Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.

In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: “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.

A basic truism I have discovered over twenty years of coaching and training is that most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept. Even those who are not consciously “stressed out” will invariably experience greater relaxation, better focus, and increased productive energy when they learn more effectively to control the “open loops” of their lives.

The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments

Most often, the reason something is “on your mind” is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: