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Archives for January 2011

How I Set Up My Files (Brief)

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I have wanted to post on filing for a long time, but have not gotten to it because there is so much to say. So, instead of continually putting it off, I’m just going to post some brief things on filing now and then. Doing incomplete posts on how to set up your file categories are probably better than doing nothing at all. And, eventually, I hope to get around to a full series on the subject.

So, here are two pictures of my file categories. You’ll notice in the left-hand part of the screen shot that I divide my categories into 7 major divisions, which are:

  1. MP [= personal]
  2. DG [= work]
  3. NC [= consulting and such]
  4. General Reference
  5. Quick Access
  6. Shortcuts
  7. Archives

I will save going into the distinction between these divisions for another post. For now, I thought I’d just show a screen shot that shows the categories I use in my personal files.

The organizing principle for these categories is area of responsibility. Each area of responsibility gets a file — if I have something I need to file for it. The result is that everything has a place. Further, it is easy to know how to create a new category if nothing existing fits for something — I just ask what area of responsibility it pertains to, and if it doesn’t exist, I just create a file for it.

Within these categories are sub-categories, which I will also save for a future post.

One other thing that I’d also like to talk about now but will save for later (among many other things) is why filing even matters at all when you can search your computer.

In the meantime, here’s the screen shot of my personal file categories (sorry if it’s small — just click to enlarge):

And here’s a continuation with what wouldn’t fit in that screen shot:

One other note: Just because I have a category of something here doesn’t mean that this is the primary repository of my files for that area. I also have paper-based files, which continue to be the main home for many of these categories (for example, bank statements, which I don’t like receiving electronically). My physical files follow the same structure so that everything is based on one unified approach.

Tomorrow I will post the categories I use for my work files.

How Not to Choose a Job

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Rick Warren writes in The Purpose Driven Life:

We have all heard people say, “I took a job I hate in order to make a lot of money, so someday I can quit and do what I love to do.” That’s a big mistake. Don’t waste your life in a job that doesn’t express your heart. Remember, the greatest things in life are not things. Meaning is far more important than money.

Someone might say, “That’s hard to do in the current economic environment.” And yes, it can be.

But Warren is making a much wider point here that goes to the issue of how we think about jobs in general. We need to stay away from the mindset of “deferred purpose.” That is, don’t fall for the view that your job is merely or even primarily about earning money, such that you need to take whatever job you can get now (or whatever pays the most) with the aim of doing what you really want later. If you do this, chances are the “later” will never come. When you chose a job, you are often choosing not just a job, but a path.

Further, the “deferred purpose” approach only takes into account one dimension of ourselves — the economic. But, as the Bible teaches and management thinkers of today are also pointing out (such as Stephen Covey — see, for example, Principle-Centered Leadership or The 8th Habit), people are more than just economic beings. We are also social, talented, and spiritual. When choosing a job, you cannot isolate one dimension from the others. To take a job only for the money is to treat yourself as merely an economic being. We need to view our work not as just a way to earn a living, but as something which in itself ought to engage the social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of human nature.

And, when you do this, you will be more effective in your job. (Interestingly, it is not only the case that people who work for more more than money are more effective; it is also the case that companies that exist for a purpose beyond making money are also more effective. See, for example, Jim Collins’ chapter “More than Profit” in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies).

Warren’s point here also relates to the way many people today think of retirement. The common notion of retirement is that you work for 40 years or so in a job (or series of jobs) that you may not like in order to build up a large retirement account so that when you retire from work altogether around 65 (or maybe earlier, if you can save effectively enough) you can then be completely free from work to do whatever you want. And, much of the time (but not all of the time), the things people “really want” to do focus on their comfort, taking it easy, and recreation.

Tim Ferris, in The 4-Hour Workweek, does a good job of exploding this notion of retirement. He basically says “why do what you don’t want to do for 40 years and put off what you really want to do to the end of your life?” But Ferris doesn’t take the concept far enough. He argues for taking frequent “mini-retirements” throughout your career. These retirements can be used for service, but that doesn’t come across as a primary emphasis.

What I would want to add to Ferris is a greater emphasis on utilizing these “mini-retirements” as a means of serving people — radically, creatively, and generously. There is some incredible and creative thought that can be given to this. Along with this, the extra time that can be freed up every day and every week simply by utilizing good productivity practices in our work is also an opportunity to give more time to serving others — and in creative ways, rather than with an “oh, I better put in my time helping out” mindset. (And this is amplified even further if we are in an environment that has a results-oriented philosophy of “work wherever, whenever, as long as the work gets done,” which sees performance as measured by what you produce and accomplish rather than by the amount of time you put in.)

But we need to go even beyond this. What Ferris seems to leave out is an affirmation of our work itself as an enjoyable, meaningful thing that is itself a means of doing good to others.

In other words, in addition to becoming more efficient and effective in our jobs so that we can have more free time to serve, we also need to see our jobs themselves as a means of serving. And, further, we need to take jobs that fire us up, that spark a passion in us, so that we are fully engaged and truly serving in the way that we are called to serve. We need to get away both from the mindset that says “I’ll do a job I hate for 40 years so I can retire with freedom and money,” and the mindset that, as Warren points out, says “I’ll do a job I hate for now so I can make a lot of money and then at some point do a job I love.” Avoid the deferred-purpose mindset. Find a job you love now, so that you can serve with maximum enthusiasm now — not in 20 years.

There’s one problem here, of course. In the current economic environment, it can be extra hard to find a job that you love. And I realize that some may indeed have to take a job mainly to pay the bills so they can get by for the short term. But, in doing that, don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. And this means, first, avoid doing that if at all possible. Don’t give up too easily on finding a job you love, even in challenging economic times. And if you do find it, you will be more likely to keep it and advance (for enthusiasm drives effectiveness — it’s hard to get good at what you hate, but it’s easy to get good at what you love.). In fact, it could be said that the economy really needs more people to hold out for jobs they will love, because the result will be greater productivity throughout the entire economy as more and more people are in jobs where they love what they do.

Second, if you do have to take a job mainly to pay the bills for a season, you still can and should do that job diligently and from the heart. You can do that by doing it for the Lord, as Paul says in Ephesians 6:5-8. Be as effective as you can be, wherever you are (and, who knows, that may itself lead to something that really is a good fit in itself). More on this more specifically in another post, perhaps.

And, finally, if you do have to take a job you’d rather not in order to stay afloat, don’t let that season last too long. Before you know it, three or four or more years can go by, and you are off track. Be diligent. Do everything you can, as soon as you can, to get into a job you love. Obviously you won’t love everything about any job, and you will also have things to learn and grow into in any job and vocational trajectory. You won’t have instant success or instant effectiveness. But be vigilant and rigorous in finding a way, if you do have to “settle” for a time, to both make the most of the job you are presently in, and then get back into the role you really need to be in.

Leading from Your Strengths Will Sometimes Look Unusual

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This is a theme that you see again and again. Here’s an example from Best Buy’s CEO Brad Anderson, from the book Strengths-Based Leadership:

Anderson’s career continued to advance during this time of transition, and he was named Best Buy’s president in 1991. From the day Anderson assumed this leadership role, it was clear he wasn’t going to fit anyone’s preconceived notions of a top corporate executive. Instead of conforming to the new role, this self-described “odd duck” decided to do things quite differently.

While Wall Street analysts, among others, expected Anderson to take a more conventional approach as Best Buy’s new president, that’s not what he did. Much to their consternation, Anderson would simply disappear for weeks on end in search of new ideas. Instead of poring through trade or business books, he read everything from Rolling Stone to historical biographies. Anderson attended non-electronics conferences in search of bigger ideas. He brought in countless outside experts to challenge Best Buy’s thinking. His Ideation, Input, and Learner themes were always at work. By Anderson’s own admission, he challenged conventional wisdom to the point where it was “radically complained about by my peers.” . . .

While studying successful leaders like Anderson, one of the most revealing items we asked leaders to respond to was: “Please describe a time when you felt like you were ‘in a zone,’ where time almost seemed to stand still.” Anderson told us that he feels this way almost any time he is learning something, whether it is from a person, a book, or solving a puzzle. He said, “I find it amazing that I can be fifty-eight years old and seem to know less every day. No matter how much you learn, it just continues to open up more substantial questions and relationships.”

Anderson went on to tell us about how, the night before our conversation, he had stepped out of a dinner early so he could spend some quality time at a nearby Barnes & Noble before heading home. The voracious learner, who reads several books each week, said that he found at least 28 books he wanted to take home that evening. “It’s a disease,” he said with a smile.

We suspect that there are millions of Best Buy employees, customers, and shareholders who are glad that Brad Anderson let this lifelong curiosity run its course. While his strategic thinking led to a few experiments that did not pan out, Anderson’s unconventional approach helped create unprecedented growth. Had you invested $1,000 in Best Buy’s stock in 1991, when Anderson took over as president, it would have been worth $175,000 by 2008. Not bad for a guy who started at the ground level and spent the next 25 years soaring with his strengths.

So one of the lessons here is: lead from your strengths, even if it means being unconventional. You will be more effective being who you are than who you are not. In fact, it’s often the most unconventional minds that make a difference because what seems unconventional is often simply counterintuitive wisdom (for more on which see, for example, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win and What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management).

Asking Questions is the Key to Understanding

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From John Piper, in his latest book Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God:

One of the best honors I received during my six years of teaching college Bible classes was a T-shirt. My teaching assistant made it. On the back it said, “Asking questions is the key to understanding.”

When I speak of becoming intentional about thinking harder, that’s mainly what I mean: asking questions and working hard with our minds to answer them. Therefore, learning to think fruitfully about biblical texts means forming the habit of asking questions.

The kinds of questions you can ask of a text are almost endless:

  • Why did he use that word?
  • Why did he put it here and not there?
  • How does he use that word in other places?
  • How is that word different from this other one he could have used?
  • How does the combination of these words affect the meaning of that word?
  • Why does that statement follow this one?
  • Why did he connect these statements with the word because or the word therefore or the word although or the words in order that? Is that logical?
  • How does it fit with what another author in the Bible says?
  • How does it fit with my experience?

For more on what Piper means by asking questions of the text, you can also see his article “Brothers, Let Us Query the Text.”

Offensive Study and Defensive Study

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This is an enlightening distinction that Gordon MacDonald makes in Ordering Your Private World:

In my earliest years of ministry, when this business of mental growth had not yet become a discipline for me, most of my study was what I now call defensive study. By that I mean that I studied frantically simply because I had an upcoming sermon go preach or talk to give. And all my study was centered on the completion of that task.

But later I discovered the importance of something I now call offensive study. This is study that has as its objective the gathering of large clusters of information and insight out of which future sermons and talks, books, and articles may grow. In the former kind of study, one is restricted to one chosen subject. In the latter, one is exploring, turning up truth and understanding from scores of sources. Both forms of study, offensive and defensive, are necessary in my life.

We grow when we pursue the discipline of offensive study.

Reading is Real Work

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A good word from Gordon MacDonald’s Ordering Your Private World:

Some months ago I led a seminar for pastors on the subject of preaching, and discussed the matters of study and preparation. Since a number of spouses were present when I spoke, I said to the group, “Now, some of you may be tempted to think that when your spouse is reading, they are really expending second-class time. So you are liable to feel free to interrupt them on impulse. What you need to realize is that they are working every bit as much as the carpenter who is in his shop sharpening the blade of a saw. Within reason, you ought not only to avoid interrupting your spouses, but also to try your best to maximize their privacy if you want them to grow in effectiveness.”

Two additional thoughts. First, the main thing I want to emphasize here is not his point on interruptions (though that is an important consideration — as long as taken together with his “within reason”). Rather, the main thing I want to emphasize is simply that reading is real work. When the purpose is study and learning, it is not second-class, throw-away time.

Second, the importance of reading is true not just for pastors, but for people in all vocations. Everyone in any vocation should devote time to reading and studying to advance their skills and ability to be effective in what they do. And when you do this, it is not leisure time, but real, first-rate work that is just as important (perhaps more important) than the rest of the work that you do.

Tim Keller on Work and Cultural Renewal

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Tim Keller has a great article at Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work on Christians, work, and cultural renewal. It’s very helpful because, among other things, he shows that there is a connection between the way we do our work and the renewal of culture.

I’ve taken the article and turned into an interview of sorts in order to highlight some of the things I’ve found the most helpful.

Should Christians seek to change culture?

I am often asked: “Should Christians be involved in shaping culture?” My answer is that we can’t not be involved in shaping culture.

So not to shape culture is to shape culture–in support of the status quo. Can you give an illustration?

To illustrate this, I offer a very sad example. In the years leading up to the Civil War many southerners resented the interference of the abolitionists, who were calling on Christians to stamp out the sin of slavery. In response, some churches began to assert that it was not the church’s (nor Christians’) job to try to “change culture” but only to preach the gospel and see souls saved. The tragic irony was that these churches were shaping culture. Their very insistence that Christians should not be changing culture meant that those churches were supporting the social status quo. They were defacto endorsing the cultural arrangements of the Old South. (For more on this chapter in American history, see Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.)

This is an extreme example, but it makes the point that when Christians work in the world, they will either assimilate into their culture and support the status quo or they will be agents of change.

How does this apply to the world of work?

This is especially true in the area of work. Every culture works on the basis of a ‘map’ of what is considered most important. If God and his grace are not at the center of a culture, then other things will be substituted as ultimate values. So every vocational field is distorted by idolatry.

Christian medical professionals will soon see that some practices make money for them but don’t add value to patients’ lives. Christians in marketing and business will discern accepted patterns of communication that distort reality or which play to and stir up the worst aspects of the human heart. Christians in business will often see among their colleagues’ behavior that which seeks short-term financial profit at the expense of the company’s long-term health, or practices that put financial profit ahead of the good of the employees, customers, or others in the community. Christians in the arts live and work in a culture in which self-expression is an end in itself. And in most vocational fields, believers face work-worlds in which ruthless, competitive behavior is the norm.

It seems that, as Christians, we don’t always do a good job of addressing these sorts of issues in our various fields. What would you say are the main errors that we are most likely to fall into?

There are two opposite mistakes that a Christian can make in addressing the idols of their vocational field. On the one hand they can seal off their faith from their work, laboring according to the same values and practices that everyone else uses. Or they may loudly and clumsily declare their Christian faith to their co-workers, often without showing any grace and wisdom in the way they relate to people on the job.

That makes sense. What is one of the primary ways that we should seek to relate our faith to our work?

At Redeemer, especially through the Center for Faith & Work, we seek to help believers think out the implications of the gospel for art, business, government, media, entertainment, scholarship. We teach that excellence in work is a crucial means to gain credibility for our faith. If our work is shoddy, our verbal witness only leads listeners to despise our beliefs. If Christians live in major cultural centers and simply do their work in an excellent but distinctive manner it will ultimately produce a different kind of culture than the one in which we live now.

So doing our work well and for God’s glory is not only good in itself, but can also be a means of transforming culture?

[Yes,] but I like the term “cultural renewal” better than “culture shaping” or “culture changing/transforming.” The most powerful way to show people the truth of Christianity is to serve the common good. The monks in the Middle Ages moved out through pagan Europe, inventing and establishing academies, universities, and hospitals. They transformed local economies and cared for the weak through these new institutions. They didn’t set out to ‘get control’ of a pagan culture. They let the gospel change how they did their work and that meant they worked for others rather than for themselves. Christians today should be aiming for the same thing.

What is our ultimate hope and assurance in this?

As Roman society was collapsing, St. Augustine wrote The City of God to remind believers that in the world there are always two ‘cities,’ two alternate ‘kingdoms.’ One is a human society based on selfishness and gaining power. God’s kingdom is the human society based on giving up power in order to serve. Christians live in both kingdoms, and although that is the reason for much conflict and tension, it also is our hope and assurance. The kingdom of God is the permanent reality, while the kingdom of this world will eventually fade away.

Use Your Practical Wisdom

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The other day I came across a good TED video of Barry Schwartz discussing the importance of making sure we don’t substitute following rules for using our good sense and practical wisdom. The great irony, he points out, is that rules can become a substitute for wisdom, and this, in turn, demoralizes people. Thus, ironically, rules can actually undermine virtue. Here’s the summary:

Barry Schwartz dives into the question “How do we do the right thing?” With help from collaborator Kenneth Sharpe, he shares stories that illustrate the difference between following the rules and truly choosing wisely.

It’s not that rules are always bad in themselves. But “they are like notes on a page — they get you started.” What we need are not people who thoughtlessly just follow the rules in spite of what the true intent may be and a spirit of mercy and generosity (see the Sermon on the Mount — we are to be more than just by being merciful as well), but rather people of virtue who apply the rules wisely while knowing how to exercise judgment, not just follow a script.

This reminds me of the time I went on a long bike ride, forgot my shirt (it was hot out), and well into the ride when I was really thirsty a gas station attendant wouldn’t sell me Gatorade or water because of the “no shirt, no shoes, no service rule.” (You can read about that here, along with the management lessons I draw out). Maybe that’s a good rule in general, but this was a clear case of a rule inadvertently being used in a way that denied the opportunity to serve a genuine case of human need (even if it was my mistake to forget my shirt and not take along more water!).

Here’s Barry Schwartz’s video: