Becoming Self Aware

My wife really gives me a hard time on my book selection. We both love to read (and we're really glad that our kids have the same love!), but the choices are extremely different. She's into John Grisham and the Mitford series, I like John Wesley and A New Kind of Christian series. She likes the deep plots and fictional characters, I prefer the deep thoughts challenging my character.

So it's not unusual for me to be reading something that makes me more self-aware of my junk. It just doesn't normally come from a book about personal organization.

I first read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" a couple of years ago (I have an Aggie friend who calls it the "Git'er Done" book), and I absolutely love the system. Yes, I recommend it, but that's not what struck me yesterday. David published a follow-up called "Ready For Anything", just a collection of thoughts on the system. He was discussing why some people don't really want to get everything they have to do out of their heads and into their system, and wrote this gem:

"If we maintain confusion and amorphousness, we can pretend that we could be smart, powerful, and purposely effective--but never have to prove it to ourselves. 'Oh, I could express much more of my magnificence, creativity, brilliance, and dynamism, but because my importance has me so burdened with the responsibilities it must bear, I just can't demonstrate it at the moment.' What crafty games we can play with ourselves!"

Wow. How many times have I let my own feelings of self-importance get in the way of actually rolling up my sleeves and doing something? When have I looked at a task that Jesus would have done and thought that I was too magnificent, too brilliant, to be wasting my time on something like that?

Ouch!