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Getting Things Done (GTD) and the Zhuangzi

Taoist metaphors that explain how GTD makes us more effective, and overall better people.

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).


Posted on March 4, 2010
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Achieving “mind like water” through Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done methodology brings about a state of stress-free productivity that fits nicely with the frame of mind I acquired throughout my Year of Nothing.

I was surprised to find that the most important benefit that Getting Things Done (GTD) claims to provide is an increased capacity to focus on and think creatively about our higher-level goals and values.

In other words, more than a methodology for getting things done, GTD is a system for aligning ourselves with meaning.

The argument is that by providing a reliable system for recording all our to-do’s and setting up appropriate reminders, we “empty our heads” of all the mundane stuff that we inevitably need to take care of in the here and now, freeing up lots of psychic energy that can now be used to think (consciously or unconsciously) on more meaningful stuff.

From the book:

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.

I totally buy this argument. Above and beyond what I have experienced during the few weeks since I adopted GTD to manage my day-to-day, the key benefit of my Year of Nothing was a spontaneous shift towards a life based on meaning.

I think that the key here is the “emptying of the mind” that occurs both by doing Nothing, or by the process of writing context-based to-do lists and reminders advocated by GTD.

Allen describes this mental state as “mind like water,” and uses metaphors from the martial arts to convey the idea of a mind that is highly focused in the here and now, yet flexible enough to deal with the bigger strategic picture, reflect on the higher issues that we consider truly meaningful, and therefore keep our actions consistent with core values and crucial goals.

The “mind like water” and martial arts metaphors used by Allen are specially significant for me after the insights on the Taoist concept of wu-wei or “effortless action” gained throughout my Year of Nothing:

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 power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle… So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind and being flexible is key.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your projects, your unread magazines… will lead to less effective results than you’d like.


Mind like water and synchronicity

I had been postponing reading Getting Things Done for a long time. Then, right after my Year of Nothing I felt naturally drawn to it as I got back in touch with goal-oriented action. This makes perfect sense from a Taoist perspective: according to the concept of wu-wei, once “mind like water” and an enlightened focus on higher purpose is achieved, we should expect lucky, synchronistic events that bring us the right resources, at the right time, for to achieving our goals effortlessly.

I wonder what Allen would think of the link between “mind like water” and synchronicity. His core audience of business executives would perhaps find the concept to be too esoteric, but he definitely is a firm believer in a psychological mechanism that resembles the Taoist paradigm of synchronistic luck.

Because a mind like water state automatically shifts our focus towards higher-order goals and values, Allen thinks that this (with the help of simple, positive visualization exercises of desired outcomes) has a direct impact on our brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS):

[The RAS] is basically the gateway to your conscious awareness; it’s the switch that turns on your perception of ideas and data, the thing that keeps you asleep even when music’s playing but wakes you if a special little baby cries in another room…

It seems to be programmed by what we focus on and, more primarily, what we identify with… We notice only what matches our internal belief systems and identified contexts.

From this, it follows that by applying GTD to our lives we should automatically start noticing all sort of resources in the environment that can help us in the achievement of our higher goals. According to this view, it is not synchronicity that “brings to us” these resources: they were always around us, we just failed to notice them due to our RAS’s lack of proper focus, and is part of the same process that strengthens our creative imagination and subconscious capacity to experience aha! moments mentioned in the beginning of this post.

The similarity of this process and synchronicity is very well captured by a passage by Maxwell Maltz quoted by Allen in the book:

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.

Regardless of what David Allen thinks of Taoism and synchronicity, one thing is for sure. If Lao-tzu would live in our day and age, he would definitely be a total fan of Getting Things Done. I can picture him in his Taoist robes, having green tea for breakfast after early-morning meditation, checking the “next action” folders in his Evernote-GTD system on his laptop…

Posted on March 2, 2010
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Learning from what is not

The very last post on the Year of Nothing series, or the yearlong process during which I became a Taoist without noticing.

Reading Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts — Change Your Life towards the end of my Year of Nothing was remarkably revelatory. Both the chain of events that led me to the book and its content helped me put in perspective what I gained during this year, and made me realize that I had become a Taoist without noticing.

Here are the most important Year-of-Nothing lessons, and the corresponding passages of the book that clarified each of them.


Contentment

Doing nothing for a whole year detoxed my system from “achievement addiction.” It developed my capacity to be content with who I already am, the serenity to appreciate all the positives that already exist in my life.

The 3rd verse of the Tao Te Ching hints at the connection between non-doing and contentment.

…

The sage governs by emptying minds and hearts, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.

Practice not doing… When action is pure and selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place

Taking a long enough break from goal-oriented action seems to have a taming effect on the ego, isolating us from its constant push to move things forward, and therefore allowing our better appreciation of the blessings of what we already are and have.

Here’s Dyer’s interpretation of this part of the 3rd verse, which he entitles “Living Contentment”:

You may have a long list of goals that you believe will provide you with contentment when they’re achieved, yet if you examine your state of happiness in this moment, you’ll notice that the fulfillment of some previous ambitions didn’t create an enduring sense of joy… “Stop pushing yourself,” Lao-tzu would say, “and feel gratitude and awe for what is. Your life is controlled by something far bigger and more significant than the petty details of your lofty aspirations.”


Humility

Doing nothing for so long somehow directed a lot of my psychic energy inwards, building my courage to take hard looks at myself. I now am clear about what made me deviate from my core values in the past. I feel more compassionate.

I am also more able to accept that many of the things we assume as “achievements” are due to factors out of our control — for instance, the huge material abundance in our lives is in large part a result of simply having been born in the Western hemisphere of the world.

In this regard, the 9th verse of the Tao Te Ching reads:

To keep on filling is not as good as stopping.

Overfilled, the cupped hands drip, better to stop pouring.

…

Retire when the work is done; this is the way of heaven.

Dyer interprets the central message of this verse to be “Living Humility”:

Cramming life with… activities when we’ve obviously reached a point where more is less indicates being in harmony with ego, not the Tao! Living humility knows when to just stop, let go, and enjoy the fruits of our labor. This verse clearly analogizes that the pursuit of more status, more money, more power, more approval, more stuff, is as foolish as honing a carving knife after it has reached its zenith of sharpness. Obviously, to continue would just create dullness, and it is obvious that a keen edge represents perfection.


Giving

Our happiness comes mostly from the relationships we build. We cannot really say that we “achieve” truly meaningful and fulfilling relationships, for what works best in that department is to allow our capacity for joyful giving to emerge. This is a state that by definition cannot be willed. It comes about as a spontaneous byproduct of contentment and humility, both also elusive to our conscious efforts. Try too hard, and you break the spell.

But there’s something to doing nothing for a while, either by meditating or taking a quiet walk in the park or surrendering to a Year of Nothing, that does the trick.

In this regard, the 7th verse of the Tao Te Ching reads:

…Why do heaven and earth last forever? They do not live for themselves only. This is the secret of their durability.

For this reason the sage puts himself last and so ends up ahead. He stays a witness to life, so he undures.

Serve the needs of others and all your own needs will be fulfilled. Through selfless action, fulfillment in attained.

Dyer interprets this verse as “Living Beyond Ego”:

The more you pursue desires, the more they elude you. Try letting life come to you and begin to notice the clues that what you crave is on its way… Stay appreciative of all that you receive… Stop the chase and become a withness — soothe your demanding habits by refusing to continue running after more. By letting go, you let God; and even more significantly, you become more like God and less like the ego…


Luck

Soon after I took the plunge, quitting a business and lifestyle that were clashing with my most important values, and let myself go with the flow without specific expectations, I was surprised with a very particular sense of self-confidence. Not the kind that comes from reinforcing the ego, but from faith — a conviction that whatever was going to happen, I would be just fine. I felt happy to live with the worst case scenario if I ever needed to, in order to stay true to myself and do the right thing.

Gradually, all sort of synchronicities started to happen, as if by meaningful coincidences the right people, information, opportunities and resources stumbled into me at the right time and place. I started feeling incredibly “lucky.” And yet, I sensed that somehow this luck was the result of my having become less fearful towards the fuzziness of life’s adventure.

The 55th verse of the Tao Te Ching states that

He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child. Deadly insects will not sting him. Wild beasts will not attack him. Birds of pray will not strike him. Bones are weak, muscles are soft, yet his grasp is firm.

In his interpretation of this verse, entitled “Living by Letting Go,” Dyer elaborates:

Verse 55 of the Tao Te Ching incites you to realize that what you call luck isn’t something that randomly happens–it’s yours for life when you decide to live by letting go… letting go for protection sounds paradoxical… But try seeing it as a way of allowing life’s natural rhythm to flow unimpeded through you. Living by letting go means releasing worry, stress and fear. When you promote your sense of well-being in the face of what appears as danger to others, your alignment with your Source frees you from pushing yourself to act in a forceful manner. La-tzu reminds you here that “things that are forced grow for a while, but then wither away.”

Living by letting go will allow you to appreciate Lin Yutang’s wry observation in The Importance of Living: “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.”

The notion of luck postulated in this verse of the Tao Te Ching resonates much stronger with me than the Law of Attraction and similar concepts preached by all sorts of personal development gurus these days. There’s no way that “the universe will conspire to get us what we want” until we loose our attachment to whatever it is that we want so badly, are content with what we already have and who we are, and have faith that as long as we let go and let our actions be guided by a sense of higher purpose, we will be OK with whatever life puts us through.


Action

During the last 2-3 months of my Year of Nothing, my desire for pursuing goals again started growing fast. But I noticed important changes in the way I approach the concept of action. Paradoxically, there is something to non-doing and trusting your “luck” that also brings clarity as to how simple (yet not easy) it is to voluntarily bring about change in the world through action. It’s as if I can see the chain of causality from action to results much more clearly. That fresh clarity gave me a huge motivational boost.

This goes as well for the negative consequence of our actions in the world — I can confidently say that today I am much more conscious of the environmental impact of my lifestyle, and of the unintended consequences for others that my actions might have.

Also of crucial importance has been a strong intuition on the value of following the path of less resistance in life. As it happens to be, I also discovered that traditional Chinese thinkers regarded this principle as the key to enlightenment, the concept of “effortless action” or wu-wei being an analogue to the Buddhist notion of Nirvana.

This is very much in line with modern notions of personal development and business thought that advocate a motivational focus on personal strengths, passions and meaning instead of profit and other external forms of reward. Action that is in line with our talents or level of skill, is exciting, and/or meaningful cannot be said to involve effort in the sense of struggle, tedium or moral torment.

Doing nothing and wu-wei are so interlinked in the traditional Chinese psyche that both are sometimes identified and referred to as “non-action.”

The Tao Te Ching’s 43rd verse is particularly straightforward on this subject:

The softest of all things overrides the hardest of all thigns. That without substance enters where there is no space. Hence I know the value of non-action.

Teaching without words, performing without actions–few in the world can grasp it–that is the master’s way…

And Dyer’s commentary:

[The principle of non-action] is clearly seen when you look at great champions as they perform their chosen activities. The greatest golfers are effortless in their swing… they don’t use force, nor can they find words to describe how they do it. The most talented artists dance softly, without effort; paint quietly, without force; and write easily, without struggle, by allowing the words to come to them.


…Some marathon runners say that they’ve learned to relax and stop pushing, letting their legs, arms and torso simply be as their bodies begin experiencing extreme exhaustion with only only a few miles to go. They report that when they shut down the mental interference and instructions they magically cross that finish line.


Apply this way of seeing everything in your world: Tasks will be simplified, your performance level will increase, and the pressure to be better than others by using superior hardened strength will cease to be a factor.

As a result of my Year of Nothing, I have also gained a much tighter control over my urges to be active for its own sakes, which more often than not is simply a modern form of procrastination.

In a nutshell, having spent such a long period of time in non-action, paradoxically gave me a much better sense of the value of action.


Patience

Equally important in the Taoist notion of wu-wei is the concept of timing. In order for action to be effortless, we must learn to act only when the time is right. Doing nothing for such long time allowed me to appreciate the value of dwelling in non-action for as long as it is needed, until the right time to act arrives.



Living from the void

Last but not least, doing nothing for a whole year somehow infused me with a sense of spirituality, with the notion that there is a creative, overarching consciousness “out there” that nurtures every single thing in the universe. I can’t help but wonder about the possibility of synchronicity and “luck” as discussed above being mechanisms by which this higher consciousness communicates with us.

With hindsight, I think I now have a better idea of how this process of “illumination through non-action” might occur. In the Taoist view, “emptying” the mind of thoughts and desires through meditation and other techniques, takes us from doing nothing to being nothing — and nothingness is at the core of the “nameless,” “formless” source of everything that they called the Tao.

That’s why meditation is viewed by Taoists as a means to “harmonize people with nature:” making us more spontaneous, allowing us to discover our true vocations, more respectful of other life forms by becoming empathetic, compassionate and less judgmental, etc.

But above and beyond all these positive effects, there is a deeper experience of transcendence, a sort of heightened awareness about the Tao as that higher form of consciousness that is so appealing to me nowadays. A deeper inner conviction that in ancient Chinese thought was the spiritual anchor that allows one to “live by letting go” as discussed above.

That is the principle embodied in the 11th verse of the Tao Te Ching:

Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub; it is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.


Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful. Carve fine doors and windows, but the room is useful in its emptiness.


The usefulness of what is depends on what is not.

These are Dyer’s words on the meaning of this verse, which he interprets as “Living from the void”:

A composer once told me that the silence from which each note emerges is more important than the note itslef. He said that that it’s the empty space between the notes that literally allows the music to be music — if there’s no void, there’s only continuous sound. You can apply this subtle awareness to everything that you experience in your daily life. Ask yourself what makes a tree, a tree. The bark? The branches? The roots? The leaves? All of these things are what is. And all of them do not constitute a tree. What’s needed to have a tree is what is not — an imperceptible, invisible life force that eludes your five senses. You can cut and carve and search the cells of a tree endlessly and you’ll never capture it.

Posted on February 4, 2010
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The Year of Nothing, Part 2

This Year of Nothing allowed me to develop a razor-sharp sense of what I want to do next and what I want to be. Never before have I felt that I Get It as I do now.



Do not pull, do not push
And fortune will return of its own accord
And the Way will naturally come…
If you are still, you will get it,
If you are active, you will loose it.
Yang Zhu


Besides reminding me of the value of friendship, this Year of Nothing has provided me with a razor-sharp sense of self-knowledge.

Never before have I been clearer on what I want to do and what I want to be. Never before have I felt that I Get It as I do now.


Getting It

While it’s true that practicing formal Taoist meditation has helped me a lot in gaining this newfound clarity of values, the process has been simpler than that.

As soon as I stopped spending most of my waking hours doing something I didn’t find meaningful, eliminating the inherent cognitive dissonance, I started to Get It.

Not having a clear objective, nothing to achieve for a while, liberated a ton of psychic energy, and refocused it inwards.

Now I know that while I’m alive and awake, I want to do something that delivers genuine value to others — not just to myself.

I want to contribute, however humbly, to change the world for the better.


Money

An obvious question I’ve been pondering all this time is how to align my quest for meaning with the necessity of making a living out of it.

In the beginning, I was quite pessimistic about this. I was still working on the assumption that running a business was a fundamentally selfish thing.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this prejudice was in large part due to my training in Economics.

Traditional economic theory is based on the notion that people seek their narrow self interest, and that this is perfectly fine — the market’s Invisible Hand is supposed to ensure that selfish individual behavior translates into broad social gains.

But after some time I managed to break free from that prejudice.

The idea that business can be motivated by forces beyond profit is, of course, one of the hottest topics in the media today.

This Year of Nothing gave me the time to absorb the huge amounts of information available on- and offline on the subject, and to meet lots of people who have embraced the concept.

But most importantly, because I haven’t been involved with any particular business for a while, I was able to open my mind and truly ponder the validity of this idea against my previous conceptions.



###

The business guidelines

Here are a few rough guidelines I’ll be following for my upcoming income-generating initiatives. Of course, I’ll be updating you on their evolution through this blog:


Affiliate information products

Since I started sharing my insights and tips about creating a lifestyle based on meaning and personal development through this blog, I’ve had some tremendously encouraging feedback from readers about the value they receive from the project.

This feedback, and the steady increase in traffic that the blog has enjoyed since its launch, made me conclude that there is room for a little “store” section where readers will be able to buy information products that I endorse.

I will only endorse products that I have found to be extremely useful and empowering during this already 1-year old journey. Eventually, I will also offer information products created by yours truly.

A store section for the blog is the most obvious way I can think of for creating a small business based on meaning and real value.


Art

Throughout this Year of Nothing I have re-connected with my passion for art.

I have had plenty of time to listen to music again. That was one of the things I missed the most in my life, and I got it back.

Through my travels, I have attended all kinds of concerts, shows and music festivals. I have been stopped in my tracks by dozens of awesome street musicians in subways and alleys, and been able to take the time to properly contemplate their performances.

I even ended up one night hanging out with Farruquito (one of Spain’s most acclaimed Flamenco dancers) and his friends at El Taxidermista bar in Barcelona until almost 6 am the next day.

I don’t know what got me more drunk: the alcohol, or the insanely powerful energy emanating from these people when they’re offstage, partying, singing and dancing for themselves. :-D

Check out some of Farruquito’s incredible moves here:

I’ve been in many museums and exhibitions. I’ve attended cinema festivals and rented tons of old movies I hadn’t had the time to watch.

This Year of Nothing allowed me to truly appreciate art as the ultimate human activity aligned with higher purpose. Art can do so much good to the world at so many levels that it’s hard to think about a more valuable human activity.

So I have come to the conclusion that I want to launch a little project related to the art business. I still don’t have much of a clue about the form it will take, but I’ll keep you posted on its progress…

And to those of you who know about my frustrated musician background: yes, I have seriously started thinking about playing an instrument again. But that’s a bit of a longer term project — I will still probably do Nothing about it until mid next year :-)


Economics

During this Year of Nothing I have also re-connected with Economics, and I have revived the excitement that I felt for the discipline back in college.

I definitely think I can use my skills as an economist for dedicating some of my time to contribute to projects aligned with a higher purpose.

Before this Year of Nothing, whenever I read or heard someone say that quietness, idleness and meditation can be a big emotional amplifier, I used to discard it as New Age BS.

Not anymore. Somehow, a Year of Nothing hugely expanded my sensitivity towards poverty, the environment, and the myriad sustainability problems we must all deal with. It’s like I’ve developed a visceral repulsion towards them that goes beyond the rational understanding of their causes and nature. And I’ve decided that I want to deal with them indeed.

Again, this is all work in progress… stay tuned for updates in this area too.



So what do you think? Does my plan make sense to you? What are your plans for 2010 (resolution time is approaching!) in terms of aligning your business or career with a sense of meaning and higher purpose?



Posted on November 3, 2009
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The Year of Nothing, Part 1

It’s been a year since I quit the PR industry and took the plunge into an intense process of self re-discovery and growth. Through a series of posts, I’ll recap what I’ve achieved since then, and where I’m going from here.

The myriad things are born from Something.
And Something is born from Nothing.
Laozi

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that it’s been a year since I quit the public relations industry and took the plunge into the process of self re-discovery and growth that inspired the creation of this blog.

Dubai-NYC ticket

So through a series of posts, I’ll recap what I’ve achieved since then, and where I’m going from here.

Nothing

This year I learned the importance of stepping back, pausing, and “doing nothing” for a while.

Of course, it’s impossible to literally “do nothing”.

What I mean is that this year I have not executed any deliberate, purposeful action towards achieving any important goal.

Well, OK, I have done some of that. But very, very little. :-)

One of the things I did was to start practicing Tai Chi Chuan and Taoist philosophy more seriously. But as Laozi’s quote at the beginning of this post indicates, Taoism is all about the paradoxical virtues of non-doing as a creative force.

So, what do you do?

Whenever I’ve been introduced to people lately, my answer to the proverbial “So, what do you do?” has been a clear, straightforward and resounding “Nothing.”

After explaining myself a bit better about this Year of Nothing, people usually understand that I needed to take a break, recharge my batteries, and reflect upon what I wanted to do next.

At this point, they usually acknowledge that it takes time to discover what makes us tick, and that trying too hard might defeat the purpose. That true self-discovery arises much in the same way as genuine intellectual or artistic discovery: through spontaneous “aha!” moments.

But they’re usually still skeptical on the practicality of taking a whole year in order to do that.

And a key reason behind their skepticism, is the belief that they “just can’t afford” a Year of Nothing.

Stuff

And yet, I have spent close to nothing for a Year of Nothing.

One of the key lessons of this Year of Nothing has been that when it comes to consumption, the best policy is to keep it as close as possible to nothing. And that this is easier to do than what I used to think.

I certainly haven’t bought almost any stuff at all. That I can remember, only a pair of shoes, a piece of luggage, and a Kindle.

Actually, I got rid of most of the very few material possessions I still carried with me. The Kindle substituted for all my books, which I donated together with half of my clothes.

Nowadays, all my stuff fits in one piece of luggage.

Getting rid of stuff has been an incredibly energizing and liberating exercise that I started a couple of years before this Year of Nothing. But I won’t elaborate on this topic because the always inspiring Colleen Wainwright (AKA Communicatrix) wrote a brilliant series of posts about her de-cluttering experience that do just that.

Traveling on Nothing, and my biggest Something

During this Year of Nothing, I learned to travel on almost nothing.

I am truly lucky of having many wonderful friends spread all over the globe. And whenever I asked them for advice on accommodation in their cities, they have invariably invited me to stay at their homes.

So with a little help from my friends, I spent this Year of Nothing in New York, Buenos Aires, Caracas, London, Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco and Los Angeles, spending close to nothing in accommodation.

But most importantly, having been able to spend so much time with friends and being in the state of calm mindfulness that comes so naturally from doing Nothing, has boosted my gratitude for friendship to levels I had never experienced. Sometimes to a crazy level of euphoria that makes me cry out of happiness.

This deeper connection with friends has pushed further down the value of consumption in my scale of values. I know now for sure that I really don’t need to buy any stuff to be happy. I need Nothing. Zero. Nada. As long as I have truly good friends, I will always have a reason for being happy.

This realization was for me the first, and biggest Something born from this Year of Nothing.

Posted on October 23, 2009
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For discovering great wines, it’s better to not try

Our eagerness to discover great wines might put us in a frame of mind that defeats the purpose.

Felix salmon recently posted an interesting piece about the potential pitfalls of tasting wine blind.

He argues that blind tastings tend to favor simple, straight forward, soft-fruity-sweet wines that offer immediate pleasure and gratification over austere, complex wines whose subtleties take longer to become aware of and appreciate properly.

According to Salmon, the very fact of not knowing what we’re tasting tends to bias us against subtle, complex wines:

…If you know exactly what it is that you’re tasting — a young first-growth wine, for example — then you can taste it in that light. Similarly, if you know that you’re looking at an Ad Reinhardt painting, you’ll be willing to spend a few minutes with it so that you can appreciate its subtleties. If you didn’t know it was a Reinhardt, then you’d probably just read it as a black monochrome and move on…

I agree with Salmon’s take on blind tasting. I have done some of it since the end of 2008 while traveling back and forth between New York and Buenos Aires (and a one-month stop in San Francisco), all cities where great wine is easy to find, which inevitably made me catch the wine bug.

I think there might other psychological elements that contribute to the problems with blind tastings. A couple of days before reading Salmon’s piece, I came across an article posted at the BPS Research Digest blog (Ht: The Situationist), about a new study by Ayumi Yamada suggesting that talking about art can alter our appreciation of it.

Half of 129 students in the study were asked to verbalize their reasons for liking (or not liking) two paintings, one abstract, and another representational. They were then asked which one of the paintings was their favorite. The remaining participants just viewed the paintings without saying anything. Afterwards, all the participants had to choose their favored painting.

Representational paintings are realistic, with content that can be easily talked about. Abstract art, by contrast, is less grounded in reality and more tricky to talk about.

… Those participants in the verbalisation condition who’d been challenged to say why they liked the paintings were subsequently biased towards choosing the representational painting as their favourite… participants in the verbalisation condition who’d been challenged to articulate their reasons for disliking the paintings were subsequently biased towards choosing the abstract painting as their favourite.

… Yamada thinks that… because participants found it easier to talk about why they liked the representational painting compared with the abstract one, this biased them in favour of the representational painting. Similarly, participants who had to talk about their dislike for the art, found this easier for the representational painting, which subsequently biased them against it.

As Salmon says, blind tastings probably diminish our capacity to judge subtle, complex wines because they’re akin to abstract paintings, and therefore difficult to evaluate from a “position of ignorance” that doesn’t provide the incentive for us to pause and let these wines grow slowly in us.

But it might as well be that the obvious, salient qualities of soft-fruity-sweet wines not only provide more immediate sensorial gratification. As it happens with representational paintings, this qualities are easier to verbalize. This would be a more fundamental advantage for these wines at any formal tasting, blind or not, which invariably consist of putting wine’s taste and aromas into the very concrete words that make up the jargon of wine connoisseurs.

Yamada study is consistent with past research showing that attempting to verbalise our feelings can distort our later choices. For example, a prior study showed that participants who attempted to explain their preferences for different jams subsequently showed less agreement with expert ratings than did control participants.

This is probably why I have discovered the wines I like the most in all kinds of situations other than wine tastings, precisely when I’m not consciously focused on tasting the wine.

Salmon is of the opinion that the best way of enjoying great wine is

“…with good food, on a special occasion, with people you love, purely for enjoyment. If you take most of that away, and drink wine blind, surrounded by serious men spitting into buckets, you’re doing something qualitatively very different indeed. And it should come as no surprise that there might not be much if any correlation between how much you like a wine in the former context and how much you like it in the latter.”

I think that a big part of this qualitative difference is that drinking wine “with good food, on a special occasion, with people you love, purely for enjoyment” is not only intrinsically more enjoyable than being “surrounded by serious men spitting into buckets”, but more crucially, it doesn’t let us concentrate too narrowly, rationally and deliberately on tasting the wine. We are going with the delicious flow of the situation, and wine is but one of the multiple delights that register in our subconscious.

The wines I like the most have always managed to surprise me in these situations, when I’m almost not paying attention to them. They pull me out of conversation for a few seconds that I use to revel more intently in the sensory pleasure they provide. But this pleasure is always enigmatic to the point that even if I could, I wouldn’t want to define it or attach any words to it. It almost feels as if I would somehow spoil the experience by analyzing it. And that’s how, so far, my best technique for discovering great wines is to not even try to.

Posted on September 22, 2009
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