What kanban seeks to do is visualize how your work is actually done. The best way to assure rapid and effective completion is to look past the emotions of “defensive” and accept Gote into the attainment of your goals. Whether you are doing Sente or Gote work, the work needs to be done. We’re lucky that it is predictably so, but it still does not adhere to our plans. It’s why that damn plumber is STILL HERE installing the dishwasher. It’s why people don’t feel they get what they want from consultants. We wanted to learn Spanish by Tuesday and now we have to wait. This makes us feel like we are on the English term defensive, and that upsets us. Mopping up water and pulling down saturated wall board isn’t helping us achieve our goal of learning Spanish. On days like this we realize that life doesn’t always respect our personal goals. Some days you are at work, methodically finishing up your report and other days you are surprised to get a report back with particularly nasty comments and an unrealistic deadline to fix it. Other days your water heater explodes and covers your basement in water, steam and destruction. They are yard work or cleaning the house. The nature of personal work is that some days are quiet, comfortable, and predictable. The Sensei knows that reaction is itself an action. There are Go Masters who can win a game and play almost entirely from a Gote position.
In Go, Sente and Gote positions are perfectly acceptable at all times. Reaction, for human beings, naturally caries a fight or flight response. Reaction is the gazelle taking flight when the cheetah springs forth. This comes from the animal brain inside us all. The other is that the goal of your defensive strategy is to quickly regain an offensive strategy. One is that you are on the defensive when you’ve lost control of something. The word “defense” has a few connotations we’d like to avoid when working. However, there’s a subtle difference here. In English, we’d be tempted to equate these to Offense and Defense. “ Sente” is the term for the initiative, “ Gote” is the term for being reactive. In the game “Go” (“Weiqi” in Chinese) there are balanced strategic concepts for the natural ebbs and flows of taking the initiative or reacting to a change in a situation.
It is normal, and nothing - not personal kanban, not GTD - is going to change that. Sometimes your relationship to work is initiative based, other times it is reactive.
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