Summary

The article reflects on personal productivity and goal-setting through the philosophical lens of Bruce Lee's martial art, jeet kune do.

Abstract

The author, a corporate lawyer, shares insights on reevaluating productivity and goal-setting inspired by Bruce Lee's philosophy. The article begins with a humorous anecdote about lawyers being paid to read, then transitions into the author's personal struggle with productivity during the Corona period. Despite a pile of unrealized goals, the author finds motivation in Lee's approach to martial arts, which emphasizes adaptability and personal growth over rigid structures. Jeet kune do is presented as a metaphor for life, encouraging individuals to absorb what is useful, reject what is not, and add their own unique contributions. The article concludes with a call to apply this philosophy to personal development by reflecting on past successes, identifying areas for improvement, and crafting personalized recommendations for future endeavors.

Opinions

The author acknowledges the impact of the Corona period on personal productivity, admitting to the failure of personal projects.
Bruce Lee's jeet kune do is seen not just as a martial arts system but as a broader life philosophy that can inform personal growth.
The author emphasizes the importance of recording and reflecting on past experiences to understand personal progress.
There is a strong opinion against the rigidity of traditional martial arts systems, which Lee's philosophy aimed to transcend.
Self-accountability is highlighted as crucial for progress, distinguishing it from self-blame.
The article suggests that each individual's path to their goals is unique, and generic advice may not be applicable across the board.
The author recommends using personal experiences, abilities, and ingenuity to forge one's own path to success.
The conclusion draws a parallel between the wisdom derived from martial arts and its application to everyday life and personal goal-setting.

“Fearless” by Charlein Gracia from Unsplash

A lesson on productivity from Bruce Lee

My father-in-law recently said that lawyers are essentially people who get paid to read. Of course, this was meant to be a joke addressed to an extended family of non-lawyers, which managed to garner quite a laugh. Myself, a fully-fledged corporate lawyer, remained silent and kept to my own thoughts. With a good dosage of humor and sarcasm.

“If they only knew that it’s true, heh heh.”

All jokes aside — I have to admit that the Corona period wrought havoc on my productivity. Any personal projects that I had looked forward to at the beginning of Spring have since met their untimely demise. Some earlier, others later, without any exceptions.

So I found myself at the beginning of June with a pile of unrealised goals and failed projects. Not exactly the most optimistic outcome of the last three months. Nevertheless, I decided to take my own advice and forced myself to prepare a plan for the future. Something to look forward to. And I did have to force myself, because it would just not happen on its own.

During the Corona period, I managed to — true to my profession — read quite a hefty pile of books and articles. Thus, I stumbled upon a story about the birth of a special martial art that made me think about setting goals from a new perspective. Let me share it with you.

Bruce Lee helped popularise a completely new film genre in the Western world — the Kung Fu movie. He was the one to influence the directors of Hong Kong to start using actors with an actual background in martial arts. The genre exploded in the 1970s and the rest is history.

But even before that, in 1967, Lee founded his own martial arts “school”, dubbed jeet kune do. I’m adding quotation marks to the term “school” because this wasn’t only a martial arts class, but a philosophical approach to life with guiding ideas.

Lee believed that classic martial arts were rigid and limited by their own system of katas, prescribed movements and fighting rules in competitions. Jeet kune do was meant to be his final answer to these limitations, and he described it as a “boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back.”

Some of his most famous quotes includes the following:

This book is dedicated to the Free, Creative Martial Artist.

Research your own experience; Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.

So what the hell does this have to do with setting goals?

What went well?

The term “progress” is best described as a transition from a lower level to a higher level of quality. To be able to determine progress, we can’t avoid comparing our past condition to our present one. Each human being understands time as linear — it’s hardwired into our DNA. So, to properly determine our progress, we have to look to our previous experience. Our experience is an inextinguishable source of our progress. But to be able to see it, we have to record our experience and flesh out the parts that went well. This is the only way to know that the effort we put into anything wasn’t wasted. So, what went well?

Research your own experience, absorb what is useful.

What could be improved?

You can’t determine progress without knowing that something isn’t OK right now. Maybe we started out OK and something happened down the line. Maybe it wasn’t OK to begin with and things didn’t improve. Maybe something just isn’t on the same level as other things that seem important to us. Maybe things even got worse than they were. To change this trend, we need to develop a sense of accountability to ourselves. Instead of blaming the outside world, we need to know that we could have done something better. Or that there was something that we left out. Maybe even that we did too much. Of course, it’s important that this feeling of self-accountability doesn’t develop into a hurricane of self-blaming and self-doubt. Accountability is not the same as blame. However, knowing the things that we could have done differently, we will be able to map out new goals and a new path to bring us to them. On this new path, we’ll drop anything that doesn’t work towards reaching our goals. So, what could be improved?

Reject what is useless.

What do you recommend?

My goals are not the same as yours. Even if we did have the same goals, my path leading up to them cannot be the same as yours. Each of us is made so different from the other that it’s impossible to prescribe a path that would always work for everyone. We have to focus on our own experience, our abilities and our own ingenuity to find the right path for ourselves. It’s our own good and bad experience that will help us make the path clear and it’s the confidence that we made up our own path that will help us walk it. So, what do you recommend?

Add what is specifically your own.

Conclusion

Martial arts are sometimes quite underrated. Especially the “art” part. The beauty of art is that we are inspired by it and that we can derive from it the bits of wisdom we need for our everyday lives — even from the art of Bruce Lee. So the next time you think about your goals, infuse a little *jeet kune do* into them.