Getting Things Done (GTD) and the Zhuangzi

In my previous post I argued that there was a striking match between Getting Things Done (GTD) and the way Taoists see the world.

I woke up early this morning with the memory of a bunch of Taoist metaphors that further clarify this match. So I picked up my copy of Edward Slingerland’s outstanding book on efortless action, which compiles and analyzes these metaphors in an exhaustive way.

Emptying the mind

As Slingerland points out, the very first step for achieving effortless action according to Zhuangzi is the “emptying” of the heart/mind, understood as loosening our attachment to ego-related concepts such as social rewards, social values and rigid pre-conceptions of right and wrong.

At a deeper level, the emptying process also implies freeing ourselves from the effects of our biased perception, getting rid of knowledge, and at the highest levels of enlightening, of the existence of our physical bodies.

While this sort of emptying of the mind might be achieved through meditation techniques and contemplation of the scriptures within the Zhuangzi, the mundane act of writing down our to-do’s in a comprehensive system, and setting up reminders that allow us to “forget” about all the stuff we need to keep track of in our day-to-day, is what amounts to “emptying the mind” in the GTD paradigm.

Mind like water and the mirror-response

As discussed in my last post, David Allen argues that the key benefit of emptying the mind by implementing GTD is achieving a “mind like water” state that allows us to react in the appropriate measure to the challenges we naturally face while pursuing our goals:

In karate there is an image that’s used to define… “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact…

The Zhuangzi metaphorically describes this mental state of appropriate response to the environment that comes with the clarity of an empty mind in terms of the functioning of a mirror:

The Perfected Person in using his heart/mind is like a mirror: he does not lead, nor does he welcome; he responds… but does not store. This is why he is able to win over things and not be harmed.

This is how Slingerland interprets this passage:

… a mirror works only because it is itself “empty” and merely responds spontaneously to what is put in from of it. Similarly, the heart/mind of the Perfect Person–once emptied through psychic fasting–is completely open and responsive to things. The mirror response is thus the behavioral correlate to cognitive emptiness or clarity.

The workings of Spirit

According to Allen, once mind like water is achieved, a large amount of psychic energy is freed up and one should experience a spontaneous increase in the creative ability to deal with higher order, meaningful goals:

Many executives I have worked with during the day to clear the decks of their mundane “stuff” have spent the following evening having a stream of ideas and visions about their company and their future. This happens as an automatic consequence of unsticking their workflow.

There is a clearly analogous process portrayed In the Zhuangzi. Once an empty heart/mind is achieved, the Perfected Person not only achieves a mirror-like mind that responds appropriately to the world, but also experiments a spontaneous shift of focus towards a spiritual perspective. This happens as a direct result of the workings of the qi, which was believed by Daoists to gain an increased dynamism within the body when the mind was emptied through meditation and other forms of physical cultivation.

Furthermore–and this is a key theme of Daoist thought in general, not only of the Zhuangzi–, this spiritual awakening provides the person not only with inner peace and joy, but is the key for effortless achievement of higher-order goals through inspired work.

Allen doesn’t talk in terms of spiritual awakening of course, but he does believe in a spontaneous process of inspired action that, though the workings of the Reticualr Activating System of the brain, provides a sort of automatic, subconscious “guidance” for goal achievement. To illustrate this, Allen cites a passage by Maxwell Maltz:

Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than “you” ever could by conscious thought. “You” supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.

Butcher Ding

The spirit as a fundamental force for inspired work that goes beyond technique or intellectual skill is perhaps best illustrated in one of the most important metaphors of the Zhuangzi, that of butcher Ding cutting up an ox.

Butcher Ding was cutting up an ox of Lord When Hui. At every touch of his hand, every bending of his shoulder, every step of his feet, every thrust of his knee–swish! swoosh! He guided his blade along with whoosh, and all was in perfect tune–one moment as if he were joining in the Dance of Mulberry Grove, another as if he were in a performance of the Jingshou symphony.

Lord Wen Hui exclaimed, “Ah! How wonderful! Can technique really reach such heights?”

Bucher Ding put down his cleaver and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond mere technique. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years, I no longer saw the ox as a whole. And now–Now I meet it with my spirit and don’t look with my eyes. My sensory knowledge is restrained and my spiritual desires are allowed to move/act. I follow the Heavenly pattern, thrusting into the big hollows, guiding the knife through the big openings, and adapting my movements to the fixed nature of the ox. In this way I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint…

Lord Wen Hui exclaimed, “Wonderful!” I have heard the words of Butcher Ding and from them learned how to cultivate life!”

Woodcarver Qing

A similar theme is found in the story of woodcarver Qing, who creates bellstands of such beauty that people think them the products of ghosts or spirits. He explains to the Marquis of Lu how he prepares for his work:

When I am going to make a bellstand, I am always careful not to exhaust my qi in the process, so i fast in order to still my heart/mind. After fasting for three days, I no longer dare to cherish thoughts of congratulations or praise, of titles or stipends. After fasting for five days, I no longer dare to cherish thoughts of blame or acclaim, of skill or clumsiness. After fasting for seven days, I am so still that I forget I have four limbs and a physical body. Once I’ve reached this point, there is no more ruler or court. My skill is focused and all outside distractions dissappear. Only now will I enter the mountain forest and observe the heavenly nature of the trees. If I come across one of perfect shape and form, then I am able to see the completed bell stand in it and simply apply my hand to the task; if not, I let it go. In this way I am merely taking the Heavenly [within] and joining it with the Heavenly [without]. This is probably why people suspect that the final product was made by spiritual beings.”

The notion of freedom in the Zhuangzi

Another way of seeing the striking similarity between GTD’s mind like water state and Daoist philosophy, is through the very particular notion of freedom implied by the Zhuangzi.

Just like GTD states that a mind like water allows one the flexibility to deal with the day-to-day stuff without underreacting or overreacting, and a simultaneous state of focused inspiration to pursue our most meaningful goals, Slingerland argues that according to the Zhuanzi, the freedom that comes from spiritual enlightenment doesn’t imply that the sage completely transcends the material realm,

… but is rather for the first time actually able to perceive and spontaneaously accord with its dictates… [This is well illustrated by] the feeling of inevitability that accompanies certain artistic achievements: when an artist is successful, it often seems to her that the lines she has drawn and the colors she has chosen could not be otherwise. This sort of activity is felt not so much as a creation of order out of nothing, but the discovery of something–of the proper way pigments on a canvas are to be combined to reflect a landscape, or the way a knife is to be wielded if an ox is to be butchered. As Alan Fox 1996:64 notes: “[Butcher] Ding does not decide where he wants to cut–he finds the space between the bones.” The freedom that Zhuangzi advocates is a freedom to act properly in response to a given situation, and thus represents a subtle combination of freedom and constraint. (The bolds are mine)

It would thus not be accurate to say that the Daoist sage is free to do anything whatsoever that he wants; rather, he is free to do what he must, and do so with joy and a sense of ease.

In exhorting people to “use to he fullest all that you have received from Heaven,” while at the same time realizing that it is necessary to act in the physical and social realms, Zhuangzi is calling for a metaphorical “walking of the two paths” with regard to the Heavenly and the human.

The Zhuangzian ideal thus somewhat resembles the vision of being “in the world but not of it” presented in the New Testament (John 17).

Tagged as: GTD, Taosim, wu-wei, Zhuangzi