What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Archives for 2 - Professional Skills / b Hard Skills

How to Learn Anything…Fast

by

This is a great message by Josh Kaufman, best-selling author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business. The encouraging upshot is that acquiring basic proficiency in a skill does not have to take a huge investment of time, but rather can be achieved in about twenty hours — if you do it right. Towards the end, he gives four steps.

I’m sort of getting tired of receiving so much content in my inbox on adapting our work to COVID-19. Nonetheless, Josh’s advice here has a very useful application to our current context. For example, if you do not have a commute because you are working from home, why not take the time you are saving from your commute to learn a new skill?

One reason you might not be doing that is that it can still seem a bit overwhelming. Josh takes that challenge away. He shows you how in just 45 minutes a day, you can develop a valuable new skill in about 30 days. Now that would be a great way to bring yet another silver lining to this unfortunate time in our society right now.

For more guidance, you can also check out his book The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything…Fast.

Lifetime Value and Business Courtesy

by

This is a basic marketing principle which Seth Godin summarizes very well. Seems obvious, but it is often overlooked!

If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.

If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.

If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.

Torrents are made of drips.

The short-term impact (plus or minus) of our work or our errors is dwarfed by the long-term effects. Compounded over time, little things become big things.

In other words, courtesy and generosity are not only good for business — they are essential for business when you look at things from the long-term perspective.

Business is Art

by

workbench

This is a great perspective from Work the System by Sam Carpenter:

Who says art must include a canvas, sculpture, or musical instrument? Art is creativity, and is there a better example of a creative endeavor than the machinations of building a successful business? Indeed, business is art in its purest form! The painter and the musician shouldn’t scoff at the entrepreneur or corporate chief who must take hard, cold life – sights, sounds, events, things, people – and stir them into an efficient enough mixture to produce a successful business. Business is art. It’s a heroic undertaking, and with it lies two superb by-products: tangible value to others–employees and customers–and personal income for the creator.

Creating a Business Plan that Actually Works

by

Thanks to the many of you who have been so encouraging as we announced the launch of What’s Best Next. You emails and shares have been meaningful.

We hope you’ll stick around to benefit from the things we have planned, and to help us refine the resources and services. None of this makes sense if people like you aren’t inspired and helped.

Creating a Business Plan that Actually Works

One of the things we’re looking to do, in addition to developing many free resources, is to publish, over time, focused books for helping Christians be more effective in their work.

Creating_A_Business_Plan_COVERThe one we started with, which seemed to make sense given what we were already working on, is a short digital book called Creating a Business Plan that Actually Works: Especially, But Not Only, for Faith-Based Organizations.

With a title like that, and given that What’s Best Next is a mere three days old, I would expect at least a snicker or two! But here’s the deal: this e-book is not about guaranteeing a level of success, however you measure it. It’s about a process that does what it’s intended to do—a framework that can make a significant difference as you plan any kind of real-world endeavor.

Whether you’re launching a new business, starting a ministry, planning an event, or managing a project of a certain size or scope, this short e-book can help guide you in thinking through your plans. Matt originally wrote this a few years ago and we’ve updated several sections in light of working through the vision for What’s Best Next.

 Here’s what you’ll find in Creating a Business Plan that Actually Works: 

  1. How Do You Think Biblically About Business Plans?
  2. Making Business Plans Useful: A Brief Overview
  3. The Elements of a Business Plan (And Getting Them Right)
  4. Further Resources

This focused book is especially for those who are making plans from a Christian perspective—whether in churches, ministries, other non-profits, or anywhere else. While you don’t have to operate from a specifically Christian perspective to benefit, it will be especially helpful for those looking for a resource that makes the integration of faith and work explicit.

Available for download from WhatsBestNext.com or Amazon.com

4 Reasons Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook Are Making the World a Better Place

by

This is an excellent post by Michael Hyatt. He begins:

It’s popular to complain about social media and talk about how it is destroying our culture, but what if the exact opposite is true?

I joined Twitter on April 6, 2008. A friend urged me to check it out. He was already using it and loved it. So after some initial eye-rolling, I tried it and fell in love with the medium too.

It wasn’t long at all before I discovered that Twitter is one of the most powerful communication tools ever invented. It also wasn’t long before I got an earful from critics who said social media was bad news.

He goes on to discuss some of that pushback, and then shows how the critics had it backward. He gives four reasons that, contrary to the criticisms that social media is making the world more selfish, it is actually making the world more generous and a better place.

Read the whole thing.

Why Read Books? (And How?)

by

A fantastic article at the 99U.

And a nice start:

Warren Buffett is undoubtedly considered one of the greatest investors of all times. His empire, Berkshire Hathaway, is worth $355 billion, an increase of 1,826,163 percent since 1964 when Buffett took over. He owns (or owns big chunks) of some of the biggest brands in the world including GEICO, Dairy Queen, NetJets, half of Heinz, and significant holdings in companies such as American Express, IBM, and Wells Fargo.

But Buffett’s very best investment—responsible for literally billions of dollars in profits over the years—was very cheap. Because it was a book. That’s right, a book.

Introducing MereChurch: Get a Usable, Effective Website for Your Church

by

This week, Mere Agency is launching a brand new service called MereChurch. MereChurch provides powerful and effective websites for small churches and ministries.

If you need a church website, or if you are looking to improve your church website, MereChurch is absolutely worth checking out. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

There are two things especially that set it apart.

First Distinctive: Usability
The first thing that sets it apart is the usability that it offers for your site. Good usability is the key to an effective website. Yet, many web agencies tend to overlook this, or at least fail understand the principles behind what actually makes a site usable. This is the reason that so many church websites are hard to use and sometimes very frustrating.

Mere Agency understands usability and has built MereChurch on the basis of world class usability principles. Matt Heerema, the founder of Mere Agency, worked with me at Desiring God, where he served as the web manager. We have the same usability philosophy, and his thinking on and attention to information architecture and the basics of good usability were key in helping make that site great. (For more on usability, you can see the various articles and presentations I’ve done here.)

Second Distinctive: Price
The second thing that sets MereChurch apart is its price. It’s the most competitive price among all the comparison offerings I know of.

Hence, you don’t need to choose between saving money or having a usable website. Now, it is possible to bring both together.

And a Bonus Example: Mere is Behind the New Look on This Site
One last thing: You may have noticed that my site has a new look! That is thanks to Matt Heerema and Mere Agency as well. He took it upon himself to update my site to this new look and template, for which I am super grateful. I love it. Thank you, Matt! This is just a small example of the type of work Matt does, and has been doing for almost 15 years now.

For more on MereChurch, check out the site and this video where Matt talks more about it:

Introducing MereChurch from Mere Agency on Vimeo.

Practical Usability: Why Most Websites Frustrate Their Users and How to Make Your Site Enjoyable

by

This is my message from the Biola Digital Ministry Conference 2012.

First I discuss why usability matters (giving both the practical case and the biblical case, which is very interesting). Then I go into the nuts and bolts of how to make your website usable, focusing especially on how to create good information architecture (the key to usability).

And here are my slides for the message (which you can use to follow along on the message, or just click through all on their own):