What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done

by Matt Perman

“The most important principle for being productive is Bible reading and prayer, before the day begins, every day.”

Truth: Productivity is about effectiveness first, not efficiency.

Truth: Productivity comes first from character, not techniques.

Truth: We cannot be truly productive unless all our activity stems from love for God and the acknowledgment that he is sovereign over all our plans.

Truth: The only way to be productive is to realize that you don’t have to be productive.

Truth: Productivity comes from engagement, not tight control; when we are motivated, we don’t need to tightly control ourselves (or others).

Truth: Productivity is first about doing good for others to the glory of God.

Truth: We become most productive by putting others first, not ourselves.

Truth: Basing our peace of mind on our ability to control everything will never work.

Truth: Time is like space, and we need to see lists as support material for our activity zones, not as sufficient in themselves to keep track of what we have to do.

Truth: The greatest evidence of productivity comes from intangibles, not tangibles.

Truth: We need to measure productivity by results, not by time spent working.

Truth: We will (sometimes) suffer from our work, and it is not sin.

Every Christian must be fully Christian by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some spiritual realm.

In fact, I would argue that this downplaying of the practical is not only discouraging but actually an (unwitting) failure of love. It’s a failure of love because part of the biblical conception of love is giving practical help to those who need it, and in our modern society this more and more needs to involve concrete insight on how to get things done and stay above water without burning out or ignoring your family.

Bad productivity approaches are annoying!

having no system is itself a system!)

With a bad system, it’s hard to get things done with a sense of confidence, relaxed control, and purpose.

The issue is not whether we have an approach to personal productivity; the issue is whether our approach is a good one or a bad one.

Managing ourselves well is foundational to all we do.

“rare is the successful leader or executive with a chaotic mind or chaotic habits.”

We weren’t made to simply respond to stuff all day, but to take action and move things forward. If we don’t give attention to the discipline of personal effectiveness but instead let the flow of events determine what we do, we will likely fritter ourselves away doing all sorts of urgent things that come our way while never getting to the truly important things.

As we will see in this book, managing yourself well involves more than just getting more done faster. It also involves knowing what the right things to do are — the realm of personal leadership. If we aren’t heading in the right direction in our personal lives, we may accomplish our goals only to find out that we were going down the wrong road the whole time.

A good productivity approach enables us to be more effective in doing good for others.

Knowing how to get things done is a component of our sanctification.

Growing in holiness doesn’t mean running to the hills to make your own clothes and grind your own wheat until Jesus comes, but living the everyday life that is right in front of you for the glory of God.

Knowing how to get things done enables us to fulfill God’s call to make plans for the good of others.

Knowing how to get things done is a component of a complete worldview.

But theology and philosophy are not the only components to a holistic worldview, for no worldview is complete without a perspective on how to live in the world.

This includes the disciplines of personal management, personal leadership, organizational ...

Managing ourselves well enables us to excel at w...

Now I was in ministry, and I found that there had actually been a gap in my preparation — I hadn’t learned about the discipline of personal productivity.

This is about all areas of life.

Getting “things” done is a slight misnomer.

The importance of structure and method.

We also will look at how the only way to be productive is to realize we don’t actually have to be productive (our goal is to please God, not appease God), and how the gospel continues to give us peace of mind even when everything is blowing up around us.

Define what’s most important in your life based on what God says, not first on what you (or others) think.

A bad (or nonexistent) structure for your life will undo the best of intentions.

After creating this structure, often you’ll find that making everything fit is the biggest obstacle. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve architected wrong; it just means you need to reduce. You need to know what’s most important (define), weave it into your life (architect), and then get rid of the rest (reduce).

But you don’t get rid of the rest by simply letting balls drop. Rather, you do it by creating systems and using tactics that ultimately expand your capacity. This brings us into the realm of the core practices of day-to-day time management, including delegating, eliminating, automating, and deferring (the DEAD process we will learn), as well as how to turn time killers back on themselves by harnessing them rather than being defeated by them.

That is, we should be radical and risky and creative and abundant in using our effectiveness to make life better for others. (And, that this is the most exciting life.)

In other words, the ultimate result of GDP is the transformation of the world socially, economically, and spiritually, to the glory of God.

Unlike in the industrial era, in which tasks were generally self-evident, the essence of knowledge work is that you not only have to do the work but also have to define what the work is.

When you don’t have your work clearly defined, there can never be any finish point.

Every effective person he encountered — and as perhaps the greatest consultant and business thinker of the twentieth century, that’s a lot — had to work at becoming effective.

Belsky adds later, “The ideas that move industries forward are not the result of tremendous creative insight but rather of masterful stewardship.”

So it takes more than just enthusiasm, great ideas, native talent, and hard work to get things done. It takes a method.

THE VILLAIN OF AMBIGUITY

Many in highly specialized vocations, such as doctors, engineers, web developers, business analysts, pastors, and so forth, are taught in great detail how to do the activities of their job itself (thankfully!), but they aren’t taught much about the process for managing their work, managing others, and leading others.

too many people at all stages of life are unclear on what they should be doing.