Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

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

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.

You do not exist in this world to get things done. You exist to glorify God by doing good to others.

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.

To be productive, you need a system. You need to build it, use it, perfect it, and rely on it. Your system needs to gain your confidence so that you can trust it to remember what needs to be remembered, to alert you to what is urgent, to direct you to what is important, and to divert you away from what is distracting.

Christian productivity is unique. Most productivity gurus will encourage you to be as selfish as you need to be, to get rid of anything that doesn’t interest or excite you. But as a Christian you know you can do things that do not perfectly fit your mission but still do them out of love for God and with a desire to glorify him.

No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good—bringing glory to God by doing good to others.

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

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.

The key to a productive and contented life is “planned neglect”—knowing what not to do and being content with saying no to truly good, sometimes fantastic, opportunities. This happens only when you realize how truly limited you are, that you must steward your little life, and that of all the best things to do on the planet, God wants you to do only a miniscule number.

There is no task in life that cannot be done for God’s glory.

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.

Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy, just like everyone else.”3 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.

If you can bring glory to God in all areas, you should bring glory to God in all areas. There is no area of your life where you have no ability to do good to others and where you have no ability to bring glory to God.

motivation gets you started, but habit keeps you going. You need to use those times of high motivation to build habits and to embed those habits in a system. That way, when motivation wanes, the system will keep you going.

Productivity—true productivity—will never be better or stronger than the foundation you build it upon.

Action: Open Todoist and create a new project called Reviews (or you can call it Coram Deo). This project will not fall into any of your areas of responsibility, but will exist alongside them. Within the project add 6 tasks: [Get Focused] Pray [Get Clear] Bring: Task Inbox to 0 [Get Current] Check: Calendar & Alerts [Get Current] Check: Waiting for [Get Current] Check: Forecast for Next 7 days [Get Going] Choose: Today’s top tasks Set each task to repeat every day at or before the time you begin your workday. You can do so by clicking on the task and, where you see the words “no due date,” simply type “every day at 6 am” or “daily at 9 am.

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.

In those interruptions you will face the temptation to react with anger or despair. But as a Christian who trusts in God’s utter and absolute sovereignty over this world and all its affairs, you can react with joy, even when it seems impossible. God has his ways and his purposes, and it is futile to rebel against them. C.S. Lewis says this in his inimitable way: The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.

An understanding of productivity needs to begin with an understanding of the reason you exist. Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you plan nothing, it should come as no great surprise when you accomplish nothing.

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.

Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don’t stop every now and again to look at the “big picture,” you’re going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what’s thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can’t over-emphasize the importance of this discipline.

A home for everything, and like goes with like....If you consistently apply [this principle] all over your life, your life will be and remain organized.

If you are a student and apply yourself to your studies, you are doing a good work that brings glory to God, because what you learn can and will be used someday to benefit other people. If