The Mountain between Us and Our Goals

Continuing with ideas I have taken from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a quote regarding the oft-stated allegory of the mountain that stands between ourselves and our goals:

... most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as their are individual souls.

I am not too sure what my mountain is as I don't have definite goals in my life. I do have vague ideas of what to do with my time and am thinking strongly that my daily job, my life, lies along the lines of learner/educator, writer, and engineer. These 'jobs' neatly capture (I believe) the aspects of software development. Then, my mountain lies in this sphere of software development ... but with what specific goal? Yet to be defined.

I can say that I have been exploring the foothills of the software development mountain. I am recognising numerous routes over the mountain and the tools required to traverse the hard parts of the climb. Relating back to the quote, I am probably currently in the camp of listening to others who have made the climb. Books, blogs, podcasts all provide stories on how the mountain has been conquered. When I do set off it is likely to be an attempt at forging my own route, guided, in part, from the stories I have read and to which I have listened.

But, before I can make a real, concerted attempt at scaling the mountain I need to state my goals and have a reason for the climb. I shall return to this soon.

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.