems to give rise to some unstable behaviour in which errors compound themselves via a breakdown of technique which exacerbates the errors; commentators have referred to this using terms like: "the wheels have come off!". When things are going well, one is thinking about the shape of the shot, drawing it against the wind, and it is all wonderful with plenty of time! When things are going badly, one is thinking about that little finger that does not feel to be in the right position, and how this shot is probably not going to work and everything feels rushed.
Then, someone once told me that the secret of playing the game is to combine concentration and relaxation. Being naive, I took this to mean that I should concentrate on my technique and relax about the wider aspects of the game. This did not help much until, I came to realise that perhaps it meant the opposite: I needed to concentrate on the big picture, including the game, my "course management", my shot selection and so on, and to relax about my technique. The effect of this switch was extraordinarily helpful. It seems to relate to whether the left or right side of the brain is being applied to the higher or to the lower level issues.
At about that time, I took part in a several short golf tours with old and new friends. At least one group played quite intensively: 36 holes a day for about a week. This is actually daft! It is very tiring but nevertheless interesting: one's golf can improve significantly. I find that it is when under pressure that the applied thinking is most beneficial; and the application of GTD, in general, is no exception. It is difficult to describe the satisfaction and enjoyment of having played golf intensively for days, to have been exhausted after two or three days, but to have recovered somewhat through gaining fitness, and then on about the fifth day to be standing over a golf ball with a 4 iron in your hands, a stiff breeze from the left, a narrow entrance to the green 180 yards ahead and feeling that you know exactly what you can do with this ... and then doing it. You are "in the groove"!
Another thought is about concentration. In another activity in which I was very briefly involved, karate, a Japanese teacher once asked a group of us to "concentrate". Then he started lightheartedly asking us beginners and some instructors about what it meant to concentrate. No one dared to volunteer an answer! He said that "in the West" we think that concentration is hard, that we must think intensively to concentrate on something; but "in the East", there is a different view, that concentration is easy: "just do not do anything else"!
So, voila! Even the hard part is easy!!
John
It reminded me of playing golf, to which I had a few years of addiction some time ago. As any golfer knows, golf can be a most frustrating game; it seems to give rise to some unstable behaviour in which errors compound themselves via a breakdown of technique which exacerbates the errors; commentators have referred to this using terms like: "the wheels have come off!". When things are going well, one is thinking about the shape of the shot, drawing it against the wind, and it is all wonderful with plenty of time! When things are going badly, one is thinking about that little finger that does not feel to be in the right position, and how this shot is probably not going to work and everything feels rushed.
Then, someone once told me that the secret of playing the game is to combine concentration and relaxation. Being naive, I took this to mean that I should concentrate on my technique and relax about the wider aspects of the game. This did not help much until, I came to realise that perhaps it meant the opposite: I needed to concentrate on the big picture, including the game, my "course management", my shot selection and so on, and to relax about my technique. The effect of this switch was extraordinarily helpful. It seems to relate to whether the left or right side of the brain is being applied to the higher or to the lower level issues.
At about that time, I took part in a several short golf tours with old and new friends. At least one group played quite intensively: 36 holes a day for about a week. This is actually daft! It is very tiring but nevertheless interesting: one's golf can improve significantly. I find that it is when under pressure that the applied thinking is most beneficial; and the application of GTD, in general, is no exception. It is difficult to describe the satisfaction and enjoyment of having played golf intensively for days, to have been exhausted after two or three days, but to have recovered somewhat through gaining fitness, and then on about the fifth day to be standing over a golf ball with a 4 iron in your hands, a stiff breeze from the left, a narrow entrance to the green 180 yards ahead and feeling that you know exactly what you can do with this ... and then doing it. You are "in the groove"!
Another thought is about concentration. In another activity in which I was very briefly involved, karate, a Japanese teacher once asked a group of us to "concentrate". Then he started lightheartedly asking us beginners and some instructors about what it meant to concentrate. No one dared to volunteer an answer! He said that "in the West" we think that concentration is hard, that we must think intensively to concentrate on something; but "in the East", there is a different view, that concentration is easy: "just do not do anything else"!
So, voila! Even the hard part is easy!!
John