TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

Last Sunday, at the Holland Festival, I attended (although not participated) a dance masterclass of the famous dancer Damian Woetzel. He explained some interesting things about what he found that was ‘great’ about dance and ballet performers.

Damian ended his masterclass by showing us this little film:

Maybe you know it, since it was published in 2008, but to me this film shows that there are people all over the world who just want to have fun. It moved me and brought a big smile to my face.

Where the hell is matt?

After reading the first part of the article of Tim Ferriss about the letter of Seneca to Paulinus entitled “On the Shortness of Life”, I decided to read the entire Seneca text. At a quiet Sunday morning, I sat in the garden and started to read the English translation. I had some trouble with the old school English, so I turned to the Dutch translation, since this is my native language.

The short summary of the letter from Seneca is: do not waste your time. Seneca in this text does not explain extensively which activities would not constitute time-wasting. In stead, he devotes a large number of paragraphs to explain why he thinks a great number of people are spending too much time on chasing money, power, fame or easy sensual pleasure.

I have to make an income, so I work. Would Seneca consider this a senseless activity? To me, it is a necessity.

Seneca argues that if you do not give in to distractions, your life seems longer. I agree with this completely. It is what my zen master Thich Nhat Hanh calls: “Achieving more by doing less”. For me, this means: do not waste too much time with zapping the television or chatting (as I did) with a number of people on the Internet. What I find remarkable is that if you are zapping TV channels or senselessly surfing the Internet, time seems to fly by and at the end of the evening, I used to ask myself: “where did the time go?”

Picture courtesy of Uwe Eischens

Once you stop with things like that, other, more meaningful opportunities open.

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

In the letter of Seneca, the author stresses that you should not let others claim your time too much. The example that Tim Ferriss gives is that if somebody would ask you to give him $ 100,-, you would kindly decline, but when somebody invites you to a 2 hour meeting that has no interest to you personally, you would be much more reluctant to decline.

This is definitely something I can relate to. As a young IT specialist, I was known within my family and friends as the guy they could call if they had some problem with their computer. This has cost me a lot of time back then, and I also found out that people would take my help largely for granted. Then one day, I decided that I would stop playing the free help desk, helping nobody anymore, save a few close relatives. I also like the T-shirt that says: “No, I will not fix your computer!” and I think that if you are a physician, people would also ask you medical details during birthday parties or receptions and you would also have to maintain the “no help-policy” for your own protection.

But what, according to Seneca, constitutes the beneficial ways to spend your time? I know from Googling about his work, that this would be a life in reflection, practicing philosophy and reading books of wisdom. This is what I miss in this letter, because here, Seneca does not write much about why these activities are good for you.

As a practicing Buddhist, I believe in mindfulness (being attentive to what you do), concentration (focus on one thing) and insight (that comes when you practice mindfulness and concentration). Focus on the essentials, daily meditation and keeping your balance give a feeling of calmness and having more patience with others. I do not know if this has any resemblance to the ideal activities in Seneca’s mind, though!

This summer, I have read the book Happiness of Matthieu Ricard.

The book starts with examining the nature of happiness. What is the definition?

By hapiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being.

Ricard has studied a lot of material about happiness which he quotes and comments on throughout the book. One central theme is that achieving happiness is a skill that can be learned; happiness does not come to us automatically.

Ricard elaborates on the subject of happiness by analyzing what makes us happy and what not. His reasoning is very logical and almost scientific. It is in no way esoteric or religiously biased. He states that scientific research has shown that rich people are not more happy, although people need a basic level of material well-being. The author also makes clear that our happiness does not depend on outer circumstances at all.

Being a Tibetan monk, Ricard uses sources from the buddhist tradition, like non-self, the roots of suffering, the difference between emotions and feelings. He also analyses disturbing emotions like desire, hatred and envy. These chapters reminded me of the book Destructive Emotions, a report about a dialogue between The Dalai Lama and Western scientists, whereby Matthieu Ricard was the translator for His Holiness.

I have enjoyed reading this book very much, while I was staying with my family in Hungary in August. It is eloquently written, well grounded in science and philosophy and can resist criticism from the more rational readers.

Recognize suffering,
Eliminate its source,
End it
By practicing the path

Photo courtisy of Nicolas Valentin

Tina Su from the blog Think Simple Now has written a great post about how to organise a day of - what I would call mindfulness to regain focus and spend quality time with yourself. By scheduling a clarity day like Tina suggests, you can ‘reconnect with your inner self’.

I’ve always been attracted to the idea of a Spiritual Day or a Clarity Day, in which you spend the whole day disconnected from the information world and the many distractions of modern life, and start to connect within yourself.

If this sounds too mystical, don’t get caught up with the words, they are just linguistic symbols to communicate ideas. When you really get into such a day, it can become a source of great bliss and understanding of one’s self. During these times, we can experience tremendous personal growth, peace, and satisfaction.

Find clarity in one day

This spring, performances of the opera Satyagraha of Philip Glass had a tremendous reception in New York and London. This opera, although composed 28 years ago still moves the audience with its repetative cords that bring near exaltation or trance. I hope to see it sometime if I get the chance.

I remember that I was working for the peace movement in The Hague when in 1982 Gandhi the movie came out and we all got an invitation to see the film prior to the premiere, as were all peace activists I knew.

In my library is the autobiography of Gandhi. I decided to get a copy, because on a couple of lists about “books that changed my life”, like this one included this life story from the man that hated to be called ‘Mahatma’. In this book, the image of a very honest and outspoken man is painted, somebody who is just as open about his failures as he is about his triomphs.

In her article on the Huffington Post, Linda Stone argues that time management, with all it’s never ending lists, causes feelings of helplessness and overwhelm. At the end of the day, the lists seem to get longer, in spite of the fact that you have crossed-off several items. This is how she puts it:

In the cases where people reported managing their time, they more often reported experiencing burn-out, they didn’t know how much longer they could go on at their particular job or lifestyle. There was often a sense of helplessness and overwhelm. The endless list, the one that gets added to and never completed, at the center of it all, left them with a heavy heart and a burdened sense of tomorrow.

Linda argues that the answer lies in managing your attention, not your time. You can do this by making a closed list at the beginning of the day and only put things on this list that you intend to really do. Also, an important part of Linda’s solution is switching off all the distracting technology, like IM, Twitter and cellphone.

Mark Forster also recommends (among other things) to trade in you to-do list for a will-do list. In his book Do It Tomorrow he writes that:
Open lists are demotivating, because:

• They tend to grow
• New items can be added
• Difficult to clear

Closed lists are motivating, because:

• They tend to get smaller
• Nothing new can be added
• Relatively easy to clear

Mark recommends to make a do-able list for 1 day and stick to it as much as possible. If you get new tasks on you desk or in you e-mail, put them on your list for tomorrow. Besides this idea, Mark offers a lot of other insights and techniques in his excellent book.

So what do I use?
So, is the rejection of the open list the end of time management, as Linda puts it? Not according to Mark Forster and I agree with him. If I make a task list for a particular day, I feel much more motivated to finish this list. One of the big disadvantages of Getting Things Done (GDT) is that it stimulates procrastination. I still use all the context lists of GTD, but I also use the task diary of Mark Forsters system, so I combine both. I digitally copy the tasks that I intend to really complete on that day from my context list to my task diary, and stop adding to that dated list during the day. This works great!

In May 2007, Mike Kavis decided that he would change the OS of his laptop to Linux. Furthermore, he decided to use as much non-Microsoft software as possible, while more than 1000 people of the company he works at, use Windows XP with Office.

This whole “Microsoft free” experiment started when a colleague of mine challenged me to eat my own dog food after reading many of my posts about my dabbling with open source technologies. The next day, after a few blue screens of death and various issues with Outlook, I grabbed a Ubuntu CD and installed it on my laptop….at work! From that day forward, I have not used a single Microsoft product at work.

Read Mikes article about this here.

Too busy to meditate? Why not start a meditation group in your workplace? Put an announcement on the intranet and find a quiet place to sit together in a small group once a week (Wednesday) before lunch.

Read more about this idea on the site Sit at Work.

Photo by Alan Oliveira

If you think of an action you have to do, but you cannot access your context lists or you do not have a list for that context, it is possible to strongly visualize a moment in the future and think about the task that you have to remember to do in that moment.

Example: you are riding on your bicycle, headed to the railway station. You have 30 minutes of biking to do and cannot write anything down. Suddenly you remember that you have to go to the ATM at the station. Then it helps to visualize yourself parking your bike and then saying to you future-you: “ATM!”.

I have tried this several times, and it works like this: when the visualized moment actually arrives, you get a hunch that there was something that you should think about. When you pause for a moment and try to remember, the imprint from the past suddenly pops to your mind: “ATM!”

Reverse memory
This works like a reverse memory. A memory is a thought about something in the past, but the reverse memory is a thought we try to think about in the future.

I have learned that Leonardo Davinci also used pre-imagination in the creative process, so I am in very good company :-).

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Wilco Jansen, coordinator of development at Joomla. Discussing interface design, he referred to this talk by Barry Schwartz, psychologist and author of the book Paradox of Choice. His argument is that if we have more choice, we often feel more constrained. I watched the video this morning, and found it very interesting!

Click here for a larger video.