In his seminars, David Allen often uses his experience with the martial arts as an analogy for GTD.  In his latest blog post, David develops on this theme to show how important it is to stay loose at work.

“A tense muscle is a slow one. This is a physiological and demonstrable fact in the martial arts. Could this be true in other aspects of our lives?

In karate, the power that can be generated by a punch is primarily due to speed, not muscle. It is the snap at the end of the whip. That is why petite people can learn to break boards and bricks with their hands—it’s not really about callouses, it’s more about the ability to generate that pop at the end of the thrust.

But a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts are about relaxation and balance, because that allows the flexibility and response-ability required to mobilize maximum resources at maximum speed for maximum results.”

Read the rest of his blog post at the Getting Things Done web site.