Category: productivity

Posted in productivity, Through the Bible Devotions

What have you been doing?

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Some “through the bible” thoughts from Jeremiah 9.

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 9:23,24)

Have you ever met someone who boasted, “I know and understand God”? Yeah, me neither.

Instead I hear, “I don’t understand why God would do that.” Or, “I don’t know why God would allow that to happen.”

When someone asks, “So what have you been doing lately?” I never respond, “I’ve been getting to know God.” Instead I mention what I’ve been reading, the workouts I’ve been doing, all the things I’ve been writing about, places I’ve gone and things I’ve done, plus all the cooking and baking I’ve done.

Does that qualify as boasting? I don’t like to think so. After all, you asked. But I certainly don’t want to answer, “Not much.” I still fall prey to the notion that I must be productive. So I have to make sure you know that I’ve been doing something, something worthwhile, something that justifies my taking up space on the planet.

After I’ve shared my recent activity, it feels so good to hear, “Wow, sounds like you’ve been busy!” I love to hear that. It makes my day.

In Jeremiah 9, invading armies and widespread destruction are on the way because God’s people didn’t get it. They lived their lives as if they didn’t know God at all. Everything they learned, earned, and accomplished would mean little when Jerusalem was a heap of ruins and the cities of Judah were desolate and uninhabited (9:11).

I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here. There always is. What if I asked, “So what have you been doing lately, God?” I’ll bet I’d be amazed at his response. Maybe I would exclaim, “Wow, sounds like you’ve been busy!”

Posted in productivity

One percent

Posted on by William Douthwaite

This is a response to the WordPress daily writing prompt, “What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?”

I love the one percent goal. If you become 1 percent better at something each day, you will be 37 times better at that in a year. Those small incremental increases pay off in a big way.

What does that one percent look like? Read one more sentence in a book than yesterday. Or increase the weight you lift in a workout by one percent. Write one more sentence in your journal than yesterday. Run or walk one percent further than yesterday. Drink one percent more water each day. Practice your instrument one percent longer.

It doesn’t have to be a daily goal. Save one percent more money than last month. Run one percent further than last month. Read one percent more than last month. Whatever. Before you know it, you’ve leveled up your life through small, insignificant improvements.

I’ll often ask myself, “What’s my one percent today?” I don’t have to improve everything every day. But there is always something I can strive to improve by one percent.

Posted in productivity

What do you do when you can’t do it all?

Posted on by William Douthwaite

I’ve been digitizing my old journals and came across this note from January 7, 2012: “What do you do when you can’t do it all?” There’s not much context to go with that, other than another line, “My to-do list is huge.”

In other entries I wrote down that my to-do list was more than a page long! I know I rarely got everything on my list done. In fact, some things on the list never got done. Not every day was like that, but enough were that I became of student of productivity.

There are two ways to tackle an overwhelming to-do list. One, just work on the first thing until it’s done. Then work on the next thing. And so on. Or, cross off a bunch of items until the list is manageable.

Actually, it wasn’t that hard to get a handle my daily tasks. I adopted a system of 1-3-5 and Kanban. I reduced my to-do list to one important thing, three less important tasks, and a few less-than-urgent activities. When a to-do list is just one important task, it isn’t overwhelming at all.

In the process, I learned that many of the things on my to-do list didn’t need to be done. I guess they needed to be done at some point, but the world didn’t come to an end if I handled them some other day. Other to-dos were done by someone else. Those tasks were on others’ to-do lists, too. And some things just never got done. Oh well.

Now I’m curious. What things on my to-do lists did I never actually do? I’ll keep an eye out and let you know what I find.

Posted in productivity

Two projects

Posted on by William Douthwaite

I believe that every homeowner like myself has an endless to-do list. Home ownership comes with plenty of maintenance, decorating, repair and remodeling projects which must be done in your spare time, when you aren’t working. I had a eureka moment the other day as I lamented that my list never seemed to get shorter.

I decided that I would set a goal of two projects per week, one inside and one outside. The projects would be in addition to weekly tasks like lawn work, cleaning or shopping. Each project would take less than two hours. Just imagine: if I did this for a whole year, I would get 104 projects done!

To do this, I would have to break some of my bigger projects into smaller chunks. I can’t paint every interior door in two hours, but I can finish two. I might not be able to make every garden look perfect, but I can spruce up one of them in a few hours. I can power wash the driveway or clean some windows or clean out the gutters. In the course of a week, I can always find a few hours to do something and thereby always feel like I am making progress.

My idea is not new, of course. It is my rendition of eating the elephant one bite at a time. But it is a newer approach for me. I won’t feel like I’m always working on projects. But I will also feel like I am getting something done. A win-win with myself!

Posted in productivity

The art of rest

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash

There is definitely an art to taking a day off.

For just about my whole career as a pastor, I’ve taken Fridays off. I know that cuts against the grain. I suspect that most pastors take Monday off, exhausted from Sunday worship and other activities. But I really like Mondays. They are far, far from Sunday. They give me a chance to get a jump on the week. And everyone thinks I take Monday off, so I don’t get a lot of phone calls or other interruptions.

But taking Friday off doesn’t mean it’s easy to take Friday off. It’s not really easy to take any day off. Even if I am totally prepared for Sunday, my brain churns with thoughts of things I need to do, people I need to visit, people who are sick or dying, people I haven’t seen for a while, or people who want to see me. That last category of people includes those who have put off emailing, texting or calling me the entire week.

I have learned the necessity of turning everything off on Friday. My phone, email, and my mind. It will all be there on Saturday, right? So it’s OK to sleep. Take a nap. Read a book. Go for a walk. Watch TV. Or do nothing at all.

That’s hard. I feel like I need to make the most of my time. Doing nothing doesn’t seem like a good use of time. But some words keep echoing in my mind: “If you are available all the time, you aren’t really available.” Unless I have time to rest, I won’t be effective during my non-rest times.

I have a few members who will ask me, “So, when are you taking vacation?” They know. They understand. They know I cannot be at my best if I never, ever get a chance to rest.

So I’m working on it. I’m turning off my phone. I’m staying off my computer. I’m trying to stay off the church-grid. I’m still learning how to “sabbath,” that is, rest.

Posted in Ministry, productivity

Do more or pray more?

Posted on by William Douthwaite

There’s a fork in the road when ministry heats up and life gets busy. Either you do more, or “you pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37). Guess which one I do more often?

If you haven’t guessed, I confess that I conclude I need to do more. I need to spend more time helping more people using my gifts in the service of God. Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. Spiritually, though, that’s not the path Christ blazed.

That’s the temptation, isn’t it? When you feel like you are in over your head, you should spend more time working harder to get more done and emulate those who do the same. Yeah, like those who brag that they work seventy or eighty hours a week.

Wait a minute. I’m not following them. I’m following Him. And when Jesus needed help, he enlisted the pray-ers around him. “You better pray that God sends some help.” He wasn’t going to put in overtime. He wasn’t going to make the ministry happen. Nope, his approach was different. “You guys better pray for some help.”

That’s my new mantra. When a can’t keep up, can’t carry the load, can’t possibly do it all, I’m going to come clean. “You guys better start praying for help.”

You know, it took me about thirty-five years of ministry to learn this lesson. I learned that I can do a lot. I can do more now than I could before. I can learn new skills, manage my time better, be more productive and optimize my time. But I’m also tired. I’m not the Christ. And not even he tried to do it all. He didn’t bear the burden of saying all the prayers.

Bottom line: “You guys better start praying for help.”

Posted in creativity, productivity

Creative moments

Posted on by William Douthwaite

danielle-dolson-322889-unsplash
Photo by Danielle Dolson on Unsplash

A couple of times this morning, I had surprisingly creative moments. First, very early, while free writing after some scripture reading, the themes for my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day sermons popped into my head. Later, as I sat in my office to begin working on sermons for the next two Sundays, the themes and outlines fell into place in just a few hours.

After those few hours of door-closed, phone-in-airplane-mode, no distraction work, I paused to capture what made the morning so productive with what seemed like so little effort. You see, I want to be able to recreate such moments. As any writer, artist, composer or pastor knows, it’s not always that easy. Sometimes you close the door, turn off the distractions, pray, struggle, work and sweat, only to come up with nothing useful. Was there anything specific about today that I can replicate in the future?

One might suggest divine inspiration, and that may be a part of it. But there’s no way to predict when that might happen or turn it on like a faucet. God’s Spirit is like the wind. There’s no way to predict when you’ll feel the breeze. You just enjoy it when it blows.

I thought of a few things that might have contributed to an especially creative morning. First, I was as far away from Sunday as I could be. No pressure, no imminent deadline. I didn’t have to come up with any ideas. That reality freed my mind to wander, imagine, visualize and come up with all kinds of crazy ideas.

I’ve also begun drawing pictures in my journal, images that I find on the pages of my morning devotions. I’ll bet doing something artistic wakes up the right side of my brain, the creative side.

I believe reading helps, too. If I just read some devotional stuff, some fiction, a mystery, anything that takes me away in a story, and my mind begins to generate ideas. Out of nowhere. They just start to grow. Ten to fifteen minutes of reading opens a window into parts of my mind where really cool ideas otherwise lie hidden just out of sight.

I may not always be as productive as I was this morning. But I am going to try making every Monday morning such a creative time.

Posted in Life, minimalism, productivity

Just drinking coffee. Period.

Posted on by William Douthwaite

IMG_7949A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in Starbucks, in between appointment, drinking coffee and scrolling through some Reddit stuff when — get this — this guy came in, sat down, and did nothing else other than enjoy his coffee. That’s right, no phone, no book, no tablet, no computer, no friend to talk to, nothing. He just sat there and sipped his venti whatever. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen someone do that before. There were plenty of other people there, some like me focused on a smartphone screen. A few were engrossed in their laptops. A couple of friends were talking.

I began wondering, “Would Starbucks even exist if we didn’t have our electronics to amuse us and their wifi to connect us as we drank lattes and ate scones?”

You do it and I do it. Whenever we sit down – in the car, in church, in the bathroom, watching TV, at concerts, at work, in a restaurant, at the pool, at the gym, stripped naked waiting for the doctor to come in – we pull out a phone to find out what’s going on. I’m sure sociologists and psychologists have a field day with this behavior.

I think I may have seen another guy do this at a bar. He was just sitting there drinking a beer. He wasn’t doing anything else.

I might have to try this. I’ll let you know what happens.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in lessons, Life, Ministry, productivity

Doing less, doing more.

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Businessman multitaskingIt’s counter-intuitive. At least it is for me. When I see a great opportunity, or when there is a need or when I just have the next great idea, my heart and soul tell me to get to work. When I am not getting the results I want, the logical response is to put more time and energy into that effort. Or when something needs to be done and I’ll be around it’s just too easy to say, “I’ll take care of it.”

More and more I realize that’s not the right response. It turns out that stepping in to do what needs to be done has some unpleasant side-effects. Doing more enables others to do less. Doing more allows me less time to focus on some of my primary tasks. Doing more doesn’t necessarily mean that I will get more done, either.

Want a couple of examples? I’ll try to limit it to a couple.

Our church choir needs men. Badly. Health, travel, and age have taken a toll on both tenors and basses. Last year, I thought, “I can sing. I can shore up the tenors until the next choir draft or we can call up some promising voices from the minors.” So I did. But without as much need for low voices, the recruiting process was put on the back burner. The distraction of having to be ready and in place for an anthem robbed me of some of the focus I needed for liturgy and preaching. By doing more, I enabled others to do less and cheated other worshipers out of some of what Jesus called “the one thing necessary.”

When we were in-between office managers, I filled in. With a volunteer to do answer the phone and duplicate materials, I could put together each week’s worship resources. It wasn’t until I hired a new talented office manager that I realized how much time I had been losing each week by doing dozens of little tasks. Within days, I had time to meet with people, visit and make phone calls. I was able to resume shepherding. By doing more, I was able to do less. I was cheating the congregation out of the care they needed. The return on investment of a good office manager has far exceeded expectations.

Some of my elders have recently stepped up to help me keep track of our church’s families, both with phone calls and visits. I’ve never had this much help before. By not trying to keep track of 200+ families alone, I can be more on top of what is going on with more of them. . When I tried to do more, I actually got less done.

Sometimes others don’t step up to meet a need until they see or experience that need. If I step in to the gap, the need goes away and so does their opportunity. But if I keep my nose out of it, someone takes it on and actually does a better job than me. And that helps me be a better me, too.