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Archives for April 2018

Time is Running Out to Pre-Order Unstuck (and why does that matter?)

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Unstuck releases Tuesday!

Most people tend to wait to purchase a book until it actually releases — which makes a lot of sense!

But there are two reasons to pre-order it now, in advance of launch.

1. To ensure you get your copy next week
When What’s Best Next came out, Amazon and other bookstores ran out within two days. Zondervan did a quick reprint, but it took about another week for those books to get into stock. By pre-ordering, you’ll ensure you get the book on the release date.

2. You get the bonuses by pre-ordering
The bonuses include 4 additional chapters on how to create your mission on a God-centered foundation that I wanted to include in the book, but which didn’t fit. These chapters go into much more detail than the chapter on mission in What’s Best Next and represent some of my most foundational thinking on the subject. I think you will find them very helpful.

Life planning and mission statements are more popular than ever now; yet, I don’t know of anything that goes into the detail on how to be truly God-centered in our mission and life plan like these chapters. Many of the current books and resources on life planning give a helpful framework, but do not explicitly show how God’s purposes relate to, define, and ought to inform our life plans.

I take all the great recent works on the mission of God, being missional, faith and work integration, the creation mandate, exilic discipleship, the holistic plot line of Scripture, and more, and show how it comes together to help us understand and create our own mission and life plan.

So, if you are so inclined, go pre-order How to Get Unstuck! Then go here to enter your email and claim your bonus chapters.

How Productivity Practices Help You Pray

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How often has someone emailed you requesting prayer while they are on a missions trip? Or for a period of time over the next week or so that will be especially stressful?

This is exactly what people should be doing, and it is a privilege to pray with them.

But the productivity challenge is this: how do you remember to keep praying for them?

So often we say we will be praying, but then forget.

It’s easy, of course, to pray for them when you first receive the email that they will be going on the mission trip. In my case, a friend just emailed that he would be teaching overseas  on certain dates, and requested prayer through that time. So I prayed for him upon receiving the email.

But how will I remember to pray for him tomorrow, and four days from now, and a week from now?

Here is a simple productivity tip that solves the issue: Create an all-day-event in your calendar for the time the person will be gone, with the prayer requests in the note. Then, when you look at your calendar through that time, you will be reminded to pray for them and have their requests right at hand.

Certainly there are other ways to remember to pray as well. But if, like me, you often just try to rely on your memory when people have requests for a period of time, this is a simple way to make sure you will be more devoted to prayer for them throughout that time.

And so we also see that productivity practices can not only help us do our work better, but live other aspects of our Christian lives more effectively and fruitfully as well.

What Does it Mean to be Stuck?

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This is an excerpt from How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity, coming May 1. (Pre-order and get 6 bonus chapters and a preview of my next book also.)

How do we break free from the productivity obstacles that get us stuck? First, we need to understand the causes better. At root, we get stuck in our productivity in three chief ways:

  1. We don’t know what God wants us to do.
  2. We know what God wants us to do, but we don’t know how to make it happen.
  3. Obstacles in our way are preventing us from doing it.

We Don’t Know What God Wants Us to Do
Sometimes we aren’t sure what we need to do or want to do at all—with our lives, with our career, with the next project, or even with the next hour. When this happens we may feel disoriented, lacking direction, or just confused (that is, stuck!).

Lack of direction is a very significant—and much overlooked—source of being stuck. For you can’t get where you are going if you don’t know where you are going!
The problem here is lack of vision.

We Don’t Know How to Make It Happen
Very often, even when we do know what we need or want to do, we aren’t sure how to do it. We aren’t sure what the path is—or how to chart the path and move along it. This is like being in the water and seeing your destination, but not knowing how to swim. You know where you want to go but can’t move yourself there. This, also, is a much-overlooked cause of being stuck.

Here you can feel trapped stuck in the most literal sense. Stuck in the mud and immobilized. The problem here is lack of planning and execution.

Obstacles Are in Our Way
Beyond that, even when we do start on the path, obstacles threaten to throw us off. These obstacles often take the form of our being overscheduled, overbusy, and overwhelmed. And, interestingly, sometimes fear is an obstacle. One of the biggest obstacles is fear of risk—or even fear of success.

This is the problem of obstacles in the way. We know how to execute and may even be pretty good at it, but our execution has holes. We are more vulnerable to obstacles than we need to be. This is the most recognized cause of getting stuck, and it needs to be addressed. But it can’t be addressed first, because often the obstacles are actually symptoms of being stuck in one of the first two ways.

Summing It Up
We are stuck when we don’t know what we want or can’t accomplish what we want. Not knowing what we want is the problem of lack of vision. Not being able to accomplish what we want breaks down into two subproblems: we don’t know how to execute, and obstacles are in the way.

Lack of vision, lack of execution, and obstacles—those are what get us stuck.

Why Do You Need the Bonus Chapters to Unstuck?

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If you pre-order unstuck, you get six bonus chapters plus the first five chapters of my next book after this.

Why do these bonus chapters matter? It’s not just some nice extra content (though that matters). Four of the bonus chapters take you through the process, in detail, on how to develop a vision for your life on the basis of the Scriptures.

This is something I wanted to include in Unstuck, but it didn’t fit. Hence, we are making them available as bonus chapters.

I was able to keep in Unstuck the chapter on the importance of vision. The natural application of this is to then begin developing your vision. That’s what these bonus chapters enable you to do, and so in a sense they “complete” the book.

The most important thing these chapters do in that regard is look at what the Scriptures teach about God’s mission for us. Why did God create us? What is our purpose here? What values does the Scripture say should govern our lives? What is God’s “BHAG,” and what should our life goal be in light of that?

I’ve found it can be hard, and sometimes almost futile, to develop your life mission. Unless you look deeply at what the Scriptures have to say. That’s when it really starts to connect and you are able to develop a satisfying and useful vision that is based on reliable, motivating, and life-giving truth.

So, pre-order unstuck and get those four chapters, as well as several other bonuses, and may the Lord bless your work in refining or developing your life vision!

What is the Meaning of “Spiritual Formation”?

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I like the term “spiritual formation.” We often use it as another term for discipleship. It is an essential thing, therefore, for every Christian.

So what is it? I was at a retreat a few months ago that defined it perfectly and in a very engaging way. They said: “Spiritual and emotional formation at its core is learning how to love God, others, and yourself well.”

Spiritual formation (and discipleship), in other words, is about love. Love for God first, love for others, and indeed, loving ourselves well. (For if we don’t love ourselves well, we often don’t love others well–just as if you don’t take good care of your car, it won’t help others get around much either.)

Note two things from this definition.

First, we are to love well. Have you thought of discipleship and spiritual formation in that way before? As learning to love well?

Often we speak of love as central to the Christian life, but don’t make the connection that we can love in better or less helpful ways. Perhaps that’s why Paul speaks the way he does in Philippians 1:9: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent [what’s best next!]” (see also the parallel prayer in Colossians 1:9-12).

Second, note that there is a tie between spiritual and emotional formation. For a long time as Christians, we tended to see these two issues as separate. But as Peter Scazzero points out in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, you cannot be spiritually healthy unless you are emotionally healthy. For they overlap.

And so learning emotional intelligence, it turns out, is a key part of our Christian maturity and thus discipleship and spiritual formation. This is something we have not given much focus to, but need to.

So love God and love others — realizing that our call is not just to do it, but to do it well, and that affirming and learning how to connect emotionally is central to doing this.

Pre-Order How to Get Unstuck!

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My second book releases May 1st. I can’t wait! As you’ve seen in previous posts, it’s called How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity. 

Instead of waiting until release day to order it, it’s best to pre-order it now. If you do, you’ll get six bonuses chapters that didn’t fit in the book, as well as the first five chapters of my book after this one (yes, that’s already done as well—very glad!).

About the Book

It was my editor’s initial idea to do this book. I got stuck writing my first book, What’s Best Next. But, I figured things out and got it done. Shortly after it released, he said “why don’t you do a book for us on getting unstuck?” I said “that sounds like a great idea.”

In addition to having been stuck before myself (in many ways), this is something all of us have to deal with. Whether we are doing big things like launching a company or fighting global poverty, or so-called everyday things like seeking to excel in our jobs and balance our lives, all of us get stuck sometimes. There are barriers to our productivity, and the ride is often bumpier than we’d like.

My initial strategy to getting stuck was outright perseverance. I just stuck with it. But that’s not the most effective approach. It easily leads to unbalance.

So in this book I apply the principles of personal effectiveness to solve the problem of how we can get unstuck in how we get things done—overcoming the obstacles of busyness, lack of balance, lack of direction, messy workspaces, leadership sticking points, distraction, overloaded task lists, lack of preparation, wrong understandings of “the good life,” plans that don’t work, and much more.

How to Get Unstuck dovetails well with What’s Best Next. First, whereas WBN sought to give a complete productivity system, Unstuck focuses more specifically on overcoming obstacles. So it is a follow-up on a more specific productivity issue. Second, Unstuck brings in principles that are super important but didn’t fit in What’s Best Next or that I wish I could have expanded on in there. Both books stand on their own with unique information and complement one another.

I’m very excited about How to Get Unstuck and hope you enjoy it and that it helps you do God-centered work for the good of others, with less friction and frustration.

Claiming Your Bonuses

Once you order the book, such as at Amazon, go to the book’s website, scroll down, and enter your email and order or receipt number. Then you will be taken to a page where you can download the six bonus chapters and the first five chapters of my next book, Effective in Doing Good. 

So, pre-order Unstuck, claim the bonuses, and spread the word!