David Allen - Getting Things Done | Page 8

must maintain control over hundreds
of new inputs daily. It must save a lot more time a nd effort than
are needed to maintain it. It must make it easier t o get things
done.
The Promise: The "Ready State"
of the Martial Artist
Reflect for a moment on what it actually might be like if your per-
sonal management situation were totally under contr ol, at all lev-
els and at all times. What if you could dedicate fully 100 percent
of your attention to whatever was at hand, at your own choosing,
with no distraction?
It is possible. There is a way to get a grip on it all, stay
relaxed, and get meaningful things done with minima l effort,
9

THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE I PART ONE
Life is denied by
lack of attention,
whether it be to
cleaning windows
or trying to write
a masterpiece..
—
N a d i a
Boulanger
Your ability to
generate power is
directly proportional
to your ability to
relax.
across the whole spectrum of your life and work. Yo u
can experience what the martial artists call a "mind
like water" and top athletes refer to as the "zone, "
within the complex world in which you're engaged.
In fact, you have probably already been in this state
from time to time.
It's a condition of working, doing, and being in
which the mind is clear and constructive things are
happening. It's a state that is accessible by everyone,
and one that is increasingly needed to deal effectively
with the complexity of life in the twenty-first century.
More and more it will be a required condition for
high-performance professionals who wish to maintain
balance and a consistent positive output in their w ork.
World-class rower Craig Lambert has described how
it feels in Mind Over Water (Houghton Miffin, 1998):
10
Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swi ng. . . . Recall
the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of
motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing
carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc
higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are n ot so much
swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The s hell wants
to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is
simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it b ack with our
thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat
speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself Social
climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no
such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have al ready arrived.
Swing is a state of arrival.
The "Mind Like Water" Simile
In karate there is an image that's used to define t he position of
perfect readiness: "mind like water." Imagine throw ing a pebble
into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is,

CHAPTER 1 I A NEW PRACTICE FOR A NEW REALITY
totally appropriately to the force and mass of the
input; then it returns to calm. It doesn't overreac t or
underreact.
The power in a karate punch comes from speed,
not muscle; it comes from a focused "pop" at the end
of the whip. That's why petite people can learn to
break boards and bricks with their hands: it doesn' t
take calluses or brute strength, just the ability to gen-
erate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense musc le is a slow one.
So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand
balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Cl earing the
mind and being flexible are key.
Anything that causes you to overreact or under-
react can control you, and often does. Responding
inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your proj-
ects, your unread magazines, your thoughts about
what you need to do, your children, or your boss wi ll
lead to less effective results than you'd like. Mos t
people give either more or less attention to things
than they deserve, simply because they don't operate
with a