What's Best Next

Sign Up for Productivity Coaching

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How do you get from where you are to where you want to be?

Many times there are obstacles in the way. You might know the goals you want to accomplish, but not be sure how to navigate the obstacles that plague our productivity. How do you overcome things like the urgency addiction, reactive workflow, procrastination, and distraction? What is the best way to manage your workflow, email, and meetings?

Or you might be stuck because you don’t have clarity on where you’re seeking to go at all. You might feel unbalanced in your life, or have a lack of direction and purpose. Or you might wonder what it means to truly do your work in a gospel-centered way–which is one of the most important issues surrounding our work today.

We have found that coaching is one of the best ways to overcome whatever productivity challenges you may be facing. Coaching helps you go further, faster. Why? Because of the outside input and encouragement that comes from a trained coach. Andy Stanley summarizes this so well in his book The Next Generation Leader: 

You may be good. You may even be better than anyone else. But without outside input you will never be as good as you could be. We all do better when somebody is watching and evaluating.

That’s why we offer productivity coaching. We help you develop the confidence and skills to overcome the obstacles to your productivity and make the impact you are called to make–and do it in a God-centered, gospel-driven way.

Our coaching combines the What’s Best Next methodology with the approach to coaching taught at Columbia University Coaching, both of which are driven by research and evidence from global thought leaders and practitioners. It is professional productivity coaching to help you reach the next level.

We offer three types of coaching:

  • One-on-one coaching
  • Team coaching
  • Learn to coach

You can learn more about each of these options on our coaching page. And if you’re interested, contact us for more information on availability and costs.

Introducing the Updated What’s Best Next

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It’s been awhile! We have redesigned our website and made updates to what we are doing as an organization that we’d love to share with you.

Website Updates

The first thing you might notice is that we now have a much-improved graphic look and organization for the site, making it easier to find and read content you are interested in.

The website also gives more information on What’s Best Next as an organization in the About section. Read especially about our mission, values, and what we mean by “gospel-driven productivity.”

You can also now more easily buy books in the store, and we have more products to come.

I am getting back to blogging again, so there will be new free content coming regularly again. Also, we will be posting new articles, messages, and videos to build out the resources section even more fully for you.

Updates on the Organization

As an organization, we have refined what we are about. Here is what we do: we provide resources and training to help you be more effective, in a God-centered way.

That’s what we do. Why do we do it? So that you can do your work with more peace of mind, greater effectiveness, and in a way that honors God and serves others most fully. That’s where the greatest fulfillment is found!

We will share more with you in the coming weeks on the new services and products we will be offering. To start, here are two key things we’re focusing on right now: workshops and coaching.

Book a Workshop

I’ve been doing keynote speaking and workshops for a while, but haven’t done much to promote them. Now we’re making it more widely known. Check out the speaking page to learn more about how to bring me in for staff training or another workshop.

Sign Up for Productivity Coaching

This is perhaps the biggest new thing. We have provided coaching for a while, but now we are giving it greater focus. We love doing it and have been seeing lives changed.

In a nutshell, reading and doing training are great. But the way to really take things to the next level is to apply gospel-driven productivity with the help of a coach. As Andy Stanley has said,

You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible. You may be good. You may even be better than anyone else. But without outside input you will never be as good as you could be. We all do better when somebody is watching and evaluating (The Next Generation Leader, 104).

So we’re offering coaching and have begun training other coaches to expand our coaching over the next year. Learn more and let us know if you are interested!

Thanks for being a great website community over the years. We are excited about these new updates and offerings and can’t wait to serve you more fully.

A New Status Update

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We have been working hard behind the scenes to retool What’s Best Next for greater effectiveness.

Look for new content to begin rolling out next week, along with the launch of our new website, and a greater emphasis on our coaching and other services. We will also have updates on upcoming books, courses, and more!

How to Manage Perceptions: Guest Post by Tom Harper

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This is a guest post by Tom Harper, author of Through Colored Glasses: How Great Leaders Reveal Reality. You can find more of his work at Biblical Leadership.

If you’ve ever taken a personality test, you’ve confirmed you have certain skills, traits, tendencies, ways of working, and eccentricities that make you you.

Those tests, however, only go so deep into who you really are. They can’t determine your hurts, fears, desires or goals; they don’t know what your night was like last night, or the family issue you may be dealing with.

This inner life, where all our thoughts and desires occur, could be called our “first self.” The second self is the one we consciously present to the world (especially in social media), hoping to receive approval. It’s got a little more of a shine to it.

There’s also a third self. We don’t know them very well. In fact, others know this person better than we do.

Colored-glass perception

People see each other through colored glasses. We filter, judge and label each other. Whether I’ve just met you, or have known you for years, I’ve got a biased impression of who you are. But in my mind, the person I perceive may or may not match your first or second selves.

The person I think you are is your third self. But there’s a problem. You can’t control my perception, not even on Facebook! I can’t see what’s in your heart all the time; I don’t know what kind of hurts or desires you may be harboring. I make assumptions about these things.

And that logically leads to another problem – you have a zillion third selves. Almost everyone that knows you has a slightly different perception of who you are. Their own filters and feelings sift your identity in ways outside your power.

People’s mistaken perceptions of each other can be devastating. Recently I overheard some people talking about me, and I have to say I was humbled. But it wasn’t that kind of humility when someone lavishes praise or attention – it was the kind that took me down a notch. It helped me see how some people perceive me, and it wasn’t pretty.

So how can we affect the way people perceive us?

Strategy #1:  Develop a multifaceted personality

Though seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes is not easy, seasoned leaders shift and change various aspects of themselves, depending on what followers need or expect. Paul said, “To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).

This requires us to get in other people’s shoes and look through their colored glasses. When we attain at least some of their perspective, we can better understand their impressions and expectations of us. It helps us see blind spots or areas where we can improve.

Do we change who we are depending on who we’re with? Not at our core. We simply “become all things to all people,” for their benefit. Paul gave up his rights and customs in order to break down barriers. He risked his reputation to save people.

He never changed his beliefs or who he was in Christ, but he became a chameleon whenever he wanted to reach into people’s lives and help them become like him.

Strategy #2:  Discipline your vision

Identifying with the pains and joys of others is a learned skill for me. But it is a discipline that has helped me in many interactions with employees, family members and friends.

Jesus saw the world around him through lenses of compassion. He saw into the heart of the demoniac, who just wanted to be free. He saw through the eyes of a promiscuous woman searching for spiritual truth. He saw with the eyes of the sick, the poor, and even the blind.

When we see from other people’s points of view, we find it easier to allow for their occasional bad moods, and to overlook their offenses. We can better serve them. We feel more compassion for them.

Adjusting our vision to look past people’s faults and offenses isn’t easy. But the more we do it, the more we see them as Jesus sees them.

Ironically, when we start doing this, people will start seeing us differently, too.

Unveiling your third self

How do we effectively get people to look past their preconceived notions and see who we really are?

As believers, we’re compelled to model ourselves after Jesus. He was a compassionate truth-teller unafraid to suffer for the benefit of others.

In your various roles and circles in life, who do people need you to be, for their benefit? How do you think they would like you to change? At times do you wish you were more relational, quieter, more passionate, or more self-controlled?

With God’s help, why can’t you become that person, inside and out?

If you’re a Christ-follower, the divine third Person – the Holy Spirit – is already in you, ready and waiting to start the process of change.

Ask him who you need to be in order to serve, help, comfort and lead better.

Ask him to help you emulate Christ, who became like us in order to save us.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

that though he was rich, yet for your sake

he became poor, so that you

through his poverty might become rich.

– 2 Corinthians 8:9

This post is based on Through Colored Glasses: How Great Leaders Reveal Reality – A Leadership Fable, by Tom Harper (DeepWater Books, 2018). Available on Amazon and Audible.  

Status Report

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We haven’t been posting new content as Matt focuses on finishing his next book and our small team works on some expanded coaching and training options.

We look forward to sharing more about these as soon as we can. In the meantime, we continue to schedule one-on-one coaching sessions.

5 Ways Efficiency Undermines Productivity

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When most people think of productivity, they think of efficiency—getting more things done in less time. It seems logical. If you have a lot to do, your tendency is to speed up.

Surprisingly, if efficiency is your first and primary goal, it might actually undermine productivity. Here are five reasons why:

  1. You can get the wrong things done. If you don’t give thought to what the “more” is that you often unconsciously take on, you might end up being incredibly efficient at the wrong things. Or at least not the best things. If my wife asks me to go to the store to get a carton of milk, and I get there and back in record time with a carton of orange juice, I haven’t been productive. More important than how much we get done and how fast we do it is whether we are getting the right things done at all.

  2. Efficiency doesn’t always solve the problem. In many cases, efficiency doesn’t even alleviate our hectic pace. It is good to exercise control over our environment. In fact, it’s one of the purposes God gave us (Gen. 1:28). Yet it’s important to recognize that we can’t control everything. Sometimes there are simply more things we could do than humanly possible. Sometimes we make mistakes. Our approach to getting things done has to acknowledge our God-given limitations. We can’t require ourselves to keep up with everything perfectly, to know everything there is to know, to be in more than one place at one time, or to see everything go precisely the way we intended it to. We are not God. If we continue approaching our work with these kinds of expectations, it will only multiply our frustration.

  3. The quest for efficiency can undermine people. Many organizations suffer from the myth that the best way to make a profit is to be militant about cutting costs. This approach tends to undermine employees—making their work more frustrating, lowering morale, and decreasing the organization’s overall productivity (not to mention increasing turnover). Worst of all, when employees are viewed as “cost centers” rather than the true source of value in an organization, they are treated like interchangeable parts. Organizations end up hiring the most cost-effective employee rather than the most qualified employee.

  4. Efficiency is the enemy of innovation. There is an inverse relationship between efficiency and innovation: the more you focus on efficiency, the less innovative you tend to be. In may not seem efficient to slow down to brainstorm, dream, strategize, or reevaluate when you’re looking at your already crowded weekly planner. But it will make you more productive in the long-run.

  5. The quest for efficiency overlooks the importance of intangibles. Intangibles are arguably the main source of value in our knowledge economy. Technology, hardware, and capital can be copied easily. What can’t be easily replicated is the culture and human capacity that create those in the first place—and does so in a way that engages not just functionally with people but also emotionally, so that people want what your organization offers. Effectiveness is more about the intangibles because effectiveness comes from people first, not things. Things are replicable. People aren’t.

Here is the great irony: defining productivity mainly in terms of immediate measurable results undermines measurable results in the long run. So productivity is not first about getting more things done faster, it’s about getting the right things done.

What steps do you need to take to prioritize productivity over efficiency?

This post was adapted from Chapter 2 of What’s Best Next.

Reclaiming Monday

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Getting back into your work rhythm after a weekend can be a challenge. Here’s a simple framework for planning your workweek so you can dive back into your most important work:

Pray

  • “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” – Ps. 127:1
  • “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.” – Prov. 16:3

Plan

Review your mission and values.

  • Am I still aiming for these long-term goals? Do I need to update?
  • Does this work align with my values? Does it move toward my mission and goals?

Define your priorities for the week.

  • What do I need to do this week? What would I like to do?
  • What should I do this week to fulfill each of my roles?
  • What should I do this week to move towards my goals?
  • What should I do this week for each of my major projects?
  • What should I do this week from my action list?
  • What is on my calendar this week?
  • How could I help people in need, fight injustice, or promote my family’s/church’s/community’s good?

Organize your priorities in a way that makes them easy to do.

  • Which of these items are small? Which will take more time or investment?
  • Is this list doable within one week? If not, what should I eliminate or delay? What is most crucial?
  • Which of these items need to be scheduled? When should they be done?
  • Which of these small actions can I accomplish right now?

For more detail on weekly planning and applying these questions, see Chapter 19 in What’s Best Next.

Doing Good Work that Matters Doesn’t Happen Accidentally

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Everything you do can become an agent for good. The activities of our everyday lives are themselves part of the good works God created us for in Christ (Ephesian 2). And, therefore, they have great meaning. Don’t just try to get things done; seek to serve others to the glory of God in everything you do.

Doing good work also doesn’t just happen accidentally. We have to be intentional in making plans for the welfare of others. And then we have to be proactive in carrying those plans out.

Note Ephesians 5:15–17: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

We are not to breeze through life, but to “look carefully” at how we walk. We don’t just walk through a store with our eyes closed, buying whatever we touch, and expect it to turn into a wardrobe. Nor should we do that with our time and opportunities. We are to “make the most” of the time. The time doesn’t make the most of itself; we are to take back the time from poor uses and turn it to good uses.

Let us plan to do good with the time we’ve been given today.

For more, see Chapter 4 and 5 in What’s Best Next.

Throwing Sheep into a Pit: The Discipline of Sabbath Rest

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Guest post by Rachel Poel

When I was a student, I would justify studying on Sunday by quoting Matthew 12:11-12: “He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” But many weekend afternoons, exhausted from a full week of classes, work, and studying, I would put off studying for a Monday morning test or drafting a paper due on Tuesday—effectively throwing that sheep into the pit myself.

Taking a Sabbath takes intentionality. Resting well is hard work.

There will be days when sheep are leaping into pits, when your kids all get the flu on a Sunday or your venue falls through days before a retreat. When these days come, do that work well. Your standing before God does not depend on how clear your Sunday schedule is.

But if you find yourself regularly planning projects for Sunday afternoon, consider the heart of Sabbath. God calls us to join Him in His rest. He gives us the Sabbath as a gift: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28).

How are we receiving this gift?

We don’t rest to maximize our productivity later.
We rest to remember that our worth does not hinge on our productivity.

Our struggle to let go of our to-do lists and inboxes for a day shows how much we really need this rest. We don’t rest to maximize our productivity later. We rest to remember that our worth does not hinge on our productivity. We rest because we are children and God is the Father. We rest because we are creatures and God is the Potter. We rest because we are saved and God is the Savior.

How will you plan this week to take time to know that God is God?


Rachel Poel recently graduated from Wheaton College with a BA in English Literature. Since graduating, she has been working on projects with Useful Group. Rachel lives in Aurora, Illinois with too many books and a very large puppy.

 

How Leaders Accomplish More by Doing Less

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A remarkably high number of new executives fail within their first 18 months, and it’s not because they were promoted above their skill set. Often it’s because they keep filling their schedules with the tasks they did well in their previous role instead of leading.

What does it look like to lead productively?

Matt Perman helps you think through your leadership priorities and develop strategies to succeed.

Download the free article “How Leaders Accomplish More By Doing Less.”