On Writing A Book
I mentioned last week that I’m working on a book on productivity, and that I’d give more details soon. Here’s a 40,000 foot, very rough, initial snapshot.
Some people might ask, “another book on productivity?” Rest assured, I’m not interested in repeating cliches. I’ll be making connections that I don’t see other people making, but which I think are absolutely necessary to how we think about productivity.
I want to do two things in this book. First, I want to give the theological basis for productivity. The question I’m asking is “how should we think about productivity as Christians?” There are some very surprising things here. More specifically, I’m going to mine the relationship between productivity and the gospel, so that we can have a gospel-oriented approach to our productivity. Believe me, this matters (and I’ll be showing why).
After giving the theological foundations for how to think about productivity, I’m then going to give a practical, simple approach to managing your life and work effectively. In particular, I’m going to try to present an overall approach that solves some of the snags that you run into with both GTD and Franklin-Covey (the two most well-known approaches to productivity).
Both of those approaches are fantastically helpful. But both have a few snags that can easily lead you to spend more time than you ought to managing your system rather than actually getting things done or just taking time to think and be with people. Maybe these snags flow from how we use them (or how I have used them!) or the way technology has increased our pace in just the last few years, but regardless, I think that we have need now for an updated approach (that is kept as simple as possible).
I’ll be covering some of the highlights of this in my workshop this fall at the Desiring God National Conference. You can glean part of my perspective from my title there: Zealous for Good Works: Rethinking Productivity in Light of Justification by Faith Alone.
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About Matt Perman
Follower of Christ. Husband of one, father of three. Former director of strategy at Desiring God. This blog exists to help equip Christians in good works, because that's what productivity is really about.
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I’m really excited about this book. Glad you’ll be approaching it from an angle rooted in deep faith and serious concern.
Who’s publishing it? What’s the title? (Only if you want to share these answers of course!)
Praying!
This sounds super interesting. Really looking forward to reading it!
I heard you lay out some initial thoughts on the Tim Challies/David Murray podcast, and I have to say that I’m very eager to see this book! As you mention in your penultimate paragraph, it’s so easy to spend more time /on/ your system than /using/ your system. Additionally, the temptation to depend on our good works (I checked off 8/10 boxes today!) feels like a constant assault to me.
May God bless your thinking and writing on this topic.
Just saw this site that might be of use to you.
http://www.trueventures.com/blog/2010/08/12/an-entrepreneurs-guide-to-self-management/
[...] at What’s Best Next, Matt Perman gives a snapshot of the book he is working on. It also serves as a preview of what he [...]
I am very much looking forward to this book. I think it’s much needed.
Will your talk at the DG Conference be broadcast live or posted later?
Bryan: I’m talking to several publishers but haven’t finalized the contract yet.
Scott: I’m pretty sure that they aren’t recording the seminars, although I’m not sure.
Matt: That’s to bad, I would have liked to seen your talk.