More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We feel beholden to our calendars, watches, and to-do lists rather than having dominion over these tools that promised to make our lives easier and more productive.
The mistake we often make is to make peace of mind the result of things we do rather than the source.”
Success isn’t our primary aim—service is, and more specifically service to our Lord and his agenda.
I get it—that promise is how you sell books. There’s just one problem: it’s not true.
But we choose to redeem our time not despite it being hard but precisely because it is hard.
That great change in his soul almost led to a dramatic change in his work.
Our problems are rooted in misconceptions of what we believe about work, time, and the role we have to play in God’s mission in the world.
Deep in our bones, we know that we were created to live forever.
But the more I study Scripture, the more I’m convinced that this desire to live and be productive forever was designed by God himself.
We will all die with unfinished symphonies. Our to-do lists will never be completed.
Easter isn’t just good news for our souls. It’s good news for the world.
What does this have to do with time management? It helps us make sense of where time is going.
Our work matters today because it is a means of glorifying God and loving our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:39). But our work also matters for eternity because God can use it to build his kingdom. And because God alone will finish that work and ultimately bring heaven to earth, we can embrace this freeing truth today: God doesn’t need you or me to finish our to-do lists. If the things on our to-do lists are on God’s to-do list, he will complete them with or without us.
“A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed” (Job 14:5).
And because we did nothing to earn his grace, there is nothing we can do to lose it.
Because working to earn someone’s favor is exhausting, but working in response to unconditional favor is intoxicating.
But to see it, we must adjust the lens through which we read them.
First and most obvious, time in the Word is how we commune with God.
I love how bluntly author Matt Perman put it: “To live your life without God is the most unproductive thing you can do.”
But you might not be at your best at five in the morning.
Whatever works for you works. What’s important is that you do it.
But remember, this is a relationship, and “relational time is wildly inefficient.”
Only by articulating what he knew to be true was he able to obtain calm in the everyday chaos.
I humbly recognize that I will die with unfinished symphonies but that if my work is aligned with your will, you will finish my work in your time.
But before we ensure we are focusing our time on doing the “right things,” it is critical that we extract everything we could be doing from our minds and put those items into a trusted external system.
Why is it that the worst songs are some of the hardest to get out of our heads?
Companies such as Netflix and Spotify are so confident the majority of people will forget to cancel their subscriptions that they’re willing to give their product away for free to get you to sign up.*2
When putting open loops onto your Inbox List, you just need to write the minimum amount of information necessary to remind yourself
God doesn’t need you to finish your to-do list. You will never complete everything you just put into your CTS, and that’s okay.
We have yet to do the mental “first creation” of defining our work as tangible things we can do for the glory of God and the good of others.
If you have an overwhelming number of items on your Inbox List, consider asking the more rigorous version of this question: “Would anything happen if I never completed this?”
Will It Take More Than One Action to Close This Open Loop?
But the distinction between the Projects List and Actions List in your CTS could not be more important in ensuring your yes is yes.
To operate at my highest potential, I have to track those open loops outside my head and in my CTS until they are fully closed.
Many people feel overwhelmed with their to-do lists because there’s nothing they can physically do on their lists.
These are all open loops that need to be clearly defined and converted into projects (which you did in question 3) and physical actions you can take to bring those projects closer to completion.
Assign deadlines only for things that absolutely must get done at a specific time.
Here’s the deal: all five of these questions are ones you are already asking yourself every time you get something done.
That’s right: I’m suggesting you get to “inbox zero” every single day.
And the way you can assure your brain that you know what you’re not doing is by committing to a weekly review.
The weekly review is the glue that holds this entire workflow together.
You and I have a moral obligation to seek out solitude as we try to redeem our time.
When our minds are filled with noise, there is simply no mental space to think.
Good work requires good thought, and good thought requires great solitude.
And, of course, these sources of noise don’t create just information overload but opinion overload too.
To discern the essential from the noise, at some point you have to turn off the information-and-opinion fire hose, get quiet, and simply think.
Noise limits our ability to think. And if we don’t have space to think, we can’t discern the essential from the noise and prioritize our to-do lists.
With all the noise in our lives today, we’ve made boredom nearly extinct, and that’s a problem because a lack of noise is essential to creativity.
Where do you have your most creative ideas? If this were a question on Family Feud, I can almost guarantee the top answer would be “In the shower.”
That’s what nonstop noise does: it limits our ability to cultivate depth at work and at home, thwarting our attempts to be purposeful, present, and productive.
