TonsofTime – Enjoy the now

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.

As usual the website The World Question Center is not afraid to ask the big questions. This year, a great number of famous artists, writers, scientists and thinkers respond another intellectual appeal. This provides us with an interesting outlook on contemporary thought.

The World Question Center 2008

Photo by Carf

The blog I will change your life features a great list of tips to change your life for the better.

This has been a major year of change in my life – I became a father for the first time in February, I began blogging in April, I relocated from Australia to Canada in July, and I started a new job in November. Along the way I have picked up a variety of tips that I have incorporated into my daily routine to make life happier, healthier, and more productive. Here are 50 of my favourites:

Here is a link to this great post!