One of my action items from Bookworm 96 was to implement my own version of the daily questions Marshall Goldsmith uses. He keeps everything in a spreadsheet, but obviously that wasn’t good enough for me. So here’s a quick video on how I did this using Roam Research.
Productivity
How to Start Your Own Mastermind Group
In a recent episode of Focused, my co-host David Spark & I interviewed Laura McClellan (a.k.a. The Productive Woman). It was a fun conversation, and one of the things we hit on was the topic of mastermind groups. I’m a big fan of mastermind groups, and a member of one myself. But for someone new to the idea I can see how the idea would be pretty intimidating, so I wanted to share some thoughts on how you can get your own mastermind group started.
Read MoreMy NeuYear Calendar
In a recent Focused episode, David and I talked about a lot about calendaring and I mentioned I’d share a picture of my current NeuYear calendar. Here it is:
We’ve even got a special Focused branded version of this with shading for those of you who like the 12 Week Year. A perfect complement to the Personal Retreat Handbook if I do say so myself.
The Motivation Cycle
A couple of weeks ago, David & I talked about “moving the needle” in one of my favorite episodes of Focused to date. David shared his system for making sure the things he was getting done were in fact the right things, and it got me thinking about what happens after you identify what moves the needle for you.
Read MoreWhy I Made Faith-Based Productivity
Purposeful productivity is not a destination, it’s a journey. You’ll never fully arrive at it, but it is indeed a worthwhile pursuit. That is why I created Faith-Based Productivity to help people who are on their own purposeful productivity journey connect to their calling, discover their destiny, and live the life they were created for.
Read MoreWho is Faith-Based Productivity For?
Faith-Based Productivity is intentionally not like most other online courses. Depending on your perspective, that is either a strength or a weakness.
The course doesn’t give you a 5-step formula for reaching your full potential. It can’t straight-out tell you what your unique purpose and abilities are (no one can). But the course will help point you in the right direction and get you asking the right questions, helping you to uncover your unique talents and abilities.
By understanding your own passions and skills, you can connect to your “why” and live the life God meant for you to live. This course will help you discover the will of God for your life and leverage whatever resources you possess to push past an average existence and do something awesome – no matter where you are or what you have when you start. But it’s still up to you to do the work.
Read MoreIntroducing Faith-Based Productivity
I know, I know – you’ve seen this before. Except not really. The development of Faith-Based Productivity has taken some unexpected turns the last couple of months. Today I want to share with you the short story of what exactly it is and how we got here.
Read MoreStepping Off the Productivity Hamster Wheel
I’m a big advocate of productivity. But I’m not a big fan of how most people approach the topic.
Productivity is not cranking more widgets. Productivity is not doing all the things. True productivity is saying “no” to the things that don’t matter so you can say “YES!” to the things that do.
But that’s not what most people think of when they hear the word “productivity.” They conjure up a mental image of heartless efficiency – getting their tasks done faster so they can squeeze in a few more from the never-ending in their task manager.
Read MoreMy Problem with Passion
There’s a fascinating discussion about the most recent Michael Hyatt episode of Mac Power Users over in the MPU forum where a couple fo listeners started responding to what Michael Hyatt calls his Freedom Compass. Michael talks about it in his new book, Free to Focus, but the TL;DR from the podcast episode is this:
Everything you do can be broken down into one of four quadrants:
- The Desire Zone – Things that you are passionate about and proficient in
- The Distraction Zone – Things that you are passionate about but not proficient in
- The Disinterest Zone – Thing that you are proficient in but not passionate about
- The Drudgery Zone – Things that you are neither passionate about or proficient in
It’s an interesting mental model, and I mostly agree with Michael’s argument that if you are able to align the things you care deeply about with the things that you are good at, that is where the magic happens. The one thing I would nitpick here is the use of the word passion.
Read MoreNew Free Email Mini-Course
I just released my first free “course” over on my Teachable site. It’s not really a course like my other paid courses because it’s much shorter. Instead, it’s a single video on my adapted email workflow and an accompanying PDF guide (for people who want a visual reference).
Basically I was frustrated with my own email workflow and went looking for ways to improve it. Along the way, I had the idea to document my changes so that others could benefit from me spending way too much time trying to solve this minor but annoying problem for myself. I’ve heard people on the internet say, “I don’t have a single unpublished thought.” Well, in this case I’m hoping my published thoughts on email can help people like me who want to crank through it as quickly as possible so they can move on to other things.
A couple of highlights:
- I have new criteria for deciding whether to do something with an email or send it to my task manager
- The Reference File is no more (GASP!)
- I’ve discovered Feedbin as a great solution for combining RSS & Read-It-Later
Click here to get The Email Workflow for People Who Hate Email for free.