self-education......................

 

Knowing is not enough; we must apply what we have learned. Willing is not enough: we must do.

-attributed to Bruce Lee

joy...........................

 

Joy is in the doing, not in the outcome after the doing.

 

Do more things you like doing.

-Annie Mueller, from here

every day.........................

 

The hard part isn't knowing what to do; it's doing it daily, whether you feel like it or not.

-from the Farnum Street blog

On thinking versus doing..............

 . . . the twentieth century saw concerted efforts to separate thinking from doing.  Those efforts achieved a good deal of success in ordering our economic life, and it is this success that perhaps explains the plausibility the distinction now enjoys.  Yet to call this "success" is deeply perverse, for wherever the separation of thinking from doing has been achieved, it has been responsible for the degradation of work.

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

reaching..................

 Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

-attributed to Zig Ziglar, from here

the best we can................

 . . . we don't need to do great, powerful, spectacular things to make a genuine difference or to become heroes.  Nor do we need to be powerful beings or important leaders.  We simply need to do the best we can, even if it seems impossible that we'll end up doing anything special in the long run.  It is purely our motivation and great-hearted Bodhicitta in action that counts, not any attachment to a specific outcome.

-Lam Surya Das, Buddha Is As Buddha Does

moderately........................

 "The man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly," wrote Adam Smith, "not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work." Yes, doing less is a way to be kinder to yourself, and to be more present to the world around you – but paradoxically, it's also an excellent way to get more done.

-Oliver Burkeman, from here

Recommended.........................

      He was no visionary, no innovator.  He articulated no grand plan for the country or the world.  He did not start Reagan's revolution, nor the one that later swept Eastern Europe.  Yet he figured out how to channel these forces, to harness them and focus them on constructive outcomes while averting potential disasters.  He could bring together people who were more comfortable apart and find pragmatic ways to paper over any rifts.  There was little idealism involved and a fair degree of opportunism.  He was not above political hardball to advance his team's chances at the ballot box.  He never lost sight of what was good for Jim Baker and he survived the ruthless arena of Washington.  Asked in later years his biggest accomplishment, he regularly joked, "leaving Washington unindicted," a line he lifted from a Doonesbury cartoon.  But somehow in the main, it worked.  Things got done.  

-Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.  The Man Who Ran Washington:  The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

Habits..............................

"It's not what you know, it's what you do consistently."

-Tim Ferriss

transcendence.................

     In surfing and in life, it's true that one can't have a "too willful will," as the Zen master says.  One won't be very well attuned to things beyond oneself without paying careful attention to them, and it is difficult to pay close attention to other things if one is preoccupied with oneself.  Perhaps one need only withdraw certain "attachments" consistent with one's aim of hitting the target, such as an attachment to performing well, or to winning, or to pleasing one's parents or oneself.  But Zen seems to require more, and indeed nothing less than "withdrawing from all attachments whatsoever, by becoming utterly egoless: so that the soul, sunk within itself, stands in the plentitude of its namely origin."
     Surfing simply can't be so exactingly ego-free.  No aquatic movement is so fixed to permit falling into a fully passive state;  there's no time for not actively adapting.  If you had to find a trance state or wakeful dream sleep, and the wave's next movement was coming quickly, you'd eat it, or quickly become out of sync.  The bodily dynamism and moment by moment demands on one's attention naturally draw one's consciousness out into the waves, away from oneself.  But this ego transcendence serves the surfer's active purposes, of being adaptively attuned.  If that isn't Zen, it's a blessedly easy way of being while doing.

-Aaron James: Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Life Of Meaning

Don't ask..............................

Consider the possibilities.............

Do you have a "to do" list?

     Do you also have a "stop doing" list?
     Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives.  We have ever-expanding "to do" lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing—and doing more.  It rarely works.  Those who  built the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of "stop doing" lists as "to do" lists.  They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.

-Jim Collins, as excerpted from Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don't

Never forget Part B......................

Part B is the so-often-neglected bit: ideas into action.

-Nicholas Bate

Standards.............................

 Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

 -Zig Ziglar

The basics......................

Plan-do-review. Review last week. Plan next week. Then the doing will be so much easier.

-Nicholas Bate

What am I doing?...........................

     Asking yourself, What am I doing? will help you overcome the habit of wanting to complete things quickly.  Smile to yourself and say, Washing this dish is the most important job in my life.  When you ask, What am I doing?, reflect deeply on the question.  If your thoughts are carrying you away, you need mindfulness to intervene.  When you are really there, washing the dishes can be a deep and enjoyable experience.  But if you wash them while thinking about other things, you are wasting your time, and probably not washing the dishes well either.  If you are not there, even if you wash 84,000 dishes, you work will be without merit.
     Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country.  Bodhidharma said, "None whatsoever."  But if you wash one dish in mindfulness, if you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment - not wanting to be anywhere else, not caring about fame or recognition - the merit from that act will be boundless, and you will feel very happy.  Ask yourself, What am I doing? often.  When your thinking is not carrying you away and you do things in mindfulness, you will be happy and a resource for many others.

-Thich Nhat Hanh,  The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching:  Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Want.......................do

The manifesto is this:  Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use - do the work you want to see done.

-Austin Kleon,  Steal Like An Artist:  10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Weighing...............................

Separate your "must-dos" from your "like-to-dos" and don't mistakenly slip any "like-to-dos onto the first list. ...
Anything is possible.  It's the probabilities that matter.  Everything must be weighed in terms of its likelihood and prioritized.  People who can sort probabilities from possibilities are generally strong at "practical thinking";  they're the opposite of the "philosopher" types who tend to get lost in the clouds of possibilities.

-Ray Dalio,  Principles

Prizes awarded daily........................

"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

-Theodore Roosevelt, from his 1903 Labor Day address