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Defining Productivity

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This is one of the best definitions I’ve come across. It’s from Charles Duhigg’s Smarter Faster Better:

Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards with the least wasted effort. It’s a process of learning how to succeed with less stress and struggle.

I like this definition because it brings together two things that are both necessary in defining productivity well.

First, the focus is on getting the right things done—not just getting things done more quickly. The aim is to “figure out the best uses” of what we have and to seize “the most meaningful rewards.” It does not matter how much you are getting done, or how fast, if you are not getting truly useful and helpful things done.

Second, it doesn’t overcorrect and forget that efficiency does matter. We do need to try to accomplish things with “the least wasted effort” and get things done “with less stress and struggle.”

This is the magic combination: get more of the right things done, in less time and with less friction and frustration.

In your quest to be productive, remember both sides. When all you care about is quick and cheap, you run the risk of helping to fill the world with useless things. But if you don’t care about speed and efficiency, it’s going to take forever to get your great work out to the world. Caring about both of these sides is a big challenge–but it is well worth it.

To Be Productive is to Be Fruitful in Good Works

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What Does God Want Done?

Good works. What God wants done are good works.

We see this right in Matthew 5:16, where Jesus sums up for us the entire purpose of our lives: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

That is the purpose of the Christian life summed up for us in one sentence. The entire purpose of our lives—what God wants from us—is to do good for others, to the glory of God.

We also see this in one of the most important passages on productivity in the Bible—Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing: it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Likewise, Titus 2:14 tells us that Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” And Jesus says in John 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”

Being Fruitful in Good Works

Hence, good works are part of the purpose of our salvation. In one sense we have been doubly created for good works. God created us to do good works, as we see in the creation mandate in Genesis, and here we see that we are also re-created in Christ to do good works.

Productive things, then, are things that do good. Productivity always has to be understood in relation to a goal, and God’s goal is that we do good works.

Hence, we can define productivity in this way: to be productive is to be fruitful in good works. 

Adapted from What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done.

 

Why Do I Call it Gospel-Driven Productivity Instead of Biblical Productivity?

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Shortly after What’s Best Next came out a few months ago, a commenter on another blog said I should call the productivity approach I outline in my book “Scripture-centered productivity” rather than “gospel-driven productivity.”

It’s a good question. Why isn’t it enough to just call it “biblical productivity”? Why do I have to call it “gospel-driven productivity?”

On Not Being Boring
The first answer is simple: The phrase “Scripture-centered productivity” sounds awkward and annoying! The term “biblical productivity” would be a bit better, but that phrase is still just plain boring.

This might seem superficial, but it’s not. God commands us to communicate in ways that are interesting (Colossians 4:6). The phrase “biblical productivity” is just plain boring in most contexts, and so I reject it on biblical grounds.

The Gospel is the Heart of the Scriptures
Someone might say to this “but why do you have to put the ‘gospel’ label on it? Isn’t it actually more accurate to just say ‘biblical’?” My answer is that it is not more accurate. The reason is that the gospel is at the heart of the Scriptures. Therefore, any view of productivity that is truly “Scripture-centered” must necessarily be gospel-centered.  I want to draw that connection, because it is essential.  

The Essence of Gospel-Driven Productivity
The chief implication the gospel has for our productivity is that the guiding principle in all the things we get done should be the good of others. Just as Jesus in the gospel put our needs ahead of his own, even to the point of dying on the cross, we are to see all that we do as an avenue for serving others — putting their needs ahead of ours, just as Jesus did for us. And we are to do this from acceptance with God on the basis of the gospel, not for acceptance with God.

That’s the heart of what it means to be “gospel-driven” and live a truly productive life. “Scripture-centered productivity” doesn’t capture that. “Gospel-Driven Productivity” does.

What it Really Means to be “Gospel-Driven”
Using the phrase “gospel-driven” also helps capture other thing — namely, that if you say “wait, the term ‘gospel-driven’ doesn’t communicate that to me at all,” then you are not understanding the gospel.

In other words, everyone who considers themselves gospel-centered needs to understand that you cannot claim that the gospel is the center of your life if you aren’t living your life first of all for the good of others rather than yourself.

This means if you are a “gospel-centered” leader, you lead for the welfare of your people first, not your own advantage, comfort, and advancement (Matthew 20:25-28). (This means getting rid of command and control, authoritarian leadership that sees people only as tools to get the job done, rather than as valuable people in the image of God to be treated with respect.)

If you are a gospel-centered business owner, you manage your business to make a real contribution to society, not simply make a profit.

And if you are gospel-driven in the way you get things done (as all Christians should be), then you make the good of others your motive in all you do, rather than just doing things to get to the bottom of your list or increase your own personal peace and affluence.

I see many who claim to be gospel-centered because they really like proclaiming the gospel, but who don’t allow the gospel to guide and shape their actions at work. They are sometimes just as selfish in the way they do things as the world is (often more so! a true irony). This is a terrible testimony and it does a lot of harm. It undermines the gospel and therefore is not gospel-centered in the slightest. We need to change this, and become truly gospel-driven in our deeds as well as words.

Is the Term “Gospel-Centered” Cliche?
It is certainly true that some have attached the term “gospel-centered” to their ideas without actually knowing what it means. When the term “gospel-centered” is used in a trite and superficial way, it is unfortunate.

But when you understand what gospel-centered really means, it is anything but trite or superficial. It is not the “flavor of the month” in Christianity, but rather at the very core of Christianity.

In Sum
Thus, from all this we can see why a phrase like “Scripture-centered productivity” actually doesn’t communicate my point. Certainly I am trying to say that we are to be guided by the Scriptures in how we think about productivity. But I’m trying to say more. My point is that since the gospel is at the heart of the Scriptures, when we think of the Scriptures we are to first think of the gospel. It is the gospel, not just the concept of Scripture in an abstract sense, that is to guide our productivity.

And to be guided by the gospel is to be guided by love, of which the gospel is the greatest demonstration in all the universe.

What Does it Mean to be Proactive?

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The term proactive means more than you may realize. Here is a good explanation from Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits:

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative [emphasis added]. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. [Which means that] our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Look at the word responsibility — “response-ability” — the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us.

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values — carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.

Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

You Don’t Have to be Busy

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Productivity is not first about getting a lot of things done, but about getting the right things done.

If you are getting the right things done, you don’t necessarily have to be doing a large number of things.

In other words, you don’t have to be busy in order to be effective.

So don’t measure your effectiveness by how much you are able to do, but rather by what you do.

And, ironically, if you focus on the quantity of things you do, you will most likely fail to identify and execute on the things that are most important — that is, on the right things.