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December 1 - December 16, 2022
“The mere presence of your smartphone in your pocket is a nudge, a gentle reminder that just a tap away are countless rewards of information, entertainment, and distraction.”
Just as you would with your kids, you decide what time your phone will go to bed and what time it will be allowed out of its proverbial room. You’re the parent in this relationship.
As we’ve seen, boredom doesn’t come naturally for us in the twenty-first century, so we have to intentionally develop the skill of being bored. Start small by refusing to fill the cracks and crevices of your day with noise.
[Lewis] walked for exercise of both mind and body.”
A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain.
walking could be as effective a treatment for major depression in some patients as medication.
To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must decide what matters most and allow those choices to prioritize our commitments.
What matters is “to excel in the thing God wants you to do and made you to do.”
And to redeem our time, we need to get crystal clear on what matters most on our never-ending to-do lists.
We must clarify what we’re saying yes to so we can say no to nonessential things along the way.
Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things he could do were not necessarily the things he ought to do….If
If Jesus had to live with human limitations, we’d be foolish to think we don’t. The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realized they couldn’t do everything.10
How can we, like Jesus, identify the work that matters most and ignore everything else?
We must also grasp the truth that we have the power to choose what matters most rather than allowing others to choose for us.
Your mission is discovered, not chosen.”
The mission of your life is to glorify God.
“In a sense, for a Christian, there is no ‘plan B.’
At the end of the day, regardless of which callings we choose, vocational or otherwise, the Lord’s purposes will prevail. His plans cannot be thwarted
Believer, you are free to choose the callings you think you can fulfill most exceptionally well for the glory of God and the good of others. So yes, take time to explore your options.
But at some point, you’ve just got to make a choice, because kingdom work is getting done and you want th...
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Personally, I have chosen three primary callings: husband, fath...
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I’d encourage you to read my book Master of One.
To prioritize our to-do lists, we must clearly articulate what we want for each of our roles that’s in line with God’s mission for the world.
90 percent of more than a thousand studies have shown that productivity is significantly enhanced by articulating what we want in the form of “well-defined, challenging goals.”
prefer to call them “Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs),” the term Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined in their classic book Built to Last.
Big Goals Are Easier to Achieve Than Small Goals
because nearly everyone aims for average-sized goals, the level of competition decreases as the size of your goal increases.
“It is just as risky, just as arduous, and just as uncertain to do something small that is new as it is to do something big that is new.”
it is much easier to develop the habit of saying no if you’re challenged and inspired by what you’ve already said yes to.
“If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.”
“Bold ideas attract bold people.”
“even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely.”
What do you sense the Lord leading you to desire over the next few years or decades of your life? What will your “I want” song be for each of your callings?
OKRs, “Objectives are significant, concrete, action oriented, and (ideally) inspirational.”
vision without a task is but a dream; a task without a vision is but drudgery; a vision and a task is the hope of the world.”
Like Jesus, these people are just as deliberate about what they’re saying no to as what they’re saying yes to.
Now that we’ve started with the Word, collected our commitments, dissented from the kingdom of noise, and prioritized our yeses, we’re ready to pick up the fifth piece of our proverbial puzzle: learning what it takes to be fully present and focused on our priorities each day.
ACCEPT YOUR “UNIPRESENCE” To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must accept our unipresence and focus on one important thing at a time.
I believe the discipline of deep work is the single most important practice in my day-to-day pursuit of mastery.
“deep work makes the dream work.”
Doing one thing at a time means doing it fast. The more one can concentrate time, effort, and resources, the greater the number and diversity of tasks one can actually perform…. This is the “secret” of those people who “do so many things” and apparently so many difficult things. They do only one at a time.
Concentration. Focus. Depth. Those are the secrets to being wildly productive.
Depth: the ability to focus intensely on one important thing at a time
the ability to cultivate depth is valuable to you, but more importantly your ability to go deep at work and at home is valuable to others.
In today’s distracted world, being fully present is one of the most valuable presents you can give.
According to psychologists at the University of London, distractions negatively influence our intelligence twice as much as marijuana.
“People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task.”
FIVE ENEMIES IN THE FIGHT FOR DEPTH Enemy #1: External Distractions
Enemy #2: Fake Productivity
Spending all day in the shallows leads to what we might call “fake productivity”: work that makes us look busy but is terribly unimportant and fails to move us any closer to our goals.
