For someone like me, getting things done is not a foreign concept.  I’ve mastered to-do lists, used various project management tools, created daily productivity rituals, and am a David Allen disciple.  In fact for a period of my life my personal motto might have been the old FedEx tag line:  “We get more things done by 9am than the rest of the world gets done all day”.   As it turns out, just being a task ninja doesn’t generate success, progress, and most certainly doesn’t foster the development of any sense of purpose.   It does generate more things to do.   Being busy getting things accomplished produces a variety of things, but most notably can prevent routine and sacred time for evaluating the beliefs that drive the actions which make visible our chosen purpose.   Yes, you read that right.  Your chosen purpose.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, your notion of predestination or your concept of karma, the idea of a choice remains constant.  Christian culture calls it Free Will, Buddhism encourages the Eightfold Path to free us from our attachments or aversions, and the Stoics point out that our choices are the only thing truly within our control.  How we exercise our choice influences our way of being with the world and the sum of our choices declare our purpose.  The discipline to make the choices that dictate where our energy and effort are spent each day is a crucial one.  It is of benefit to make these choices from a mindful place, being aware of our stories or perceptions that if undisclosed allow unfettered narratives to cloud our judgement.  It is also of benefit to be without grandeur or self deception of what is within and outside of our locus of control, lest we chose to spend our energies trying to put back the tide.  It is in this way that a disciplined approach to action through conscious, mindful choice may become a guide to clarifying the question of purpose.  

 

Alfred Armand Montapert, author of The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life, may have described it best:  "Don't confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but doesn't make any progress.”

 

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