Patrick Rhone – Page 183

Remainders 03.25.2008 – Zen Edition

A little something different for the remainders this time around. As some out there may know, I have been a long time practitioner and subscriber to Buddhist philosophy. While I am certainly no zen master, I have used these practices to keep a whole lot of daily stress (and many a personal demon) at bay.

I have recently been impressed by the number of great posts on meditation, mindfulness, zen practices and Buddhism that have been popping up amongst my productivity blog brethren and sisterhood. Here are just a few of the better ones that have caught my attention:

* 43 Folders: Video: Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness and “falling awake” – This is a great commentary and link to a fantastic video of noted meditation and mindfulness expert, Jon Kabat-Zinn. The video was taken at a recent talk he did a Google. If you would like some sort of low impact introduction into the practice of these techniques, I can think of no better place to start than here. The video is longish (about an hour) but well worth tuning out for a bit to tune in.

* Zen Habits: 12 Essential Rules to Live More Like a Zen Monk – A few things that you can take away from the way a buddhist monk lives their daily practice. These include, doing one thing at a time, doing these things slowly, completely and with a deliberate effort to do less in order to appreciate and enjoy more.

* Dumb Little Man: Meditation Techniques for the Busy or Impatient – Meditation does not have to be some difficult, time consuming, years to master task that a lot of people perceive it to be. As a matter of fact, you can incorporate simple meditation into many ordinary daily activities. This post covers exactly that. The shower meditation is a particular favorite of mine. Good stuff.

Kudos to all who continue to allow this stuff to bubble up to the surface. I deeply believe that freedom from stress and worry is only achieved when we learn to let go of the past, allow the future to remain in place, and take real, honest, compassionate, right minded, action in the present. After all, if you waste energy worrying about things you can’t change, then you miss spending that energy right here and now – in this very moment- on the things you can.

The Today Card

In my last post, I mentioned a little something I call my “Today Card”. Here is a bit more about how that works.

I keep an index card with three simple things I would like to accomplish for the day written on it. I keep this on my desk next to my laptop. Why? Well, when you have a time sucking, life consuming, attention draining source enter your life (referred to by some as a “baby“), allowing a low expectation bar for yourself can go a long way towards sanity. Being able to pick some low hanging fruit off of a otherwise full and getting more so action tree is a Good Thing™. Of course, I am lucky if I am able to accomplish any one of those three things but if I am able to get at least two done, I feel like I have done something to move life a little bit forward.

The other advantage is that it gives me a ready scratch pad as I use the rest of the whitespace on the card to capture notes, phone numbers, and other like incoming items. At the end of the day, I move any undone items from the original three to the card for the next day, add more to equal three on that card, and then toss the old card into my Inbox or Circa for processing the random notes, incoming actions, phone numbers, and such if there are any.

Having this simple list at the ready helps to draw quick focus for the few minutes I may be able to steal here and there.

How I’m Workin’ The Circa -or- GTD, Baby, and Levenger Makes Three

As many a reader of this journal knows, I am a big fan of Levenger’s products. I love them. Covet may even be a more apt word. I recently noticed, while placing yet another order with them, that they are celebrating their 20th anniversary. It was then that I realized I have been a customer for almost 18 of those. My first order from them was a Lap Desk which I still own to this day. They happened to be running a promotion at the time that gave me a free pack of their Cornell ruled pads with my order. While I was more than happy with the Lap Desk, the Paper Pads were a revelation to me. I was a young man of 22 years old who had never even thought about the satisfaction that could come from writing on nice paper. Let’s just say, I never looked back and have been hooked ever since.

In addition, I have been on paternity leave from my main job since the birth of my daughter last Month. As anyone with children knows, at this stage, your to-do list mainly consists of “Feed baby”, “Change Baby” and, perhaps the hardest item “Baby is sleeping. Now what?”. It is that “Now What?” where the methods espoused in Getting Things Done really come into play. You see, you have about one hour, maybe two, before she wakes up. When she does, you will really be unable to pay attention to anything else. The house may be a wreck. There may be calls to return or errands to run or doctors appointments to be made. It is in these moments that having been capturing these items into a trusted system and organizing them by context gives you the best insight into how to use that “free” time.

How do these two things relate? Well, since I am not “working”, the number of things I have to track has become more simple. That being said, there are still many things I have to stay on top of, and some brainstorming for my consulting business I have been trying to take the time to do. Also, these days I often only have use of one hand (since the other has a baby in it). This makes using the computer for capture, notes and project tracking difficult. Paper on the other hand is faster, only requires one hand for writing and therefore is just plain better. One Levenger product has really helped me stay on top of my Org-fu in the last few weeks is my Junior Sized Circa Notebook. The Circa Notebook system is designed so that it is highly customizable and pages can be moved around and mixed and matched with a ton of add ons and such. I wont go into a long detail about that here. Levenger has plenty of that information on their site. Here is how I have mine organized…

I have the notebook divided into three sections using some of the plain white dividers available from Levenger.

* Action: The front section is for Action Items and Capture. I keep things open to this page most of the time while on my desk and a pen at the ready.

* Notes: The notes section is for notes and where I flesh out projects. I also have a page marker for my Circa that gets used here. Active projects and notes go in front of the marker, non-active go behind. This way, I know that anything between the section divider and the page marker in the notes section is in play.

* Archive: When my Action items pages get mostly complete, I start a new one free of completes items. I move the old pages to the Archive.

* Back Section: In the rear of the book I have a clear pocket to hold loose items and ephemera such as stamps. I also have a 3×5 dock that I, in all honesty, have not really sussed a good use for yet. Finally, in the built in pockets of the leather cover, I keep a stencil and some extra 3×5 cards (will cover my use of these in a future post).

So, is there anyone else out there reading this using a Circa? I would love to hear in the comments about how you have yours set up and what you use it for. Share it people!

Click here for more pictures of my setup.