Assembly of a Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind

The title of this blog post comes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) (ZMM) as a quote from an assembly manual for a bicycle. The reasoning for having such an instruction is that the workability of a machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. If your mind is occupied with other things or you are generally worried/stressed then you are likely to build those problems/concerns into the machine.

From the other side, an erroneously constructed machine is also likely to become another source of worry. In order to get back to a peaceful state of mind, it is necessary to fix that machine.

I have a lot of machines that need work. My machines are source code that is not quite right, writing that hasn't been written, and grand plans and ideas that I have not actioned. Dave Allen calls these sorts of things "open loops" in Getting Things Done (GTD). That book is basically a guide to freeing the mind of these tasks by capturing the thoughts in external, physical storage that you then work through. I think at the very least I need to get through a capture process to get these tasks out of my mind. My longer term tasks need to be formulated as goals.

But I am not sure how to attain a peace of mind before working on a machine. It seems very circular: a broken machine is the cause of an unpeaceful mind but you have to have peace of mind in order to fix the machine.

From my reading of ZMM, the answer to breaking this cycle is to elevate your focus above the object, the machine, and into the notion of Quality. But what is Quality? Hmmm, any understanding I once had on this topic eludes me right now. I'll have to re-read some parts of the book and post again.

For now, I can perform the mechanical actions of capturing task lists and writing goals.