The Science of Productivity.

Time Management with Scott Williams

Great video by Scott Williams about how to manage your time with God as your No. 1 priority.

GTD - Ubiquitous Capture (doh!)

Merriam Webster's definition for ubiquitous:

Main Entry: ubiq·ui·tous
Pronunciation: yü-'bi-kw&-t&s
Function: adjective
: existing or being everywhere at the same time : constantly encountered : WIDESPREAD ubiquitous fashion>

Right. So up till now, I've been using the term "Ubiquitous Capture" to talk about the initial major collection (including the mindsweep) that dumps everything into my inbox for the first time. In other words, I've been using it incorrectly.

Thanks to Ben (of bathgates|dot|net) for clarifying my error. He writes:

I think 'anonymous' is right about ubiquitous. Allen's intent is that you always have the ability to capture information into your trusted system - everywhere - whether that's using HipsterPDA, a 'real' PDA, the back of your hand etc. If it doesn't go straight into your trusted system then, it at least gets captured. What you're talking about is a mindsweep.

Doh! To be fair, "Ubiquitous Capture" isn't even an official GTD term. David Allen only uses the term "ubiquitous" once in the book (on page 166). And only one article (by Robert Peake) on the davidco.com website uses the term "ubiquitous." Thus, the term "ubiquitous capture" must be an invention of the vast GTD blogging community.

Unfortunately, I cannot blame the blogging community for my mistake. The overwhelming evidence is abundantly clear:"Ubiquitous Capture" means having a voice recorder with me in my car, bathtub crayons in my shower, a pad of paper by my bed, and my PDA with me at all times. Sorry for leading anyone astray.

Finding/Making Time to Read

A couple of days ago, I posted some book summary sites as a way to get a grip on the volume and breadth of reading a pastor really should be doing.

Calvin writes:

As a 4-month newbie to GTD, I want to ask how do you find time/ make time/ plug
in time to get the reading done you need (even with executive summaries)? It is
my #1 frustration in ministry. (OK, that may be an exaggeration, but it is up
there AMONG the top frustrations in ministry).

Making time for reading is one of those Quadrant 2 things that we're just going to have to intentionally make time for. It's not urgent (it's not screaming at you, begging for attention), but it is important (if you want to continue growing, leading, and thinking).

I used to read 50-70 books a year (not book summaries. books). But then we bought a TV. And then we had kids. And then I started blogging. So now I'm down to about 20 books and 20-40 book summaries per year.

The whole trick to making Q2 work? Make the hard decision up front to replace something less important (American Idol?) or something urgent/not-important (interruptions, junkmail, too-frequent email, phone calls, some meetings, visitation with long-winded members) with something very important (in this case, reading).

I think part of the problem with pastors (in general) is their uncanny ability to spiritualize every part of their job and artificially force it into Quadrants 1 and 2. We really think every phone call might be life or death. We really think we're building the Kingdom of God by letting a church member waste our time with stories about their great aunt Martha. We think there is something innately spiritual about being at everyone's beck and call 24/7. Jesus didn't fall into that trap and neither should we.

In my life, three major Q2 areas stand out - reading, prayer/devotion/spiritual disciplines, and family.

So here are some ways to make time for reading:

1. Calendarize it. Make it an unbreakable appointment on your calendar. Try to do this first thing at work (after devotional time), so all of the emails and phonecalls haven't claimed all of your time yet. If someone needs an appointment with you, schedule it at a different time (you have an appointment then, don't you?). Same thing is true with all Q2s.

2. Make it accountable. Ask someone to keep you accountable on a weekly or monthly basis. You choose the person. Choose what specific things you want them to ask you about - how many books? how long? what genres? what interesting or mind-stretching have you read? what are you reading now? etc.

3. Start/join a reading group. This has been very fruitful for me. I meet with a group of church planters 2X per year. Our meetings are based around a book that we've all been reading as an assignment. So there's 2 books per year that I'm forcing myself to read so I don't look like an idiot. My wife and I set aside time every other week to read a relationship book together and discuss it. Locally, I meet with 2 other pastors every week and discuss a leadership/spiritual growth/preaching book we're all reading.

4. Keep an @reading list. When I wrote down all of my "current" reads in my @reading list, it turned out I was trying to read 8-10 books at the same time. I've since gotten that down to 5 books that I'm keeping open on my list. (1 church planting, 1 relationship, 1 preaching, and 2 others). Minimize the open loops.

5. Take a reading retreat. If you just can't make yourself read at home or work (you probably also can't pray there), take a reading retreat every month or quarter where you blast through 1-3 books over a couple of days.

6. Don't leave home without it. Always keep reading material with you. If you have to sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes, don't waste your time with whatever magazine hapens to be lying around. Read the book or article that you brought (or one that's on your Palm Pilot). If you have to sit outside the changing room while you're shopping with your wife, use the time reading.

That's how I make time to read. What works for you?

Prepared for Preaching

Did you hear the one about the pastor who accidentally mentioned that he did all of his sermon preparation on the walk between the parsonage and the church? On the agenda for the next board meeting was a proposal to sell that parsonage and buy a new one 20 miles away.

A couple weeks ago in The Amazing Expanding Project, I wrote about short-scheduling your projects as a great way to manage time and beat procrastination. Unfortunately, the example I used was preaching. And upon further reflection, I have decided that I didn't really need to encourage pastors to spend less time on their sermons (in general).

In Thom Rainer's book Surprising Insights from the Unchurched, he points out that the first major reason for the unchurched to return or retreat is the impression they get of the pastor. And most of that impression comes during the sermon time.

The whole rest of your ministry can suck - you can quit visiting, quit evangelising, quit running effective meetings, quit planning, quit liking people - and people will still think you're a good pastor if you hit it out of the ballpark every weekend from the pulpit. (Wait, I know that pastor)

Conversely, the whole rest of your ministry can be great. But if you're not preaching well, people will think you're an idiot. (I know that pastor, too)

Obviously, you don't want either extreme. You want to be a great preacher and a faithful pastor.

But you can't be a great preacher if you don't spend enough time on it. You can't just think something up on the way to church and wing it every week.

Preaching is a sacred responsibility. It's not something that we should ever take lightly. It should weigh heavily on us. We are handling God's Word. Are we handling it faithfully? Or are we twisting it to fit our ideas and agendas? We are leading God's people. Are we leading them into His truth and will? Or are we just saying stuff that will sound impressive or not offend the saints?

Spend enough time really preparing to preach. Plan your preaching. Pray over your preaching. Read about preaching. Practice. Review your sermons. Analyze audio and video tapes. Evaluate your effectiveness. Improve. (It's a stewardship issue)

Prayerfully plan your sermonic year. (My Process)
Create compelling topical series. (Sermon Series Planning Worksheet)
Make each week's sermon Biblical, Interesting, Relevant, Balanced, and Christ-centered.
Take enough time each week to:
- Study your pericope and outline major themes and principles (early in the week)
- Find modern, relevant illustrations (early in the week)
- Decide what actions your listeners should take
- Find Jesus in the topic/text/theme
- Pray, pray, pray

Why I Blog Meme

Beth (over at My Simpler Life) just tagged me in the "why I blog" meme.

There are several reasons why I blog:

• It keeps me accountable to GTD and best practices.
  
• Pastors desperately NEED time management and personal productivity.
• I thrive on developing others.
• I learn best by teaching.
• It's storage for my best thoughts, ideas, links, processes, and documents.
• The community sharpens me.
• It could enhance my career.
• It might make enough money to pay for itself.
• My wife encouraged me to do it.
• It keeps me moving forward.
  

From Doer to Designer

I think one of the best ways to increase personal productivity as a pastor is to intentionally move from the role of doer to the role of designer. Moving from doer to designer is all about leveraging your time and energy.

Pastors complain all the time about the church expecting them to do all of the ministry. And pastors know that their real job is to empower others to do ministry. But the pastor isn't really doing anything about it. Even when the pastor thinks he is empowering others, often he's really just willy-nilly dumping responsibility on someone else.

So the pastor has to become a designer. I'm talking about the pastor becoming process-oriented, designing workflows, and establishing best practices. This means writing down every important detail of every regular church process and publishing it.

Note of Caution: I'm not talking about the pastor becoming the only designer in the church. The pastor doesn't have to write down all the processes by himself. But the entire church needs to become a place where well-designed processes and well-documented workflows are the norm.

Once the processes are designed and documented, they become great tools for training (empowering) people to do ministry. That way, people don't have to reinvent the wheel each time they do something, or scramble each time a ministry volunteer moves away. With a well-designed and documented process, you have an established standard for accountability. If the process isn't working, your document can be a great diagnostic tool to see where it's breaking down.

I really believe people want to be involved in ministry. And I believe they want to be successful. But too many times, they don't know what the job entails. They don't have clear outcomes and processes to look at. So they don't know what to do. And they don't do it. And they feel like they're failing at serving the Lord. And you wonder why people just aren't volunteering anymore.

The doer/designer problem is a major reason small companies fail to become large - the entrepreneur who started the business has all of the standards and processes. But they're trapped in the entrepreneur's brain. And when it's time for the business to grow, the small business owner is overwhelmed with so much to do and doesn't know the next step. The next step: go from doer to designer. Design and document all of your processes.

This will take extra time up front, but it will save you lots of time, energy, volunteers, relationships, and sanity in the long run. And who knows, it may just be what you need to move your church to the next level.

P.S. I really suggest going through the Ministry Advantage Pastor's Coaching System to help you make the transition from doer to designer.

My Review Broke Today

So, in the middle of my weekly GTD review, a church member came in to my office very distraught that her daughter had been incarcerated and was being held without arraignment for a while because it is President's Day.

All that to say that my GTD review didn't get done today! But also to say that maybe I do need to remember that a big part of my job is to comfort the afflicted, and sometimes that can't wait.

I've been meaning to post on the weekly review for a while, because it is, IMHO, the single-most important factor in keeping the GTD system working properly.

That said, I want to point you to a new post on zen habits. It explains the review process nicely. And it makes a major case for going on to the last step of the review, into higher-level thinking and the goal review. Enjoy the post.

Always Take Someone With You

Don't do anything alone as a pastor that you could be doing with someone else.

Do you need to make a hospital visit? Take someone.
Are you going to a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce? Invite someone.
Are you teaching a baptismal class? Bring an elder along.
Are you going to a conference? Take someone.
Are you planning an upcoming sermon series? Include someone in the process.
Are you going out to lunch this afternoon? Take someone with you.

Jesus sent His disciples out two-by-two in Luke 10 to go and preach and teach, cast out demons, and heal the sick. When they come back in verses 17 and 18, Jesus says "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."

There is something powerful about doing ministry as a team (two or more people together). Here are some major benefits that no pastor can afford to ignore:

• Spiritual Power - Biblically, there seems to be something very spiritually important about working in teams. Adam had Eve as a helpmate; Moses needed Aaron; Elijah had Elisha; Barnabas mentored Paul; Paul worked with Silas; Paul trained Timothy; etc. I think it's significant that Jesus made a behind-the-scenes spiritual comment about Satan falling like lightning when the disciples went out two-by-two into ministry.
  
• Accountability - A team member can keep us accountable in several ways. They can help us make sure we are being honest and transparent. They can keep us accountable to right thinking and a right relationship with God. They can keep us accountable to our stated vision and goals.
  
• Training for Ministry - If you don't spend time with people, you can't train up the next generation of gospel workers. You'll be able to delegate a lot easier if you have already brought someone to a level of familiarity with the task. Maybe the person has skills or interests that can be used to grow God's kingdom. You won't know if you aren't spending time with them.
  
• Transfer of Vision - Vision is caught, not taught. You can't transfer the vision that God has put on your heart by teaching a class or having people fill in the blanks. My senior pastor used to drive me around town, pointing out land that would make a great site for a new church. He would drive me through parts of town where we had no church members. We would pray together. We would brainstorm. He was transferring vision.
  
• Relationship - Pastoring (especially in a small church) is all about relationships. Are you building relationships for God's Kingdom? Are you deepening relationships within the body of believers? Relationships take time.

Bottom line: Don't do it alone. You weren't meant to. Pastors already feel isolated. There's no need to compound that by neglect.

Getting Things Done - Weekly Mastery Review

During today's weekly review, I scored myself on Duff's 100 Behaviors to GTD Mastery Checklist. I came out at 28. Yes, that's 28 out of 100.

I resolved to read Getting Things Done a second time through (#27).

I have made several copies of the Mastery Checklist and put them in my tickler file. I will be using the checklist every week during my review time to identify the next steps on my journey toward GTD Mastery.

Keeping a Time Log - How Depressing

When I was going through the Ministry Advantage Pastor's Coaching System, my personal coach wanted me to do a 1-week time log. For five consecutive work-days I set my timer to go off every 15 minutes (during "at-work" time) and wrote down what I had been doing during those last 15 minutes.

Then, in a second column, I had to categorize my time by roles - "pastoral," "administrative," "visionary," "evangelistic," "secretarial/notmyjob," "janitorial/notmyjob," "rescuing/notmyjob," "games," etc.

I did not like what I found. But they tell me that awareness is the first step to recovery.

I must say that the point of this exercise was NOT to show the utter disaster of my time management skills (although that was a healthy side-effect). My coach was really trying to help me figure out my pastoral role. Was I doing the things I was hired to do, or could these things be done by someone else?

It was really easy for me to rationalize it out from day to day and say, "I'll just do it myself. I want it done right. I don't have time to train anyone, anyway. Who else would do it?" And then I end up mailing out the weekly sermon CDs. For a year! What was I thinking?!!

Do a 1-week time log. You may be surprised at what you find. But awareness is the first step to recovery.

Working Two Dayparts

One of the things my supervising pastor taught me when I was an intern was the two daypart rule. The rule: work two out of three dayparts every day. He didn't ask me to clock in or keep a strict schedule (although he did evaluate my work to see whether or not I was being lazy). All he asked was that I worked two dayparts every weekday.

Most days I worked morning and evening. Occasionally, I would work afternoons.

I still think this is a good system. There are a lot of things a pastor has to do in the evenings - church board, school board, prayer meeting, worship practice, visitation, etc.

I've seen some (workaholic) pastors who put in a full work-day (every day) and then try to fit in full evening schedules as well - to the detriment of their families (and their sanity).

And I've seen other (workaphobic) pastors who have no set office hours, come in only when they feel like it, and remain impossible to find - to the detriment of their churches.

I really do believe that I get more done in the mornings than the afternoons (which is why I prefer a morning/evening split schedule). Sometimes I have to switch, but not very often.

Whatever you decide for your work schedule, I suggest that you write it down, share it with your church, post it prominently on your office door, and try to stick with it. There's already a weird notion that pastors only work on weekends; there's no need to reinforce the stereotype.

Tuesday is My Pastor's Date Night

My wife and I are both PKs (pastors' kids - for those of you who don't know). And both of our shiny, happy families disintegrated when our pastor dads left our pastor's wife moms. Her family split when she was six; mine finally tanked when I was in seminary.

Needless to say, we both learned a lot about pastor's families. Mostly what not to do. I'm shocked I'm a pastor. And my wife is shocked she's married to one.

So, when we were first getting serious about being in a relationship together, we put some safeguards in place to keep us from the kind of non-relationship that destroyed our parents.

One of those is date night. Ever since we've been married, we've always taken one night per week for date night. It usually means dinner out and a movie in. But sometimes it means Taco Bell and a trip to Barnes&Noble. The point is that we are intentionally making special time for each other on a weekly basis.

When we had our firstborn, it was a little harder to have date night. But as soon as he was old enough, we set up a babysitting co-op for Tuesday nights with a couple of other young families. So now we have date night 3 out of 4 Tuesdays (it's our turn to babysit the other week).

My church knows about date night. They know not to call me on Tuesday evenings. Ever. I put it on my work-schedule that I share with all of my members. And I enforce it. It makes its way into sermons (when I preach about the Sabbath, I talk about date night; it helps people see Sabbath in a relational way and reinforces my date night boundaries).

Not only is date night good for my sanity and the strength of my marriage, it's good modeling for the other families in the church.

Personal Vision Workbook - 10. Accountability

The following is from my Personal Vision Workbook. Read the introduction and legal stuff.

--------------------

God never intended us to be loners. We need others to pray for us, encourage us, challenge us, and keep us honest. That’s why Jesus sent out the disciples two-by-two. That’s why Paul had Silas and Moses had Aaron.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” - Proverbs 27:17

While Proverbs 27:17 isn’t true about Superbowl parties, it is true about accountability relationships. When we ask someone to keep us accountable, God uses that relationship to make us better than we could ever become by ourselves.

New Year’s resolutions are 10 times more likely to fail if you haven’t asked someone to keep you accountable.

Note: Christian accountability relationships should be male-male and female-female.

Ask God to lead you to the right accountability partner.

Brainstorm at least 3 people you know who can keep a secret:

1.
2.
3.

Choose one and ask if they are willing to keep you accountable.

Give them a copy of your access areas [link], obedience areas [link], and your concrete action steps [link].

Meet for about an hour at least once per month for accountability.

I would love to know how God has used this vision process in your life. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you've discovered.

Personal Vision Workbook - 2. Giving God Access

The following is from my Personal Vision Workbook. Read the introduction and legal stuff.

--------------------

God will not force His way into our lives. He will only come in as we intentionally invite Him. He can only work in the areas of our lives where we give Him access.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” - Revelation 3:20

Jesus is knocking, patiently waiting for us to give Him access.

God gains access to our lives whenever we open our hearts to Him in prayer. If you pray through your finances and spending, you are giving God access to show you His vision for handling your money. If you don’t talk to Him about it, He’s not going to force His way in.

Think through what you do and think in a typical day (or week).
What areas do you need to talk to God about, so He can have access in those parts of your life?

Schedule at least 20 minutes of prayer (access) time every day until you complete the vision process.
When will you do it? Write it down and tell someone.

Listening to God is just as important as praying. Fasting is useful for intentionally listening for God.
Consider turning off all excess noise for a week or two. Let leisure time become listening time.
How will you listen? Write it down and tell someone.


Here's a sample list of possible access areas:

Money, Television, Food, Parenting, Internet, Spouse, Sex, Work, Friendships, Honesty, Emotions, Habits, Bible Study, Spirituality, Attitude, Health, Discipline, Forgiveness, Lust, Plans, Drugs, Trust, Music, etc.