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.

I’m going through my in box after being gone for a week, and there are 6 new books in it that I’m looking forward to reading or dipping into a bit more (or, 4 that are actually new, and 2 that are new to me).

King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus

Tim Keller’s new book. I’m very excited about it — though I still haven’t had a chance to read Generous Justice (which I’m much looking forward to). Tim also did a recent interview with the Atlantic which is very good.

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

I haven’t dipped into this much yet and don’t know a ton about it. I think I came across it in a bookstore recently and ordered it from Amazon in order to take a closer look at it. But the topic (namely, cities) is important to me and it looks like it might have some helpful insight, so it seems worth taking a look at. You can also read an interview with the author and his recent article in the Atlantic, “How Skyscrapers Can Save the City.”

The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way

Michael Horton’s new systematic theology. I’ve really enjoyed and found helpful the parts that I’ve read so far. And I’m grateful for Mike Horton’s ministry in general, which you can learn more about at The White Horse Inn.

The Four Holy Gospels

A production of the four gospels featuring the artistic work of Makoto Fujimura, “a devout Christian, and one of the most highly-regarded artists of the twenty-first century.” I was very interested in this when I first heard about it, and some friends graciously gave a copy to me this week (thank you!). You can also see Justin Taylor’s recent interview with Makoto Fujimura.

Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)

I try to have a solid commentary on most books of the Bible. I’m reading through Acts now as part of my reading through the Bible this year and picked this up when I realized I didn’t have anything yet on Acts.

The Acts of the Apostles (Pillar New Testament Commentary)

Along with Bock’s commentary on Acts (above), these are probably the two best two commentaries on Acts.

A good word from Josh Kaufman in his book The Personal MBA:

One of the beautiful things about learning any subject is the fact that you don’t need to know everything — you only need to understand a few critically important concepts that provide most of the value. Once you have a solid scaffold of core principles to work from, building upon your knowledge and making progress becomes much easier.

Along with this, Kaufman quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s helpful point on methods and principles, which is good to keep in mind:

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

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.

The question is not simply, “What must I do to make a difference?” but also “What must I learn to make a difference?”

Excellent thoughts today from Seth Godin. In an era where all the highlights from everything are so easily available, it can be very, very easy to forget this:

The top of a mountain is rarely the best part.

You can watch “the good parts” of a baseball game in about six minutes. The web has become a giant highlights reel… the best parts of SNL, the best parts of a speech, the best parts of a book.

We can skim really fast now. This is a problem for marketers, because it means that if they don’t make the good parts easily findable and accessible (and bold and loud and memorable) then the whole product becomes invisible.

As consumers of information, though, I wonder if the best parts are really the best parts. Yes, you can read a summary of a book instead of a book, or watch the trailer instead of the movie, or read the executive summary of the consultant’s report instead of the whole thing… but the parts you miss are there for a reason.

Real change is rarely caused by the good parts. Real change and impact and joy come from the foundation and the transitions and the little messages that sneak in when you least expect them. The highlights of the baseball game are highlights largely because the rest of the game got you ready for them.

Don’t skip that page, it’s there for a reason.

One more thought: In his management book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham talks about how there are several stages to building an excellent work environment. Here’s what’s interesting: you can’t just skip to the final stage. If you do, you will fail. The stages leading up to that are the necessary preparation.

Mountain climbers know this well. As Buckingham states: “To reach the summit you have to pay your dues — if you just helicopter to camp 3 and rise to the summit, experienced guides know you will never make it. Mountain sickness will sap your energy and slow your progress to a crawl.”

The same is true with information and most things in life: If all we ever seek out and engage with are the highlights, the end result is going to be mountain sickness.

For the last several years, I’ve been a subscriber to Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries. Each month, you get two summaries of some of the most important and latest business books. The summaries come in both audio form (either CD or, I think, MP3 download) and in written transcripts (by email).

Each summary is about 45 minutes, and they actually summarize the content very, very well. So for a time investment of about 1.5 hours per month, you can keep up with 24 business books per year.

This post is not an advertisement — nobody asked me to write this. I have simply found this to be a helpful tool which some of you might be interested in exploring. I think the cost is about $150/year.

One point to keep in mind: Don’t expect to fully absorb the content in only 1.5 hours a month. If you want to truly think over and remember the content, it will take additional review of the transcripts and just plain reflecting on the content. I view this program as a way to stay briefed on new books, and then go deeper on the few that seem most useful.

Here’s a summary from their site:

Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries are carefully written summations of the best business books published each year. They are recorded on audio CDs or cassettes, plus word-for-word e-transcripts.

Each audio summary is 45 minutes in length, much shorter than the average of 10 to 15 hours required to thoroughly read and comprehend most truly important business books. They enable subscribers to turn the “downtime” of commuting, travel or exercise, into profitable “uptime.” A subscription to Business Book Summaries is a productive alternative to the radio or cellular phone.

The 24 books summarized each year are selected by our Editorial Board from nearly 3,000 new titles examined. The Audio-Tech Editorial Board is composed of Harvard Business School Graduates, Fortune 500 senior executives and internationally known management consultants. Each is an expert in one or more of the subject areas we cover.

Our professional writers and editors carefully summarize the books under the watchful eyes of Editorial Board Members.

Last of all, here’s a business idea for anyone so inclined: This would be a good thing to do for the latest books in Christian publishing. I bet a lot of pastors and people in ministry would appreciate being able to keep up with about 2 books a month through well-done audio and written summaries. The business model for such a company would not be hard to spell out.

But the books chosen for summarizing would need to be good. None of that fluffy, boring, useless stuff that so often finds its way into Christian bookstores. Also, I would recommend not limiting the summaries to new books. It would be helpful maybe for 1 of the summaries each month to be new, and 1 of the summaries to be a solid, classic work from church history (Edwards, Luther, Owen, Augustine, etc.), as well as more recent classics such as Packer’s Knowing God.