Some time with The Master

I guess you're partly looking for ways to improve your productivity. Maybe I have some tips that you could use, maybe you're looking for an insight on a problem you have. You could also be reading just to check that your current method is the right one. Well, today you might be in luck!

If you're older than a certain unspecified age, or interested in martial arts, you might have seen a 1985 cult classic called "The Last Dragon". In it, a martial arts teacher, realizing his own limitations, informs his young apprentice (Bruce Green, aka Bruce Leeroy) that he is now so good that the teacher is not qualified to teach him anymore. He says there is another master, a better master, and the young apprentice must go in search of him to have any chance at reaching martial art perfection.

The apprentice heads off into the city, meeting baddie after baddie and cleaning their respective clocks. He gets interviews with fortune cookie machines and various other unsavouries, until upon meeting Sho' Nuff (pictured above, mid-tantrum) he finally learns who...The. Real. Master. Is.

Interestingly enough, and even more significant as the movie was made long before the latest productivity craze, that master is also a killer GTD practitioner and coach. If you spend a lot of time reading blog entries about how to improve your system, then The Master is definitely the best person to speak to. Go rent the movie, and seek The Master out for yourself!

Just to unpack that a bit:
Often we give up responsibility far too easily. We'll duck and dive all over the place looking for tidbits that will improve our "system", but if we think about it, we know what to do. From what I've read, very few people are doing the basics properly. To really become a master of GTD, we have to wax-on-wax-off for a while, exactly as specc'ed in the book. If you want to do it properly, just follow the rules for a while. Have you done a full mind-sweep? Full? Because if not, forget about being able to say what works and what doesn't work about GTD.

Yesterday, I bought a copy of Mark Forster's book "Do It Tomorrow". I could easily spend this evening poring over it, looking for a way to improve my ideal system. But I know that the real answers to improving my effectiveness lie within me - I know what I'm not doing.