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John Piper on Spiritual Leadership

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John Piper has a very helpful but often overlooked article from 1995 called The Marks of a Spiritual Leader. I highly recommend it. Here are three things that stand out from the article.

First, Piper gives a very helpful definition of spiritual leadership, which differs in some ways from leadership in general:

I define spiritual leadership as knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to use God’s methods to get them there in reliance on God’s power. The answer to where God wants people to be is in a spiritual condition and in a lifestyle that display his glory and honor his name. Therefore, the goal of spiritual leadership is that people come to know God and to glorify him in all that they do. Spiritual leadership is aimed not so much at directing people as it is at changing people. If we would be the kind of leaders we ought to be, we must make it our aim to develop persons rather than dictate plans. You can get people to do what you want, but if they don’t change in their heart you have not led them spiritually. You have not taken them to where God wants them to be.

Second, Piper spends the rest of the paper outlining the characteristics a person must have in order to be a spiritual leader “who excels both in the quality of his direction and the numbers of people who follow him.” He divides these characteristics into an inner circle and an outer circle:

The inner circle of spiritual leadership is that sequence of events in the human soul that must happen if anyone is to get to first base in spiritual leadership. These are the absolute bare essentials. They are things that all Christians must attain in some degree, and when they are attained with high fervor and deep conviction they very often lead one into strong leadership. In the outer circle are qualities that characterize both spiritual and non-spiritual leaders.

Third, and among other things, Piper has a great discussion of the outer circle characteristics. Below is the list of characteristics he discusses. I especially love the emphasis on optimism, energy, hard thinking, dreaming, and decisiveness.

  1. Restless
  2. Optimistic
  3. Intense
  4. Self-controlled
  5. Thick-skinned
  6. Energetic
  7. A hard thinker
  8. Articulate
  9. Able to teach
  10. A good judge of character
  11. Tactful
  12. Theologically oriented
  13. A dreamer
  14. Organized and efficient
  15. Decisive
  16. Perseverant
  17. A lover
  18. Restful

How GTD Can Help Keep Your Basement From Flooding

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Last Thursday or so, we had about four inches of rain. I was in my basement Friday morning and didn’t notice anything. On Saturday morning, however, I went down there to get something, only to find that the carpet was saturated with water. It turns out that our sump pump had failed, creating a big mess.

Could GTD have helped keep this from happening? Well, it provides a critical tool I’m going to use to help keep this from happening again.

Before this happened, I never gave much thought to the life expectancy of a sump pump. And our sump pump gave out earlier than would have been expected, anyway. But the reality is, every sump pump will eventually fail. The thing is, you don’t want to wait for it to fail to find out, because that means a basement full of water.

So it makes sense to replace your sump pump on a regular basis. For me, there’s a big insight right there: If you have a sump pump, you need to have it on your agenda to replace that sump pump when it starts to get old. That’s a simple concept, but it had simply never occurred to me before.

But how do you remember to do that? That’s the challenge. You could just trust your brain to somehow randomly bring it to mind every few years or so that it’s time to change your sump pump.

But I don’t really want my sump pump to take up even that much thought. I don’t want to have to program it into my head to pause every few years and say to myself, “is my sump pump getting to old?” I’d rather automate everything I can. It’s also less likely that I’ll totally blank it out since, after all, 7 years is a long time. And the consequences of forgetting can be large.

Enter the tickler file (or “action calendar,” which I call it because I keep it electronically). An action calendar is simply a list of repeating tasks that you keep in your task management software (whether Outlook, OmniFocus, Things, Remember the Milk, or whatever). You set each task to repeat at whatever interval you need. Every day or week (depending on how many tasks you have in there), you review it to see what needs to be taken care of.

In my action calendar I’m just going to create a repeating task for every 7 years to replace my sump pump. That way, before the pump gets to the point of failure (unless it breaks before it’s time — which is entirely possible!), it will be replaced. And I don’t have to think about it otherwise, because the reminder will come up automatically when it’s time.

Here’s the interesting thing: There are all sorts of things like this you need to keep track of as an adult, and they occur on both short-term and very long-term intervals. Things like: refill the salt in the water softener, change the furnace filter, change smoke detector batteries, keep up with the kids’ immunizations, renew your tetanus shot (every 10 years), renew your passport (every 10 years), and so forth.

I used to think that there was some big mystery to remembering these things. That you just had to trust that they would come to mind at the right time. But there is no mystery to it. If you have a tickler file (action calendar), remembering when you need to change the furnace filter or update your tetanus shot or change your sump pump simply becomes a matter of creating a repeating task. That gets it off your mind, and you can trust that you’ll see it when you need to.

And it could save you a lot of hassle, also.

Filed Under: GTD

Shifting into Surge Mode

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I agree entirely with the following section from Time Tactics of Very Successful People:

High achievers from many different fields speak of being able to regulate their intensity — of being able to phase in and out of an intense state. Some people call this intense state the “surge mode.”

Using the surge mode is a bit like using a passing gear in a car. Normally, when you’re driving, you don’t give a lot of conscious thought to putting your foot on the accelerator or on the brake. But sometimes you require an extra burst of power to get out of one lane and into another Then you need extra power, and you floor it. That’s what surge mode is.

There are may illustrations of high achievers using the surge mode. Mozart preferred to write music for an hour or so every morning when he got up. But when a piece was demanded, he would work day and night without sleep, sometimes seemingly mesmerized by the task.

Isaac Newton made three of his greatest discoveries during two years of virtually uninterrupted thought, study, and experimentation. Mark Twain wrote six of his best books — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Rough It, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Life on the Mississippi, and The Prince and the Pauper — during only two summers. He would write an entire day at a time, day after day. His daughter, Claire, remembers that he would come out in a white linen suit, with a pile of pads of paper under his arm. He would joke with his family and then head off toward the study. There he would spend the entire day, sometimes eating only one meal.

The surge mode is especially important among creative people, such as scientists, writers musicians, and designers. They will gather all the parts of the project together — the notes, the rough ideas, the books the research, the sketches — and spread it all before them on a desk or table. Then they dive in and don’t stop until a major part or sometimes all of the project is done.

It is really much more efficient to do huge chunks of work at a time than it is to start and stop a hundred times. The quality of the finished product is better too because it is more cohesive and has fewer seems.

This is spot on, in my view. I have found that shifting into a period of surge mode has been critical to every large endeavor I’ve sought to accomplish. I recognize that this concept may not be for everyone. But if you are among those who incline to this approach when you have high-impact, large, and important initiatives, you have a very powerful tool at your disposal. Use it.

Notes on Workspace Organization

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These are my notes from a few years ago on organizing your workspace. They reflect a combination of points from Organizing for Dummies, Getting Things Done, and my own thoughts.

More detail could be given, but in the meantime they outline the big picture. I especially find helpful the observation that all of the permanent stuff you might have at your desk falls into four categories: supplies, equipment, reference, and decoration.

After that, the concept of centers is especially  useful (although I currently do things a bit differently than what is represented in these notes).

Stuff At Your Desk

Permanent Stuff:

  • Supplies: In drawers. Small stocks (only what need). Extras in supply room.
  • Reference: File cabinets, bookshelves.
  • Decoration: On desk, walls; keep limited.
  • Equipment: On desk if used more than once per day; else, drawers.

Transient Stuff:

  • Input to be processed: In box
  • Current work items
  • [If not electronic] Action reminders: Calendar, next action lists, project lists
  • [If desired; I think these go best in a file drawer at your desk] Project support materials: Active projects file; planner.

Work Centers At Your Desk

Desktop centers:

  • Phone center
  • Computer center
  • Capture tool center or planner center [if you use a paper tool for either]
  • Work center

Drawer centers:

  • Pen/pencil/related supplies center
  • Mailing/finance center (if needed)
  • Stapler/filing center

File Centers [in file drawers]:

  • Pending
  • Projects
  • Operations
  • Reference
  • Archive

Basic Principles

  1. Like with like. One spot for all books. All filing cabinets together. Create centers for different tasks by grouping everything necessary for them together.
  2. Purge. All things that are unused or ill-suited should be tossed.
  3. Access. Goal is fingertip management. Use an L, U, or parallel shape for your desk. U is best, as it allows easiest access to the most desk space and equipment. Move infrequently used equipment, reference materials, and supplies to another room.
  4. Contain: Keep files in cabinets, books on shelves, and supplies in drawers.
  5. Evaluate: How do you feel? Does the work flow?
  6. The desk is a place to do work. Use REMOVE to reduce clutter and arrange desk properly.
    1. Reduce distractions.
    2. Everyday use (if not, drawers).
    3. Preferred side (all things go on right side if you are right handed; phone is one exception–it goes on opposite side).
    4. Organize together: Create work centers for phone, computer, time, etc. Phone center should include phone, message pad, pen nearby. Good for capturing thoughts and tossing into in-box as well.
    5. Empty the center (so you can work).
  7. Supplies are for the drawers. Group like things together. Turn each drawer into a work center: Central is pen/pencil; others are mailing/finance and stapler/filing.

The Paradox of Choice and the Meaning of Freedom

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My wife has been enjoying the book The Paradox of Choice and I’m looking forward to reading it as well. The concept is simple: having more choices doesn’t always lead to more happiness. Often, it leads to paralyzed decision-making and discontent.

Here is the author’s presentation recently at TED, which gives a great summary of his key concepts:

I have one disagreement with Barry Schwartz in the video. He states at the beginning that maximizing individual freedom is a central tenet of western civilization, and that “the way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The more choice that they have, the more freedom they have, and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have.”

I agree that maximizing individual freedom is a central tenet of Western civilization, but I think he has slightly misstated things thing when he says that this entails the idea that “the way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice.”

Many people believe that, probably. But that kind of freedom is not at the heart of Western civilization.

For example, the founders of this nation serve as a good representation, I would contend, of what the tenet of freedom means when it comes to the guiding principles of Western thought. And I don’t think that they saw the essence of freedom as maximizing choice.

The essence of freedom that was captured in the American Revolution and which, I would argue, is at the heart of Western society is rather the right to make your own decisions. The number of choices that you have is not ultimately relevant here. The main idea is that you get to choose, not the government or someone else.

You don’t need someone to provide you with a lot of options in order to be “free” in this sense. It’s about choosing your own path and making your own decision — and, if you think you don’t have enough options, finding a way and possibly creating more options yourself.

That’s the view of freedom that is at the heart of Western society. Schwartz is taking aim at another view of freedom — a very common one, and perhaps one that is pervasive and dominant at this current juncture in history and going back a generation or two, but not one that should be characterized as central to Western civilization per se.

The view of freedom that Schwartz is taking aim at here, which so values maximizing options, is in part behind a recent mutation of the original Western view of freedom. This mutation holds that if you don’t have health care, you aren’t free, or that if you don’t earn a “living wage,” you aren’t free, because both things limit your options. It is then implied that the government ought to provide these things for people, “in the name of freedom.”

Schwartz of course isn’t discussing that mutation on the concept of freedom. But I think it goes to show the importance of getting this term correct.

To conclude: I’m not against having lots of options; I just want to point out that the value of maximizing individual freedom does not depend upon the number of options you have. And it certain does not entail that we have a duty to maximize people’s options. Rather, it simply entails that we let people make their own decisions. This includes, of course, the decision to generate more options — as well as the decision, which Schwartz does a good job contending for, not to always seek out a wide range of options.

Doubling Your Time

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A few years ago I heard someone say: “Every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two, and every hour of work before noon is worth two.”

That’s a pretty good principle in general. It would need to be nuanced, of course, when it comes to those who are naturally most productive late at night. But as a general statement, it points to the high productive value of making the most of the morning.

Although maybe you could have the best of both worlds. If you went to bed at 9 pm, you’d have six hours of sleep by midnight and could then get up, ready to attack the day…

When Tactics Drown Out Strategy

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Seth Godin had an excellent post a few days ago on tactics drowning out strategy. I find it especially relevant because (1) my role is “director of strategy” and (2) I’m spending the entire day today on strategy (which, at this point at least, I try to do every Thursday — and as a result have to say no to a lot of good tactical stuff.)

New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don’t need as much approval and support to launch them.

As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita’s candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don’t feel confident outlining one unless we’re sure it’s going to work. And the ‘work’ part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, “I’m going to post this.” If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

“Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time” is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy… and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.

The next time you find yourself spending 8 hours on tactics and five minutes refining your strategy, you’ll understand what’s going on.

A lot of people don’t get this. The pressure is to simply “perform,” and time spent on strategy is looked at as slowing you down and wasting your time.

Others think that strategy just comes naturally if there are smart people on your team, so it should never take more than a few minutes of thought. Whenever someone says “why can’t you see that? It’s obvious!” it’s often an indication that, no matter how smart they are, they don’t have a clue. There’s always a twist. Almost always, that is.

Perhaps most significantly, there is the false idea out there that thinking you should have a strategy somehow implies that you also think you can somehow know the future. But it doesn’t imply that. In large measure, you are strategizing for the unknown. Strategizing because of the unknown.

Thoughts on Daily To Do Lists

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An interesting dilemma in blogging (at least for me) is the balance between posts that reflect a more settled position on things and posts that capture my in-process, very-much-in-development, top-of-mind reflections on various things. I think most of my posts fall into the former category.

This one falls into the latter category: a few random thoughts on daily to-do lists that aren’t necessarily settled positions, but reflect some tentative observations. So, take it in that light.

Here’s the issue: In Getting Things Done, David Allen says that GTD means “no more daily to-do lists.” (Since these are just rough thoughts, I won’t look up the page number.) Instead, you manage your day from an inventory of all of your next actions, most of which have “as soon as possible” status but which also includes “even the most time-sensitive actions.”

An inventory of non-scheduled, “as soon as possible” stuff is fine. But I have found that not having a daily list in addition to that is fantastically frustrating and unworkable for me. (I’d like to put that in stronger terms, but might regret it.)

As you know, I highly recommend Getting Things Done and find Allen’s approach very helpful and worthwhile. But I do think that some aspects of the approach need to be tweaked a bit, at least for me (and I think, probably, others).

Allen’s mindset on these things seems to be “if that works for you, go for it.” So, while there is an important core to GTD, it is also very adaptable and flexible. Thus, although my thoughts here are probably outside of conventional GTD wisdom, I don’t think that they are contrary to the spirit of the approach.

With that in mind: Some reasons I find it unworkable not to have some type of a daily to-do list are as follows.

Pacing

I find it impossible to pace myself without some version of a daily to-do list. I have found that there is no way to know when I am “done” for the day without some type of daily list, given that there are always more actions you can do.

Deadlines

I find it more complicated than it needs to be to keep up with deadlines without some version of a daily-to-do list. This is a corollary to not being able to pace myself without one.

The fact is that if I have 4 larger projects that need to be done over the next two weeks, I will not be able to focus my progress on those projects if I just let their next actions remain in a set of “as soon as possible” next actions. Keeping them in that kind of list gives them equal weight with the less time-sensitive actions. But they don’t have equal weight.

And the reality is that my intuition does not function to make me always pick those time-sensitive actions out of the mix of all the others at the right time. Instead, I find that my tendency is to want to get rid of the smaller actions because they feel like they are “clogging things up.” Then more smaller things come up (I think Merlin Mann calls these “mosquito tasks”), creating a cycle of frustration.

Hence, because of the role that systems play in influencing behavior even contrary to the best intentions, I’ve found that I need to bake it right into my productivity system to focus my attention on the most important and/or time-sensitive actions.

The Ambiguity in Truly Defining What Must Be Done Today

David Allen writes that “if there’s something on a daily to-do list that doesn’t absolutely have to get done that day, it will dilute the emphasis on the things that truly do.”

It seems to me this concept, however, very quickly runs into unhelpful ambiguity: How do you define what truly has to be done today?

Is it defined by what your boss tells you that you have to do? By deadlines others have set and want you to comply with? By contextual realities (Fred is going out of town Saturday, so you have to call him on Friday)?

I think the reality is that there are very few things that absolutely have to be done on any given day. But there are many things which, if not done this week, will simply make your life a lot more complicated and put you behind on your projects. Hence, if you only put on your calendar (or a daily to-do list) things that absolutely have to get done that day, you will get out of step with things. And you might find that all of a sudden, you have a large number of actions that “suddenly” need to get done today — but now you don’t have enough space in the day to do them.

Further, if it is OK to regard action A as something that has to be done today because someone else (such as your boss or manager) said it needs to be done by that time, why isn’t the fact that you yourself simply want something done today enough of a reason as well?

In other words, I think that more important than deadlines other people give us are the time frames that we want to meet simply because we want to. Or, to put it differently, the mere fact that you think it will work best to get action A done today is sufficient reason to make it a “have to do today” item. And without a daily section of your next action list, the decision to do that item today will not be reflected in your list, and so it will be easy to end up overlooking.

List, Not Calendar

Some people block off time on their calendar to do very important tasks. I think that is a great practice. It does not scale to every important or time sensitive action you have, however.

The reason it doesn’t scale is that there may be, for example, five 10-minute actions that you need to get done today. Add those to your calendar would be cumbersome. Slotting them into specific times would assume greater precision than is likely possible. But creating them as “all day events” in your calendar program also quickly gets cumbersome as well. Calendar programs are not designed for holding a bunch of all-day events — it quickly starts to feel cluttered.

Hence, while I do recommend blocking off time on your calendar for sizable tasks, an actual list is still necessary when you have multiple smaller actions that you need to accomplish in a day.

But What About Re-Writing?

The idea that those who create daily to-do lists always end up having to recopy a ton of items that they didn’t get done to the next day is, in my view, an incorrect stereotype. Sure, that may be the case for some people. But it doesn’t have to be the case.

First, many people have the discipline to actually do what they decide they will do. You can develop this discipline. Second, it’s really a matter of being realistic with yourself and not over-scheduling. Third, in the age of copy and paste, it is not hard if you do have to revise things every day, even significantly.

Fourth, if you do find yourself having to carry over a bunch of items from one day to the next, regard that as a learning process. That is showing you that you are over estimating what you are able to do. So stop planning so many things for your day. This realization is one of the central uses of doing this — it forces you to start being realistic about what you can get done, so that you can then become more selective in deciding what you really will do, and what should be eliminated because, while nice, it’s less important and needs to give way.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this concept is not as foreign to GTD as may at first seem. For Allen does say in Getting Things Done that “having a working game plan as a reference point is always useful, but it must be able to be renegotiated at any moment.”

That’s really what I’m advocating here: creating a working game plan for your day. I just see this as implying a bit more than what seems to be contemplated in the standard GTD approach.

A key to making this work is to remain flexible. This doesn’t mean regarding the items on the list as mere “hopes” of what you will do that day. Rather, it means not outlining literally everything you will do that day. Keep it as basic as possible and to the most important things. Two hours of work is probably enough. Preserve lots of time for being able to do things not on your list that fit the flow of the day, and for being able to meet the needs of others that arise.