Using Email Intervals to Save Your Sanity
Mike Anderson has a good post from a while back on how email intervals can save you from insanity. He gives good advice with some unique twists. Also, his statement of the problem is great:
Problem: Email is unrelenting, and when you tend to your inbox—people just reply back to you more quickly. Email will take over your life if you let it. Here’s how I fought back.
What You May Not Have Known About William Carey
William Carey arrived in India in 1793 as a missionary. But what you might not know is the true scope of his work, all done for the sake of the gospel and glory of God. The back cover of The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture brings this out:
He was an industrialist. An economist. A medical humanitarian. A media pioneer. An educator. A moral reformer. A botanist. And a Christian missionary.
And he did more for the transformation of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than any other individual before or since.
It goes on:
Many know of William Carey. Some know about the specifics of his work and ministry. But few understand the profound contemporary significance of his life. Few realize how much we owe the increasing globalization of Christianity to the silent revolution he initiated. Fewer still are aware of his legacy of sensitivity to the variety of issues confronting true gospel witness in any culture.
[Carey's example] is a charge to all Christians to respond in kind within our own cultures, and to use Carey’s example as our model for taking the light of the gospel into every corner of society. If we follow in his footsteps, not only will lives be bettered this side of heaven, but hearts will be changed for eternity — and entire cultures transformed for Christ.
Get in the Zone Through Time Blocking
Another Fast Company column by Gina Trapani. Here are the first two paragraphs:
In an interruption-driven culture, it’s too easy to let everyone else decide where your attention goes and how to spend your next 10 minutes. If you jump every time your phone rings, a new email arrives, your Blackberry buzzes, or someone stops by your desk, you’re undermining your most important work and costing your company money. A recent study shows that unnecessary interruptions costs the U.S. economy $650 billion dollars in lost productivity per year.
Being available to your boss and co-workers is part of your job. But the most creative and important work you do requires total focus and attention for an extended period of time. Your brain needs at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to dive in, concentrate on one thing, and get into the zone where you’re truly focused and doing your best work. Time blocking is a technique that sets the stage for that to happen.
Stop Multitasking and Start Doing One Thing Well
Gina Trapani, founding editor of Lifehacker, has a recent column in Fast Company on multitasking.
ESV on iPhone Now Available
From the Crossway blog:
For the first time, read the ESV Bible on your iPhone or iPod Touch, with or without an internet connection — for free. Record your own notes, highlight verses, save favorites, and share with friends. Please take a look at the ESV App and tell us what you think.
John Calvin on the Common Good
“It is an error to think that those who flee worldly affairs and engage in contemplation are leading an angelic life… We know that men were created to busy themselves with labor and that no sacrifice is more pleasing to God than when each one attends to his calling and studies well to live for the common good.” John Calvin
Getting Things Done Quick Review and Summary
Drew Buell has posted a good, brief review of Getting Things Done, which summarizes the system into four very good points.
Creators vs. Reactors
A good word from Jim Collins, written during the economic recession of 2001-2002 but always applicable (and to many arenas of life), on being one who creates rather than one who merely reacts:
Here’s the essential truth of our current situation: The real problem has stayed the same, regardless of the direction of the market. First we went through a spiraling-up phase, and people lost their bearings as they got caught up in the great melee of opportunity. Now we’re in a downward spiral, and people have lost their bearings in a scramble of uncertainty. It’s the exact same pattern in reverse: people merely reacting to circumstances, rather than doing anything fundamentally creative.
The distinction isn’t between a market that’s going up and a market that’s going down. It’s between people who are fundamentally creators and people who are only reactors, who take their cues from the outside world.
If you did a word search across my research materials on the greatest company builders of the past 100 years, you would find almost no mention of “competitive strategy.” Not that those builders had no strategy; they clearly did. But they did not craft their strategies principally in reaction to the competitive landscape or in response to external conditions and shocks. Without question, they kept a wary eye on the brutal facts.The fundamental drive to transform and build their companies was internal and creative. It didn’t matter whether they faced a crisis (as did Thomas J. Watson Sr. at IBM, who never resorted to layoffs in the Great Depression) or whether they faced calm (as did Walt Disney when he conceived of Disneyland). The leaders who built enduring great companies showed a creative inside-out approach rather than a reactive outside-in approach. In contrast, the mediocre company leaders displayed a pattern of lurching and thrashing, running about in frantic reaction to threats and opportunities.
If I could bring all of my students back into the classroom, I would remind them of David Packard’s admonition that in the long run, “more companies die of indigestion than starvation.” If a company focuses on making creative contributions that fall in the middle of three intersecting circles—what it is passionate about, what it can be the best in the world at, and what best drives a sustained profitable economic engine—then growth will likely follow.
Why Acknowledging Mistakes Increases Trust
From What Would Google Do?:
We are ashamed to make mistakes — as well we should be, yes? It’s our job to get things right, right? So when we make mistakes our instinct is to shrink into a ball and wish them away. Correcting errors, though necessary, is embarrassing.
But the truth about truth itself is counterintuitive: Corrections do not diminish credibility. Corrections enhance credibility. Standing up and admitting your errors makes you more believable; it gives your audience faith that you will right your future wrongs.
When companies apologize for bad performance — as JetBlue did after keeping passengers on tarmacs for hours — that tells us that they know their performance wasn’t up to their standard, and we have a better idea of the standard we should expect.
Also: “Being willing to be wrong is key to innovation.”
A Look Inside RC Sproul’s Office
HT: Alex Chediak
John Piper on How He Remembers What He Reads
John Piper describes his approach to remembering the things he reads. It comes down to underlining, commenting in the margin, and indexing — and for books that really strike him, writing a page or two in his journal.
John Piper on How He Decides What Books to Read
This is helpful, from the Desiring God site.
Inside Facebook’s Headquarters
A slide show from Fast Company.
Two Books I’m Looking Forward To Reading
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
The Hierarcy of Value
Also from Linchpin, Godin illustrates the “hierarchy of value.” It’s done visually in a way that won’t replicate well in the same way here, but the levels are:
- Lift
- Hunt
- Grow
- Produce
- Sell
- Connect
- Create/invent
He notes:”Lots of people can lift. That’s not paying off anymore. A few people can sell. Almost no one puts in the work to create or invent. Up to you.”
Mediocrity and the Web
From Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?:
The Internet has raised the bar because it’s so easy for word to spread about great stuff. There’s more junk than ever before, more lousy writing, more pointless products. But this abundance of trash is overwhelmed by the market’s ability to distribute news about the great stuff.
Of course, mediocrity isn’t going to go away. Yesterday’s remarkable is today’s really good and tomorrow’s mediocre.
Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.
Note: Godin isn’t using “really good” in a positive sense in that last line. His point is: don’t go for really good. Go for remarkable.
And so the problem in being mediocre is not that you failed at being really good. It’s that you were aiming at being really good in the first place, instead of aiming at being remarkable.
(Side note: remarkable doesn’t necessarily mean flawless. It means “worth remarking on.” So doing something remarkable is not necessarily to be confused with a perfectionistic quest.)
Study: Employees With Flexible Hours Work Harder, More Satisfied
Here.
Yes
“Every great accomplishment of mankind has been preceded by an extended period, often over many years, of concentrated effort.”
- Earl Nightingale
Keith Ferrazzi’s TED Report
Keith Ferrazzi posts some quick notes from a few talks at this year’s TED, which is going on now.
Review of Linchpin
Glenn Brooke has a good review of Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin.
Classic Business Writing Blunders
This is a helpful, short video on the top 5 business writing blunders. (Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a way to embed it.)
Seth Godin on When to Quit
Google’s Two-Front War with Apple and Facebook
A good look at current and upcoming developments by Scoble. Here’s the first sentence:
I’ve now heard from three separate Google employees that Google will release a news feed that will compete with Facebook and Twitter.
Tom Peters: Work on Your Writing!
A good word from Tom Peters:
(How does this harmonize with my linking last week to Penelope Trunk’s post on not making a big deal out of typos on blogs? Peters is addressing a larger and more macro issue — he’s not talking about typos. However, eliminating typos would be a sub-set, for sure, of good writing.
Further, Trunk wasn’t saying that lots of typos are good or that we shouldn’t care about them at all; her point in general was that in the medium of blogging and the press for time that comes from it being avocational for most, an occasional typo isn’t such a big deal.)
HT: BNET
The Biggest Sin in Your Church
A recent post by Ed Stetzer. Here are two paragraphs from it:
If I preach about gay marriage, everybody cheers. If I preach about sin you can hear the amens ring. But those aren’t the real problems. I tell people that the biggest sin in our church is you sitting there doing nothing and still calling yourself a follower of Jesus.
…
The elephant in the evangelical room is that we’re not making disciples. People are still struggling through how to do that. We studied 2,500 Protestant church attendees and did so again a year later and the spiritual development was shocking and frustrating.
HT: Ekklesia 521
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