The Open Road
is a book by Pico Iyer about the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Iyer is a non-Buddhist journalist who has covered Tibet for publications like Time, The New Yorker and The New York Times for over 20 years, and has known the Dalai Lama for over 30. Perhaps because of this unique combination, he’s able to give us an intimate yet critical look into the Dalai Lama’s life.
I deeply enjoyed this book. I didn’t know much about the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism or the recent history of Tibet before reading it, and The Open Road opened my eyes (pardon the pun) to the three topics. Iyer combines power and poetry in his writing; he has the ability to lay bare the realities behind the myths while never losing respect for his subject.
It’s not an easy task, especially when Iyer doesn’t shy away from the multiple paradoxes in the story. For example: How can the Dalai Lama encourage non-violence while his own country is being ravaged by violence? How can the Dalai Lama stress reason over faith while his entire existence owes thanks to prophecy? He contrasts how many want to see Tibet as Shangri-La – an otherworldly heaven on Earth – with Tibet’s bloody history – when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was a small boy, civil war erupted and the monks of one of the great monasteries killed more than two hundred people.
Since I got my first iPhone three years ago, I’ve used iXpenseIt to keep track of where my money goes. iXpenseIt is a personal finance app that lets you input and save your daily expenditures, helping you to see just how much you’ve spent on what over time.
iXpenseIt is a great app, with a lot of functionality, but there were always bits about it I didn’t like. Ever the geek, I kept my eye out for other personal finance apps, but none caught my eye until Saver. I’ve been using Saver for the past month, and since then I’ve deleted iXpenseIt off my iPhone.
Like the comparison between Things & Omnifocus, iXpenseIt and Saver sit on opposite ends of the spectrum. iXpenseIt is complex but powerful, Saver is simple but easy to use. But whereas I chose complexity over simplicity in the case of Things and Omnifocus, I chose simplicity over complexity in the case of iXpenseIt and Saver.
Using Saver is just easier. It feels like Saver’s designer has put more thought into making the app as frictionless as possible. To enter a ‘Food’ entry for a lunch of $5, for example, takes six steps in Saver, but takes eight steps in iXpenseIt. Two extra steps may not sound like a lot, but add that up over the multiple times you’re using the app in a day, and that’s a good number of steps you shave off.
I used to be a Things man, until I got an iPad and wanted a to-do app that could sync between it and my iPhone. That’s when I switched to Omnifocus, and I haven’t looked back since.
This isn’t a Things versus Omnifocus review – those have been done long in breadth by writers better versed than I – this is a broad impression of both apps and why I’ve chosen one over the other.
Getting Things Done in Same but Different Ways
Things and Omnifocus are both iOS apps built upon the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system created by David Allen. But the two apps present the same principles in different ways; Things is slim and elegant, while OmniFocus is full-bodied and muscular.
Things is simpler, and strikes me as an app that anyone can use and pick up as a to-do app, even if they don’t know about or use GTD. OmniFocus sticks more rigidly to GTD, which makes it more difficult for non-GTD practitioners to use, but which makes it a better fit for GTD-ers.
Elegance vs. Power
OmniFocus requires a steeper learning curve but offers more flexibility and power with the corresponding complexity. This isn’t to say that using OmniFocus is a daunting task, indeed I’d say that the Omni Group has found a balance between complexity, power and ease of use with OmniFocus’ design for the iPhone and iPad.
Do you believe that there is an inherent purpose to your life? I don’t believe that we’re given a life purpose at birth, but I do appreciate the focus that even a consciously created life purpose can provide.
I was feeling a little burnt out a few weeks ago, and came across Steve Pavlina’s review of the book Life On Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life by Brad Swift. The review sounded interesting, and I felt like I could use the clarity, so I hunted the book down (only copy remaining!) at a local bookstore.
I had a week of leave this week and decided to spend most of it working through the book. (Turns out powering through the book may not be the best way to go through the material, as Brad advises the reader to take some time in between some exercises for thought and reflection.) Did the book deliver on its promise, to “take a major shortcut on the road to clarifying your true purpose” and “infuse the inspiration of purpose into every aspect of your life”? Yes, but not in the way I expected.
Inherited Purpose vs. True Purpose
I appreciate the distinction that Brad makes between an inherited purpose and true purpose. Your inherited purpose is the purpose full of ‘shoulds’, all the things you think you should do instead of what you want to do, and is driven by fear.
A sign of a good book is how much it changes you. In 2008, when I read Rory Miller’s first book Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, it evolved the way I looked at martial arts and self-defense training so much that despite having trained in the martial arts for 15 years, I completely changed how I trained and what I trained in.
So I was definitely looking forward to Rory’s new book, Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected, and seeing what more I could learn from the jiujitsu-trained ex-corrections officer. Having read it, my first impressions are how Facing Violence differs from Meditations on Violence; Meditations was focused on showing the differences between martial arts training and real-world violence. Facing Violence explains how to train for that violence.
Note: Quotes in the post are from Facing Violence.
7
The book is laid out into seven main chapters (hence, Rory’s original title ‘7’), addressing the seven elements needed for complete self-defense training:
- Legal and Ethical
- Violence Dynamics
- Avoidance
- Counter-Ambush
- The Freeze
- The Fight
- After
The seven chapters provide a solid framework for, as the cover subtitle says; “preparing for the unexpected – ethically, emotionally, physically and without going to prison.” Important goals which you think ought to be covered in most martial arts or self-defense training, but which may very well be missing.