What's Best Next

Tim Keller on Discerning Your Calling

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The other day I linked to Michael Horton’s article on discerning your calling. Tim Keller also has a very helpful article on that as well (online as a pdf).

You’ll notice these articles are in agreement with the same basic three questions to consider, but they complement one another in a helpful way.

Here’s the summary from the end of Keller’s article:

Your vocation is a part of God’s work in the world, and God gives you resources for serving the human community. These factors can help you identify your calling.

Affinity—“Look out.”
Affinity is the normal, existential/priestly way to discern call. What people needs do I vibrate to?

Ability—“Look in.”
Ability is the normal, rational/prophetic way to discern call. What am I good at doing?

Opportunity—“Look up.”
Opportunity is the normal, organizational/kingly way to discern call. What do the leaders/my friends believe is the most strategic kingdom need?

Your life is not a series of random events. Your family background, education, and life experiences—even the most painful ones—all equip you to do some work that no one else can do. “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do“ (Eph. 2:10).

(HT: Resurgence)

Two Verses on the Value of Secular Thinking

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Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Proverbs 13:10: “By insolence comes nothing but strife, but with those who take advice is wisdom.”

The Bible speaks highly of listening to advice and wise counsel. Now, when you are reading a book on a subject like management — take, for example, Marcus Buckingham’s First, Break on Rules — that talks about management based on research but isn’t seeking to expound the Bible, what are you doing?

You are seeking advice. Which, according to these verses, is a good thing.

By speaking of “advice,” these verses clearly have in view something other than biblical teaching. It surely includes that — such as when a friend gives you counsel based on the Scriptures. But there is also another category of advice that consists of just good wisdom. We experience this all the time.

When a plumber says “don’t put peanut shells down the garbage disposal,” you won’t find that in the Bible, but it’s good advice. When doctors say “don’t give A negative blood to someone with O plus blood,” that’s a form of advice — potentially life saving advice, actually (and, knowing this reality, it would be unethical to do otherwise).

So also when business thinkers and others do research on management and leadership and write about what is effective and what isn’t, and what serves people and what doesn’t, it falls into the category of advice. And the Bible affirms the value of listening to good advice.

So the best thinking on leadership and management, even if it comes from thinkers that aren’t writing from an explicitly Christian point of view, is still useful and important.

The Bible speaks highly of seeking out advice. And since advice, by definition, includes non-inspired general wisdom, in affirming the value of advice, the Bible is also affirming the thinking and research of extra biblical sources about matters of work and life.

5 Principles for Starting a Presentation Well

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These are from the notes I took from an article by Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die):

  1. Don’t preamble—parachute in.
  2. “The first mission of a presentation is to grab attention.”
  3. A preamble is a laborious overview of what’s going to be covered. Don’t start with this. Don’t follow the “tell them what you’re gonna tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” Steve Jobs doesn’t present this way. Ronald Reagan didn’t present this way.
  4. Example: Rebecca Fuller presenting on tactile museum exhibits. She parachuted in by shutting off the lights and saying “this is what it’s like for a blind person in most museums.” It wouldn’t have improved here presentation to say “today I’m going to give you an overview of the challenges faced by the visually impaired in most museums.”
  5. “If you bring us face to face with the problem, we don’t need a lot of upfront hand-holding.”

The most important point: parachute it. “Telling them what you’re going to tell them” usually reduces interest.

If You Wait for Favorable Conditions, You Will Never Act

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Lewis:

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come (from “Learning in Wartime,” in The Weight of Glory, 50).

Ecclesiastes 11:4:

He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

The Best Kind of Prosperity

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Spurgeon, from Counsel For Christian Workers:

Let no man be deceived with the idea that if he carries out the right, by God’s grace he will prosper in this world as the consequence. It is very likely that, for a time at least, his conscientiousness will stand in the way of his prosperity.

God does not invariably make the doing of the right to be the means of pecuniary gain to us. On the contrary, it frequently happens that for a time men are great losers by their obedience to Christ.

But the Scripture always speaks as to the long run; it sums up the whole of life [that is, including eternal life] — there it promises true riches. If thou wouldst prosper, keep close to the Word of God, and to they conscience, and thou shalt have the best prosperity.

For Writers (And Everyone Else): 12 Tips on Overcoming Procrastination

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These are from my notes on writing and are pulled from a bunch of books I read last summer. While the focus is how to overcome procrastination in writing, these principles can easily be adapted to be applicable for anyone, in about any context:

  1. “Almost all writers procrastinate.”
  2. Turn it into rehearsal.
  3. Lower your standards. Writers block is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance. Get rid of the standards that inhibit you, write, then raise your standards during revision.
  4. Just start typing.
  5. Adopt a daily routine. “Fluent writers prefer mornings.”
  6. Draft sooner. Avoid over research, which makes writing seem tougher. Write earlier in the process so you discover the information you need.
  7. Discount nothing.
  8. Limit self criticism in early drafts.
  9. Rewrite.
  10. Set the table (= pull everything together and get things ready; make short plan).
  11. Find a helper.
  12. Keep a daily record of accomplishment.

When you Get Stuck

  1. Just start writing. “Writing is the means to achieving the clarity of what you should write.”
  2. It’s OK if you just produce a few pages a day for the first several weeks. Things will snowball if you get momentum.

How to Discover Your Calling

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A great article by Mike Horton on discovering your calling. Here’s a key point:

God does give us the desires of our hearts. He is not out to get us, or to make us wander the vocational wilderness forever. Sometimes we are “dumped” into short-term vocations which to us seem utterly meaningless and yet in some way providentially equip us with a skill which will be vital in our as yet unknown calling in life. We just cannot figure out God’s secret plan, but we can trust it and learn from natural as well as biblical sources how we might better discern our calling.

The questions, What are your skills?, What do you really enjoy?, What would get you up on Monday morning?, are in the realm of nature. Super-spirituality may look down on such mundane questions and try to steal into God’s secret chamber, but biblical piety is content to leaf through the book of nature. God has created us a certain way, given us certain habits, skills, longings, and drives.

Sometimes we over-spiritualize things and think God doesn’t care about whether we are in a role that is a good fit, or that considering our own desires and giftings in choosing what to do is somehow unspiritual.

Not true. Sometimes God will have us doing something that is not the best fit, but seeking the right fit is a good — and spiritual — thing to do. It is a matter of good stewardship to seek the best way to maximize the gifts, skills, and interests that he has given us.

All Moral Knowledge and Business Skill Are From God

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Jonathan Edwards, in A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul:

All Moral Knowledge and business Skill from God
God is the author of all knowledge and understanding whatsoever. He is the author of the knowledge that is obtained by human learning: he is the author of all moral prudence, and of the knowledge and skill that men have in their secular business. Thus it is said of all in Israel that were wise-hearted, and skilled in embroidering, that God had filled them with the spirit of wisdom, Exodus 28:3.

Yet Flesh and Blood Reveals It
God is the author of such knowledge; but yet not so but that flesh and blood reveals it. Mortal men are capable of imparting the knowledge of human arts and sciences, and skill in temporal affairs. God is the author of such knowledge by those means: flesh and blood is employed as the mediate or second cause of it; he conveys it by the power and influence of natural means.

This is not Edward’s main point in the sermon — his main point is that apprehension of the truth of the Gospel and the beauty of Christ is given immediately by God (illuminating Scripture), whereas he uses means to bring about moral knowledge and skill.

But this is still a helpful and important point: All knowledge, including your knowledge of how to do your job and be effective in it, ultimate comes from God.

Mind Like Water?

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Mind like water is one of the main metaphors utilized by GTD. I’m not so sure, however, that it’s actually a good or biblical state of mind.

Note, for example, Tim Chester’s excellent description of the Christian’s prayer life in Total Church:

Calvin however, says a “sweet and perfect repose” is not the characteristic of the spiritually advanced but simply of those whose “affairs are flowing to their liking.” “For the stains,” he continues, “the occasion that best stimulates them to call upon God is when, distressed by their own need, they are troubled by the greatest unrest, and are almost driven out of their senses, until faith opportunely comes to their relief” (Institutes 3.20.11).

Biblical spirituality is not a spirituality of silence; it is a spirituality of passionate petition. If we are engaged with the world around us, we will care about that world. We will be passionate about people’s needs, our holiness, and God’s glory. We will not be still in prayer. We will cry out for mercy with a holy violence. If we are silent, it will be because in our distress, words have failed us. This is the spirituality of the psalms—a spirituality in which all of our emotions are engaged.

Filed Under: GTD

4 Steps to Good Decision Making

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I would like to address decision-making in my book, as that is a key part of getting things done, but there isn’t space.

So, I’m posting here the four steps to making effective decisions that I would have developed a bit in the book. They are:

  1. Understand the objectives
  2. Consider the alternatives
  3. Consider risk
  4. Decide

Very basic, to be sure. But it is surprising how often we go into important decisions haphazardly, without taking an intentional (albeit simple) approach.