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

by Matt Perman

THE VILLAIN OF OVERLOAD

Here’s the bottom line: We are using industrial era tactics for knowledge era work. And that doesn’t work.

I mentioned earlier that effectiveness must be learned. Here’s the good news: Drucker found that everyone who worked at becoming effective succeeded. And that’s what Belsky found as well. Effectiveness has to be learned and, fortunately, can be learned.

More important than efficiency is effectiveness — getting the right things done. In other words, productivity is not first about getting more things done faster. It’s about getting the right things done.

You can get the wrong things done.

Efficiency doesn’t solve the problem.

Becoming more efficient can actually make things worse.

Now, I actually think this is a good thing when it comes to technology. But when it comes to our lives, it often isn’t. If you become more efficient at getting things done, you will tend to do more. If you don’t give thought to what that “more” is that you (often unconsciously) take on, you might just end up being incredibly efficient at completely useless things.

As Peter Drucker said, “the most unproductive thing of all is to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”

The quest for efficiency often undermines the true source of effectiveness in any o...

The way we go about handling our email, making appointments, running meetings, attending classes, and running the kids to where they need to go are not distinct from the everyday life of sanctification that God calls us to but are themselves a fundamental part of it. We are to “be wise” in them just as we are to be wise in the things that directly pertain to salvation; indeed, the way we go about them is an expression of our Christlikeness and sanctification.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH behind this book is that the gospel changes everything. It affects the way we go about all areas of life — the workplace, business, the arts, culture, serving the poor, everything. We are to live all of our lives in a gospel-centered way. When we are driven by the gospel, we act in God’s power and work for the peace and prosperity of everyone (Jer. 29:4 – 7). And God’s call on us is to do this through all kinds of work, not just ministry work.

The activities of our everyday lives are not separate from the good works that God has called us to. They are themselves part of the good works that God created us for in Christ. And, therefore, they have great meaning.

The avoidance ethic is the opposite of what I have outlined here. Instead of seeing the Christian life as about being proactive and abundant in doing good, it sees the essence of the Christian life as avoiding bad. It turns discipleship into the art of, as David Platt has said, “disinfecting Christians” rather than sending them out for real engagement in the world.

To exclude the world of work from the command to love our neighbor as ourselves is to make the same mistake we saw in the previous chapter on good works. The more complete and biblical view of good works that we have seen, in fact, necessarily entails that we also have this more comprehensive view of love. For if good works are everything we do in faith, including our work and the demands of our daily lives, then surely our work lives are not an exception to the command to love others as ourselves.

Usability: Create products that lift burdens, not products that create burdens.

Good design: Create products that people like.

This is why the notion of justification by works — of being accepted by God through good behavior — is not only wrong but impossible. It is impossible because, prior to being forgiven, we have no good works to offer. “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20).

THE GOSPEL IS NEWS, NOT ADVICE

The Christians in Wilberforce’s day, by reducing Christianity to a mere system of ethics, had obscured the greatness of Christ and thus cut themselves off from the joy that provides the true power to obey him and to be prolific in good works.

This is what enables our good works to be truly good. If we had to do good works in order to become justified, we wouldn’t truly be doing them for the sake of our neighbor. They would ultimately be for our own sakes.

One other implication of these things is that the way to change society — to change the nation and the world — is, interestingly, not primarily to preach on politics or ethics or ten steps to a healthy marriage, but to preach on doctrine.

EVEN IF WE AVOID THE ERROR of seeking God’s acceptance through our productivity, there is another subtle and related trap that we easily can fall into — the trap of basing our day-to-day peace of mind on whether we made it to the end of our to-do list, put “first things first,” kept our action and project lists up to date, or got the results we wanted from our day.

The reason is that when our peace of mind comes from outside ourselves, it keeps us from finding our identity in our productivity.

What does it mean to be driven by the gospel rather than by the law? A: It’s not a question of getting rid of the law. You can’t get rid of the law; that’s the heresy of antinomianism. The law is good and has never been the problem. I’m the problem, and the law just identifies that.

We should not look to the law — either God’s or a task list we have made up for ourselves — for our identity.

The result is that we are secure. Even if everything goes wrong, our identity remains, and this is what enables us to serve people more (which is the essence of productivity), not less.

As Rick Warren points out, “Only secure people can serve. Insecure people are always worrying about how they appear to others. They fear exposure of their weaknesses and hide beneath layers of protective pride and pretensions. The more insecure you are, the more you will want people to serve you, and the more you will need their approval.”

THE CHARACTER ETHIC VERSUS THE PERSONALITY ETHIC What Covey saw and Os Guinness points out represent two fundamentally different ways of viewing productivity and life: the personality ethic and the character ethic. The personality ethic looks mainly at externals as the way to be more productive and effective — how you relate to people, what tactics you use to get things done, and what techniques you follow to accomplish your goals. It might affirm the importance of character, but it is just one ingredient among many.

The character ethic, on the other hand, looks first at who you are. It says that true success is not first defined by externals, and the way to live an effective life does not come first from technique. True and lasting effectiveness comes from character, which is not simply an ingredient of an effective life but foundational to it. Techniques do have their place, but only as building blocks upon a foundation of genuine character.

Notice that this person also bears fruit. I think the primary fruit in view here is character. The fruit also includes our actions as a legitimate form of fruit, as verse three speaks of this person prospering “in all he does.” They are always and ever ultimately productive. Nothing they do is in vain, and everything works for their good (cf. Rom. 8:28). How’s that for productivity? Even when things go wrong, everything works for your good.

Virtue and character are at the root of what it means to live a productive and fruitful life before God, and we should seek to grow in them.

How does character lead to productivity? First, as we have seen, character is itself at the heart of what God requires and is the essence of the productive life. The greatest success is to be a person of character — someone who walks with God, in Christ, and seeks to live this out every day by doing justice and loving mercy (Mic. 6:8). Second, character leads to making the most of our time in the decisions of everyday life because character is actually the source of our ability to determine what’s best next.

Here is the character ethic again: Paul commands us to “be transformed” and then roots our ability to make good decisions (“discern what is the will of God”) in that transformation of our character.

God doesn’t whisper in our ears what to do next — that would short-circuit the growth of wisdom and path to maturity. Instead, God works through our understanding to enable us to determine the best course of action.

This is Hebrews 5:14

The essence, the heart, and the basic dimension of the Christian life is living in fellowship with God, and central to that is prayer and the Scriptures.

We have to distinguish personal leadership and personal management; you have to be able to lead yourself before you can manage yourself

WEBSITES — AND ALMOST EVERYTHING — OPERATE THIS WAY Everything that we learned in this process was helpful, but there was one integrating idea that went to the core and made everything else we learned useful. It’s from Steve Krug, who pointed out that the definition of a usable site is that it doesn’t make you think.1 There it was: the core idea of usability in a single sentence. This gave us the core principle for knowing what design choices made for a usable site and what didn’t. A usable site minimizes question marks. You don’t have to think hard about how to use it; the way to use the site is obvious, intuitive, and natural. By knowing this core principle and some of the primary applications of it, we were able to think for ourselves about what makes a site usable. We could now evaluate any site using this framework. This approach can be applied to just about anything: politics, government, communication, leadership, management, theology, everything. Seek to identify the core governing principle, and then everything else follows from that.

The overarching, guiding principle for our lives is love. Putting the other person first equals maximum productivity.

THE CORE PRINCIPLE OF PRODUCTIVITY Here it is: Know what’s most important and put it first.

But that never works. The smaller tasks always multiply, so if you try to take a bottom-up approach to your productivity, you will be directed by the course of events rather than charting your own course and accomplishing the things you are called to do.

What you need to do is define what’s most important first and then take a look at what’s before you and identify what you are and are not going to do. This is a top-down, proactive approach to getting things done.

I think Stephen Covey has stated this the best: “Don’t prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities.” That’s the core principle in seven words. You can’t do everything, so identify the most important things and make everything else work around them.

His point is that we are to start with the most important things first (which, at an ultimate level, are justice, mercy, and walking with God); only then can everything else find its proper place.

Jesus is telling us to operate from priorities. And at the ultimate level, it is not up to us to determine our priorities. We have one ultimate priority, and it is given to us by God: Seek him and his kingdom first.

Here’s the gist of what he said: “For me, one of the most important things is having the courage to say no to those things that are often good, but not dead-on mission. . . . I’m working on increasing my nos so that my yeses will stay on track with my primary mission, which is building the local church.”

Or, put differently, “know what you’re trying to accomplish (know what comes first)” and “put first things first (actually put it first).”

Personal leadership, on the other hand, has to do with the direction you are headed.

If personal leadership is about where you are going, personal management is about how you get there.

This distinction between personal leadership and personal management is illustrated well by considering it in relation to the six horizons of work. The six horizons are: Personal Leadership • 50,000 feet: Mission and values • 40,000 feet: Vision (or life goal) • 30,000 feet: Long-term goals • 20,000 feet: Roles Personal Management • 10,000 feet: Projects • Runway: Next actions and calendar