In the spirit of sharing, and spreading knowledge throughout the productivity community, I am going to present a shameless rip-off! There is a remarkable post over at Copyblogger entitled “Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging” that has inspired me. I was perusing this article while some nagging bits of my Getting Things Done system were simmering on the back burner of my mind. Therefore, I have taken the liberty of editing this post into “Zen and the Art of Gettting Things Done”:

The 1974 bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance begins with the following disclaimer from author Robert Pirsig:

“[This book] should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles, either.”

Likewise, this article isn’t going to teach you much of anything about Zen Buddhism, and absolutely zero about motorcycles. But I hope it does provide some insight into effective productivity, or, at a minimum, gets you to think differently about your current notions regarding Getting Things Done and the effectiveness you seek with it.

The Four Noble Truths of Productivity:

1. Get Over Your “Self”
Buddhists believe that suffering begins with our perception that we are separate and distinct from the rest of reality. In other words, our own egos make us miserable.
In productivity, the unorganized mindset can also cause you unnecessary pain. The key to successful productivity is an alignment of interests between Contexts and Next Actions. It’s that sweet spot where what’s good for your Projects matches what’s good for you.
Don’t focus on having a great system. Focus on executing a process that’s great for your input.

2. Free Your Mind
Zen is all about seeing deeply into the nature of things by direct experience. Productivity that is efficient and stress-free is all about seeing existing information from a unique perspective and capturing it in the proper Context.
Zen encourages meditation, and great productivity requires contemplative thought. If you’re truly going to get into a higher-level thinking mode, you’ve got to step away from the system and think. Stop hacking notebooks, arranging and re-arranging notecards and go for a walk.
Albert Einstein figured out that time is relative while on a stroll with a friend. Go do something else and a killer angle for your next project may just pop into your head.

3. Detach From Results
Another key to existential angst is an attachment to systems rather than simply focusing on excelling in our actions. The same is true for any pursuit, including productivity and Getting Things Done.
When you focus on the outcome you expect from your Next Actions, you are invariably creating a vision of success. Moreover, while one great achievement may change your productivity profile immensely, a failure to consistently perform at or near the same level will make you nothing more than a one-hit wonder.
Focus on consistently executing the fundamentals of your practice: Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do. The results will come.

4. It’s Up to You
While still steeped in Buddhist philosophy, Zen is more concerned with attaining wisdom through doing, in that daily life and mundane tasks will teach you more than any sacred text could. In this way, productivity and Zen are closely aligned—simply showing up and keeping at it will teach you more than anyone else can.

Zen encourages practitioners to learn from teachers and other students to better understand how to attain truth through direct experience. The productivity community offers a similar environment, but the final breakthrough will always occur in your own mind and be the result of your own Next Actions. You’ve got to accept responsibility for your own success.

I’m sure the story of the origin of Zen can make this point much clearer than I ever could:

Buddha gathered his disciples at a lake on Gridhakuta for instruction. His adherents sat in a circle about him eagerly awaiting his teachings.

Wordlessly Buddha reached into the muck and pulled up a single lotus flower. He then held it high for all to see.

Practically everyone was bewildered. But then the disciple Mahakashyapa began to laugh.

Finally, Buddha handed the lotus flower to Mahakashyapa and said,
“What can be said I have said to you, and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa.”

Please forgive my insolence.

Linda Stone has thoughts on what it is and how it affects us:

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

I am as guilty of this as anyone, what with the laptop always on, my wife and her TV addiction, and the stack of books that I need to read.

How do you use GTD to avoid the trap of Continuous Partial Attention and accomplish the things on your lists?

Kaly provides a list and links:

All for Gmail: handy Firefox extensions, best Greasemonkey scripts, some desktop tools and lots of useful tips. Take this Gmail thingie to another level. Enjoy.

Lots of goodies, indeed. It may take me a while to go through this list…

Doc Searls is waiting for the new internet advertising paradigm. Commenting on a post by Jeff Jarvis:

Advertising is […] a model that never got past 1954. Worse, we’ve dragged it over to the Web and blogging and everything else here.
No, I’m not saying advertising will go away. But I am saying it’s inefficient, inappropriate and stuck in a sell-side perspective and mentality. We have to do better than advertising. Building a Relationship Economy offers some pointers. There have to be others. Go find them. Or make them.

What did Jarvis say?

We can nurture an explosion of creativity and commerce. But we have to do it right.

Blogs didn’t do it right. Not the economic side of the equation. We bloggers make it extremely difficult for advertisers to love us – and many want to. They can’t find the right matches: the blogs that write about what they care about, with authority and trust and popularity. They can’t measure us – and to advertisers, metrics are sex. Size matters. They can’t find our names and email addresses to negotiate with us. They can’t put ad hoc buys of us together across many incompatible networks. They can’t serve ads because we don’t all have 15-year-old sons who can dig into the PHP to put up the ad call. They can’t track their ads’ performance. Their clients fear us. And so they give up. And thus they still give too much money to old, shrinking media. They buy dumb. They lose. So do we.

On top of that, it has always been hard for our fated friends and readers to find us. That’s not the fault of bloggers or the technology, but it has long been an opportunity: helping people find the good stuff, as each of us defines good.

The new economy is starting to look much more like the old (really old) economy. Niches. Stalls in the public square, even. It’s not that advertisers can’t find us, it’s that their model of ‘economy of scale’ in buying ads does not work so well on the Web 2.0 framework. The big advertising purveyors have built empires based on the framework of mass disribution. There is a new framework of distribution that is tightly focused and even user-generated. How do you market your product or service to these people?

Web 2.0 is not TV with a “buy now” button.