Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

by Tim Challies

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2)

Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose.

The simple fact is, you are not the point of your life. You are not the star of your show. If you live for yourself, your own comfort, your own glory, your own fame, you will miss out on your very purpose. God created you to bring glory to him.

Your good works are like a light, and when that light shines, it illuminates God.

Does the passage really say that God works are the light?

Productivity is effectively stewarding my gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.

You just need to do the best thing (good to others) for the best goal (the glory of God). And yet, if you are like me and so many others, you have had a lifelong struggle to be and to remain productive. If your purpose is so clear, why do you struggle so much?

three productivity thieves: laziness, busyness, and the mean combination of thorns and thistles.

If you want an excuse to be unproductive, you will inevitably find one, and if you can’t find one, you will manufacture one.

Although we complain about being busy, we also find that it validates us, as if we have only two choices before us: doing far too little or far too much. We somehow assume that our value is connected to our busyness. But busyness cannot be confused with diligence. It cannot be confused with faithfulness or fruitfulness.2

Busyness may make you feel good about yourself and give the illusion of getting things done, but it probably just means that you are directing too little attention in too many directions, that you are prioritizing all the wrong things, and that your productivity is suffering.

The times of busyness would then make me so worn out that I would experience a crash and convince myself I had earned the right to lay low and be inactive for a little while.

Busyness and laziness are both issues that arise from within. They are deficiencies in character that then work themselves out in our lives.

The punishment was not work itself, but the difficulty that would now accompany work.

diminished productivity is first a theological problem. It is a failure to understand or apply the truths God reveals in the Bible.

You need to structure and organize your life so that you can do the maximum good for others and thus bring the maximum glory to God.

The kind of productivity I have described here is not only about what you do, but also about who you are. You need to be a certain kind of person before you can live this life.

God calls you to productivity, but he calls you to the right kind of productivity. He calls you to be productive for his sake, not your own.

Displaying discipline and self-control in one area shores it up in others; conversely, neglecting discipline and self-control in any major area makes it all the more difficult to emphasize it in others.

Choose at least one habit other than productivity that you will pursue as you read and apply this book.

Smart

Productivity depends upon brokering peace between each of the different tasks we could prioritize in any given period of time.

charged you with all those New Testament “one another” commands,

Vive la difference!

Action: Use the productivity worksheet to create a list of your areas of responsibility.

What roles do you have there? What tasks has God given you? What projects are underway, or what projects would you like to begin? What are the criteria God may use when he requires that accounting?

Action: Using the productivity worksheet, list your roles, tasks, and projects within each of your areas of responsibility.

You have limited amounts of gifting, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm, but unlimited ways of allocating them. For this reason productivity involves making decisions about how to allocate these finite resources.

Our mission is to do good to others and in that way to bring glory to God. That is our aim in the broadest sense, but we need to find ways of doing that mission in life’s nitty-gritty.

The primary value of seeing these as “living” statements is that it frees me from the paralysis of defining a mission that needs to guide me today and twenty years from now.

I believe God has gifted me to do, is help people think and live like mature and maturing Christians.

Action: Write a brief mission statement for each of your areas of responsibility. Give it your best shot for now, and prepare to keep refining them as time goes on.

Your primary pursuit in productivity is not doing more things, but doing more good.

You haven’t begun to live a focused and productive life until you have said no to great opportunities that just do not fit your mission. There are many good things in this world that will go undone or that will have to be done by someone else.

My ability to make wise decisions is directly connected to my understanding of my mission.

Action: Choose whether you will drop, delegate, or do each of those off-mission roles, tasks, or projects.

Todoist

Wunderlist, Asana, Things, OmniFocus,

Action: Choose a scheduling tool, a task management tool, and an information tool.

Here it is: a home for everything, and like goes with like.

Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.

A system is “a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole.”9 A system has multiple parts that work together toward a common goal.

This reality means that your day needs to have two phases: planning and execution.

I call my daily planning phase my coram Deo, a Latin phrase that means in the presence of God, and I use this phrase because it helps remind me every day of whom it is I ultimately live for.

Pray -Purpose: Admit your dependence upon God and ask for his help. -Actions: Pause to pray just briefly, giving the day to the Lord and asking him to help you use it to his glory. Ask for wisdom to understand how you can best use your day to do good to others and ask for grace to do it well.

Bring: Task Inbox to 0 -Purpose: Ensure that every task has been properly assigned to a project. -Actions: Go to your Todoist inbox and process it by assigning any items there to a project. Delete, do, defer, or delegate every task. Whenever possible also assign a due date. Do not move to the next step in coram Deo until the inbox is empty.

Check: Calendar & Alerts -Purposes: Ensure that you will not neglect any of today’s events, appointments, or meetings, and gauge how much time is available for completing tasks. -Actions: Open your calendar and look for any meetings or appointments that are occurring today. Check each of them to ensure that you have set appropriate notifications. Make a note of...

Check: Forecast for Next 7 days -Purpose: Note any approaching deadlines. -Actions: Using the Next 7 days view, take a brief look at all due dates for the next 7 days. Make a note of any approaching deadlines.

In many vocations and in many places in life it is energy, not time, that is the more valuable commodity.

Do the Hardest Tasks First

Accomplishing nine or ten low-priority tasks while neglecting the one high-priority task may make you feel better, but it is the very opposite of true productivity.

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”