Effectiveness

Effectiveness is the ability to get the right things done. We get the right things done when we consider alternate opportunities and choose the best one. We take swift action on the opportunity once the decision has been made. We use feedback from reality to know when the decision and action is no longer relevant or may have been the wrong choice.

Our effectiveness is improved when we thoughtfully consider how we spend our time. What are we doing with our time? What things are we doing that are not necessary? What time wasters are we permitting to occupy our valuable time? What behaviors and elements from the past are we refusing to let go in order to create room for more effective use of our time?

Effectiveness is enhanced when we know the correct order of things to be done. Once we know that order, we focus on one thing at a time. Once the first thing is finished, we then re-evaluate our list of things to do again and then pick the top one off the list again. The scope of the list of things to do here is on the order of major accomplishments rather than mundane daily to-do lists.

We are more effective when we build from our strengths rather than try to remove our weaknesses. Building from strength allows us to put full focus into positive action toward a small number of things rather than trying to do a little bit of everything. We can drop activities that are attempts to eliminate weaknesses - those will be diminished soon enough as we build up our strengths and perhaps stop doing (or no longer have time for) some of the things that were building our weaknesses whether consciously or unconsciously.

Effectiveness may tend to go hand in hand with maturity. As we grow, we learn explicitly or implicitly which of our behaviors result in the more bang for the buck. The truth that we can learn to be more effective in our professional, social and family lives is inspiration for all of us to desire to do better. We can learn to handle ourselves and our situations better by growing our strengths and conditioning our choices through thoughtful decisions and deliberate actions that are consistent with our personal world view and inner consciousness.

Finally, effectiveness is about contribution. In any situation we can increase the value of our actions by asking the question, "What can I contribute?", or, "What is mine to do?". Our potential for broad and deep contribution is enhanced by our own self-development. We experience growth in proportion to what we require from ourselves. Require little and we probably remain stunted. Require a lot and we may develop into giants. We can ensure that we are headed in a productive direction when we require ourselves to pursue the next step in the form of the opportunity whose time has come.

Existentialism

In the past I had a notion that Existentialism was a negative, depressed philosophy of life created by a neurotic Frenchman. As usual with these kinds of things, I probably formed that opinion by seeing a picture or two of Sarte and making up what I thought the philosophy meant from the pictures and the name. The name, Existentialism, seemed to imply cold, dry existence rather than a life of enjoyment.

The reality is much different. The stream of thought of Existentialism is rooted in individual expression, passion, positive self-esteem, self-realization, search for being, personal freedom, responsibility and authenticity. There can be no excuses for failure to act, take control of our lives or for any particular circumstance we might find ourselves. We are where we are in life because of our choices. There is no one to blame or congratulate but ourselves.

Individuality is admired since it is through self-expression that we experience self-realization. The result of this expression is positive if we approach life from a position of pro-active mastery and self-control rather than slavery and reaction. We are in control of our lives and must accept the freedom and responsibility that comes with that.

Given this, we cannot blame others for situations or our actions. We always have a choice within the constraints of a particular context. No matter what the context, there are choices. Even in a prison situation we'd still have our freedom of thought and consciousness.

We all have a will to self-esteem that leads us to self-actualization. This will can be frustrated if we do not make choices from a position of cause rather than effect. Master morality vs. Slave morality. We should be passionately committed to our choices.

Like any great philosophy, easier read/said than done.

Hardening of the Categories

Is there any ailment that is more limiting than this? Hardening of the Categories stunts imagination, thought, ideas and creativity. It ossifies the mind long before its time. Unlike its second cousin, hardening of the arteries, an attack of the categories version is not necessarily limited to the older population.

An early predictor and related ailment of this ravaging disease is premature categorization. This mental sibling is the habit of trying to impose structure on a set of ideas before they are fully ripe. Ideas need to be discussed so they can grow, mutate and create new ideas. They need to swirl around, be repeated and understood from various perspectives.

Ideas need to be inverted, rearranged, taken apart and put back together again. Only after the appropriate duration of ripening (and this can be different for every idea) should structure start to be imposed. In fact, the structure should emerge from the ideas themselves naturally rather than being forced.

Hardening of the Categories is a situation where a particular structure or worldview is cemented so tightly that there is no hope of allowing a new concept to enter the inner sanctum. In some cases this devolves into an anti-conceptual mentality where any degree of new abstraction, no matter how small, cannot affect the hardened concrete pavement, floors and supports of the singularly literal mind. In fact the very thought of doing so is frightening.

In contrast to this image of a hardened structure, a holistic framework is much more malleable and elastic. Sure, a framework has categories and abstractions. But the premises and abstractions and conclusions are somehow open enough to allow breathing room so that new paths can be explored and existing arteries and veins of thought can be refined and uplifted.

We should all guard against Hardening of the Categories. None of us is immune and sadly our immunity is likely to weaken as we get older. More reason to be especially alert, curious, open, engaged, focused and attentive so that the scourge of ossification does not inhibit the continuous evolutionary unfolding and actualization of our individual expressions of Mind.