Reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, along with everyone else in the computer world. He says “If it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now.” But I’m realizing that most things take 10 minutes, and these are the things that really drive you crazy.

Need to find ways to make 10 minute tasks take 2 minutes without sacrificing quality.

Possible approaches:
- don’t edit and re-write e-mails, write them right the first time.
- limit quality, for tasks that don’t deserve it
- limit quantity.
- stop obsessing
- kill the anal attitude.
- delegate
- consolidate
- start from a place of organization
- skim
- just say no

others? (I’m delegating.)

Thinking of questions for strangers in the elevator of our four-story building. I get in on the fourth floor, heading out for a lunch break. Elevator descends to third floor. Door opens. Person walks in. As door closes, I say:
‘Excuse me, what do you think the meaning of life is?’
‘Nice weather, huh. What was the most traumatic experience of your life so far?’
‘Uh, will you tell me how an internal combustion engine works?’

Others?

What is the difference between cooking and making a sand mandala?

I’ve always liked sand mandalas as a concept, but could the monks’ time be better spent preparing food for the community? Cooking is also meditative creative process. It emphasizes impermanence, both of humans and of the food which will ultimately return to the earth. It aids in the lesson of detachment from personal ownership. And it the result is a thing of beauty.

A mandala feeds the community in a spiritual way, you might say, but food literally feeds it. So what am I missing here? Any monks in the audience with first-hand understanding?

Probably it’s just a tradition, but I say it’s time to learn a real lesson of impermanence by dropping dusty traditions in favor of modern pragmatism. Or perhaps it’s a matter of optics. Mandalas do have a simplicity to them that cooking lacks. Cooking requires a lot of resources. A group of traveling monks hauling a pile of All-Clad around might not be seen as masters of detachment from personal ownership.

I’m sheepishly posting to this blog right now using Flock.

Here’s a recent Al Gore speech—an interesting read. There’s a couple plugs for his television network (I’m intrigued), but the central subject is the public discourse—what happened to it?