LifeHack, GTD, ZTD and Friends

What is LifeHack, GTD, ZTD, and LifeHack 2.0?

LifeHack 1.0 is productivity tips to cut through information overload, and generally to get better organized. It was extracted from highly efficient IT people, similar to Steven Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People" for the general case.

For example the book "LifeHacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day"
includes hacks such as emailing your future self (reminders), installing a personal Wiki, avoiding time wasting sites, automate repetitive tasks, control email, keep the Inbox empty, Google searching, firewalls, backups, etc.

GTD (Getting-Things-Done) is a set of tools (manual or electronic) to externalize our to-do lists, so that we need not keep them in our heads, and thus reduce stress. GTD can be seen as a glorified to-do-list, it includes calendars, workflows, 6 levels of focus and planning.

ZTD (Zen-To-Done) is a book by Leo Babauta: "Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System" , which claims to have combined GTD with Stephen Covey 7 Habits. ZTD focuses on developing 10 habits.

LifeHack 2.0 is a term I coined for the extension of LifeHack 1.0 to non IT subjects such as creativity, happiness, procrastination, writing and presentation skills, negotiation, investing, relaxation, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, eating habits, and giving gifts. These are some of topics you can find at LifeHack.org.

I am trying to compile LifeHack 2.0 hacks, some of these have appeared on this blog already. Hacks should be action oriented, and not domain specific. They can be inspired by philosophies and spiritual traditions, but should be acceptable to people from various beliefs.

LifeHack 2.0 Examples:

• Slowing down, take time to smell the flowers, relax
  

• To see the extra-ordinary in ordinary things

• Do simple ordinary things such as dish washing, sweeping the floor, gardening

• Less Multi-tasking, more focus on here and now
  

• Bare Attention Suspend judgment once in a while

• Clear Comprehension of Purpose
  

• Mindfulness, using every day events for reminders to be mindful (Thich Nhat Hanh suggested every time when a phone rings, to compose ourselves, before picking up the phone)

• Mindfulness of bad habits to break them

• Refactoring and re-purposing, get the task completed first and improve by refactoring (as in extreme programming). Re-use by re-purposing
  

• Continuous Learning

• Sub tasking, take one bite at a time

• Systems thinking things are interconnected. Thich Nhat Hanh's InterBeing
  

• Nice guys finish first it is always good to be good
  

• Helping others to help ourselves

• Don't use violence

All of the above hacks still need to be reworked, elaborated, or subdivided into smaller hacks.

I would be grateful for comments and suggestions of such LifeHack 2.0 tips from the readers.

Revised version: Life Hack 2.0 How-to's

"The Devil May Get You When You Are Empty"

It is a common misconception that emptiness is dangerous, because when you are empty, the devil could enter and takeover your body. This is often said by non-Buddhists about Buddhist meditation. The cause of the misconception is when we think of emptiness as a kind of vacuum, when we are completely defenseless against foreign forces.

The Zen priest Thich Nhat Hanh explains that empty is always empty of something. The glass is empty of fluid, but it is not empty of air. In (Mahayana) Buddhism emptiness means empty of the notion of self. The self is a delusion, when we realize it, we understand that "all is empty", which is one of the three characteristics of all things, Non-Self (Anatta). The other two being Impermanence (Anicca) and Incompleteness (Dukkha).

Another way of understanding emptiness, is by looking at the Buddha Nature, which each person has, but is normally not in tune with the Big Buddha of the universe, because our Buddha nature is clouded by the notions of selves, possessions, self-image, etc. Only when we attained emptiness, i.e. getting rid of the self, can the Buddha nature be in union with the Big Buddha (similar to the notions of Atman and Brahman in Hindu religion).

Sir Arnold (Light of Asia) described the union thus: "the dew drop slips into the ocean", becomes one with the ocean.

In other word, emptiness is like a holy communion with a higher being, and it is ridiculous to think that the devil may get you when you are in a holy communion.

Of course, meditation, like many other things, could be harmful if not practiced correctly. This is where we need help from our teachers to constantly check our progress, and why we always start meditation by taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, and making affirmations to help others. We do not meditate to get something (skills or powers), but to let go of what we already have.

Thich Nhat Hanh's second trip to Vietnam in four decades

On a hillside temple in southern Vietnam, one of the country's most renowned Buddhist teachers is giving a talk.
Around 5,000 people, including hundreds of monks and lay followers from overseas, sit listening in a newly-built meditation hall.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master, peace activist and bestselling author, has spent the last four decades living mostly in France.

On Friday he will hold a public requiem in Ho Chi Minh City for the souls of those who died in the Vietnam War, including those who fought for US-backed South Vietnam.

The idea is to heal the wounds and divisions of the past. The three-day chanting ceremony is open to all faiths, and even to non-believers.

Official figures put the number of Buddhist followers in Vietnam at 10 million in a nation of 84 million.

But that number only refers to registered members of official temples, so nobody knows exactly how many Vietnamese practice Buddhism, which is sometimes diluted by ancestor worship and Daoism.

"Today, people's minds are on stocks and news headlines. They no longer have time to take care of themselves or their loved ones. And even though they have lots of money, they aren't happy," he said.

"I've met many millionaires. They're not happy people."

It is a message that resonates with younger members of the audience who were born after the war ended in 1975.

Some have taken time off work to join a five-day retreat at this hillside temple, 140km (80 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City.

Many are curious about Buddhism and how to apply its creed to modern life, as Vietnam's dynamic economy continues to grow and reshape society. They are richer than their parents, but also more open to ideas.

His books, which were previously banned in Vietnam, are now sold in stores here.

Thich Nhat Hanh is trying to plant the seeds of his brand of faith, known as "socially engaged" Buddhism, among young Vietnamese.

It differs from mainstream Buddhism by putting more emphasis on self-development and group discussions of moral and spiritual dilemmas.

PowerPoint bullets make us stupid, but Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki are using it

Edward Tufte , the author of "Envisioning Information", "Visual Display of Quantitative Information", "Visual Explanations" and other books, believes that PowerPoint is Evil. He said, adopting Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely." However, people say that Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki, two great communicators, used PowerPoint in what is generally considered best practices of PowerPoint.

What are we ordinary people going to do with PowerPoint, stop using it, or try to imitate Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki? This question is definitely relevant as PowerPoint is the workhorse used by millions from schools to corporations and governments.

Edward Tufte.
Edward Tufte, further said, "It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication".

He has only harsh words for it, "pushy style seeks to set up a speaker's dominance over the audience", "no respect for the audience", teaching kids bad cognitive style :"rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials", "slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis", and "the PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content".
At the end of the Wired article, he concluded, "The practical conclusions are clear. PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it."
To read more on this, see Aaron Swartz, "PowerPoint Remix," , presented in PowerPoint style, titled "Edward R. Tufte’s “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”, Presented in the Form of a PowerPoint Presentation."

Lots of pictures, few words, in large font.
Steve Jobs style is lots of pictures, few words in extremely large font. Steve wants people to listen to him, not to read the slides. Just as important, the speaker should also listen to what he/she is saying, and not guided by the slides as a robot. Guy Kawasaki said the font should be at least size 30 Arial.

10/20/30 mantra.
Guy Kawasaki's mantra is: no more than 10 slides, not more than 20 minutes, and size 30 font.
Microsoft's Don Box went further, at the start of his presentation, he deleted POWERPNT.EXE and opened Notepad.

In "Guy Kawasaki: Presenter extraordinaire" , he is said to take a Zen approach of simplicity, limiting to only 10 points, presented in 10 slides .
The article "What is good PowerPoint design? " talked more about Zen and simplification:
"In Living Zen, author Robert Linsen (in speaking on the simplification of needs in everyday life) says that a "simplification of existence" is a consequence of an "effective experience of Zen." In other words, as one discovers their true nature, "needs" such as possessions or status are reduced or seen for what they are: superfluous."

In summary, we can say that Powerpoints should be simple with few points, not distracting both to the audience and the speaker, and we should be careful not to follow the bullets cognitive style. There is no substitute for clear thinking, communication, and practice, don't expect them to come from PowerPoint.

Beginner's Mind

Two Suzukis went to the West, and brought Zen with them. Daisetz Suzuki is perhaps the better known of the two, he was a prolific writer on Satori and Zen generally.

Shunryu came to the US a little later. In contrast to Daisetz who was from the "sudden" or Rinzai school, Shunryu was from the "gradual" or Soto school, being a spiritual descendant of Dogen Zenji, the master who founded Soto Zen in the 13th century.

When mistaken for the other Suzuki, he would say in his modesty, "No, he's the big Suzuki, I'm the little Suzuki."
Shunryu wrote very little, but one of them -- 138 pages -- "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is a real gem, a product of a beautiful mind.
I am not a Zen practitioner, but I regard the book as one of the best on Buddhism.

Beginner's mind is a favorite expression of Dogen Zenji. Richard Baker, heir of Shunryu, gives an example of Beginner's mind when writing calligraphy, "The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing. This is the way of practice moment after moment."

Apply this to all walks of life, and you basically achieve your beginner's mind.

"In
the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's
mind there are few"

It sounds very simple. Obviously, a chess master would consider only a few alternative moves, but would analyze them deeply. A beginner considers many moves, which experts consider stupid and reject them straight away. Because a beginner considers so many moves, he or she doesn't have time to go deeply. So here it seems that the expert is doing a more effective search.

This applies to many other areas as well, expertise in programming, in finance, in cooking, etc are all valuable.
Shunryu was not saying that we should not become experts. What he meant was, that at any time, experts should be ready to become beginners again.
We should not make anything into a dogma, something absolute.
Everything, including Buddha's teaching are just guidelines. The first rule of Engaged Buddhism says:
"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth."

We easily become prisoners of habits, not always "the seven habits of highly effective people", but more often than not, prisoners of bad habits, prisoners of the viruses in our minds.
We become not only experts in our fields, but also experts in self delusion, experts in rationalizing and self-righteousness.

Even when our expertise is useful, e.g in mathematics, it is often good, from time to time, just to forget what we know, and learn from the beginning again. We will have a fresh way of looking at things, and perhaps discover new things.

In an earlier post in my blog, I use the analogy of a debug mode when meditating. In normal mode, we can be experts, but in debug mode, we are beginners.

The above is perhaps the surface meaning of Shunryu words, but there is also a deeper meaning. When we are not just newbies, but a really absolute beginner, we are empty. And emptiness means infinite. Empty means empty from self, and in that condition, you are one with the universe, you have the original Buddha mind, and therefore has infinite potential.
The beginner's mind is then also a mind of compassion, always true to ourselves and in sympathy with all beings.

I apologize if I have misinterpreted Suzuki Roshi's teaching in any way.