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Faith-Based Productivity

Faith-Based Productivity

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Inspiration

April 18, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

It's all coming together...

I recently read an excellent book called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon which talks a lot about the creative process. At the very beginning of the book, he says something potentially revolutionary for any creative type that the more I think about the more I completely agree with:

Nothing is original.

Jonathan Lethem says that when people call something original, 9 out of 10 times they just don’t recognize the original references. William Ralph Inge has said that originality is undetected plagiarism.

Creating is a process that requires outside influence. If you are your only influencer, your work will never beas good as it could be. You are the sum total of your experiences, and what you create is the result of what you’ve allowed to influence you.

Your influences are the seeds of your inspiration.

Inspiration is the “a-ha!” moment happens when the piceces (your influences) fit together and everything just clicks. Inspiration lines things up and connects the dots, but YOU have to collect the dots before they can be connected. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.[1] Artists, songwriters, designers, developers, inventors, etc. are merely people who connect the dots in a way that no one has before.

As someone who creates, I can tell you that embracing this philosophy is extremely liberating.

The pressure to “create” can be suffocating. People’s expectations for you to produce something “original” can be paralyzing. But when you realize that art is a process and the journey produces the result, you are free to enjoy the ride and accept the results for what they are. You don’t have to judge your work, because what was created was simply to summation of the influences throughout the process.

What you need to realize is that it may take 1000 hours before you connect the dots in a way that works and you actually “create” something great or useful, but the 999 hours before the breakthrough comes are still part of the process. You don’t have to feel bad about just listening, just taking things in. It’s ok to be a sponge. Those moments are investments in the final product, whether it’s a song, painting, photograph, or novel. Surround yourself with the right influences and eventually something great will materialize – even if you’re the only one who thinks so!

Harold Ramis (Egor from the movie “Ghostbusters”) once said “Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful.” I really like this, and I’ve adopted this strategy in my own way (digitally). I’m just a guy with a brand new blog trying to “leave my dent in the universe”, but through RSS, podcasts, and Twitter I’m able to “surround” myself with people who are at the level I want to get to – people like David Sparks, Federico Viticci, Shawn Blanc, Mike Vardy, and Brett Terpstra. I call these people my “internet heros”[2]. And if you’re wondering how you can possibly “help” people like this, money is good.

Austin Kleon says in his book that “if you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.” The great part about the internet is that it instantly connects you with people who are MUCH more talented than you are! The trick is to seek out those people who can influence you to do greater work. They are out there, but you have put yourself in a position where you can receive. My pastor said recently that “not being teachable is the kiss of death for a Christian”. Really, it’s the kiss of death for anything in your life – if you refuse to be taught, you will never progress. You will never get better, you will never improve, and your world will stay small.

You are in complete control of your destiny. You can’t fix the past, but you can change the future. Karen Lamb said “a year from now you’ll wish you had started today”. Make a decision, start today, and then keep at it.

Never stop learning. Never stop improving. Never stop creating.

Stay inspired.


  1. From the book Manage your Day-to-Day by 99U  ↩

  2. My wife thinks I’m crazy – whenever I use this term, she smiles her sad smile of sympathy and usually calls me a nerd.  ↩

Mornings

April 10, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

I’m not a morning person. Don’t even talk to me before I’ve had my coffee.

I also have 4 kids (and a wife), so for me, the only time I get to myself is early in the morning. So guess what? I’m teaching myself to become a morning person.

And you know what? It’s really not that bad getting up early. I actually enjoy it.

A LOT.

I’ve been reading a book lately called The Early to Rise Experience by Andy Traub. It’s kind of a guided walk through establishing new productivity habits by being selfish with your time early so you can give it away later in the day. It’s a simple premise, but it really does make a difference. Here’s what I think is in the “secret sauce”:

  1. You’re at the top of your game first thing in the morning – energy is the currency of life. By the time you get home after work and have dinner and get the kids in bed, you’re literally spent. Whatever you have left isn’t going to accomplish much – sorry, but you’re useless.
  2. It allows you to put “first things first” – one of the key cogs to David Allen’s GTD system is the “weekly review”. Anytime GTD “doesn’t work” for someone, it is because they are not reviewing regularly. When you get up early, you have time to put thing in their proper place and plan out your day. Essentially, you attack your day before your day attacks you.
  3. When you “eat your frog” in the morning, you’ve already done something significant – Brian Tracy wrote a great book called Eat That Frog which is based on the famous Mark Twain quote “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” The gist of it is that if you do that hard thing you’ve been putting off because you don’t have enough energy first thing in the morning then the rest of your day gets easier.

Andy Traub says that 1 minute a day can change your life. The minute you hear your alarm clock to off, you have a choice – get up and attack your day with intentionality, or stay in bed and let it happen to you instead. Hitting the snooze is the epitome of the unstable man in James 1:8, who’s tossed to and fro by the waves of life. This man most likely knows he should be getting up earlier and being more prepared for his day, but just can’t bring himself to actually do it. He waits until the last possible moment to do just about anything – not just get out of bed. This is the guy in Matthew 25:14–30 who did nothing with his talent – don’t be that guy!

If you find yourself in this position, good news – you don’t have to live that way! Here are 5 things you can do to make a change:

  • Think a day ahead – suddenly never happens suddenly – it’s the cumulative result of choices you’ve made over a period of time. If you think ahead (i.e. go to bed early), you can break the habit chain and set yourself up for success tomorrow. If you string together enough of these “small wins”, you’ll find yourself winning the war.
  • Get Organized – being disorganized costs you more than you know. David Allen says that many people operate in “emergency scan modality” because they’re not organized enough to know what they’re supposed to be doing at any given time. Ed Cole said it this way: “the man without an organized system of thought will always be at the mercy of the man who has one.” Don’t let your life just happen to you and then get stressed out because you don’t have control – take control, today!
  • Visualize success – picture the perfect morning, whatever that looks like to you. Is it having coffee with your significant other before the kids get up? Going for a run? Walking the dog? Hitting the gym? Whatever it is, WRITE IT DOWN! On the paper, off the mind. Habakkuk 2:2 says to write the vision down so that people may run with it – you’ll never move yourself until you write it down.
  • Start TODAY! – don’t wait until tomorrow to stop procrastinating. I’ve written about it before, but the graveyard is full of people who ran out of tomorrows. You don’t need a lifetime to become great at something, you just need to be consistent. Just start! Karen Lamb once said “A year from now you will wish you had started today.”
  • Give yourself some grace – you won’t hit your goal 100% of the time. Some morning you will fail. That’s OK! As Jon Acuff says, “some beats none every time”. Every time you do succeed you are creating and reenforcing a new success habit. Just keep going!

Make it happen, cap’n!

TextExpander Touch

April 9, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

David Sparks (a.k.a. “MacSparky“, one of my internet heroes and co-host of the Mac Power Users podcast) recently wrote a great post on some of the new changes to TextExpander touch for iOS. TextExpander is one of my favorite utilities for both Mac and iOS (I recently did a short screencast highlighting some of the ways I use TextExpander for Mac on my other site, Semipro Workflows).

If the $4.99 price tag for TextExpander touch is too rich for your blood, pick it up now because it’s on sale for only $1.99. That’s an insane deal on a great little piece of software.

Your Mind

April 8, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

Your mind is a weapon, and education is the tool to sharpen it! Use it righteously.

— Bishop Dale Bronner (@BishopBronner) April 8, 2014

Well said, Bishop Bronner.

Intro to TextExpander

April 6, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

I recently did my first screencast of some basic uses for one of my favorite Mac utilities, TextExpander. TextExpander is an integral part of my workflow, and a utility I don’t think I could work without anymore. Using a Mac without it just feels weird now.

You can check out the video screencast (and hopefully many more in the future) at my other site, Semipro Workflows. Let me know what you think and what you’d like to see in future screencasts.

Perspective

March 28, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

Sometimes all all you need is a fresh perspective.

Sometimes you just need to see things from another angle, or see what things look like from the other side.

Your perspective can either drive you to slay giants or keep you on the sideline instead of entering your promised land.

Perspective will either propel you with passion or paralyze you with fear.

David didn’t look at the size of the giant, he looked at the size of his God. The spies in Numbers 13 though couldn’t look past the opposition they faced. They had a “grasshopper mentality” which kept them small.

Don’t tell God how big your mountain is – tell your mountain how big your God is!

All In

March 22, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

David Allen (the GTD guy) once said there are only 2 things you have to do: what your’e doing right now, and everything else.

The first time I heard it I laughed (you probably did just now too), but as I thought about it really made a lot of sense me. No matter how many things you have to do, you really can only do one at a time. Multi-tasking is a mirage, and “business” is a fictional badge of honor that we give ourselves to justify the fact that we can’t manage our time or our priorities. The human brain was just not wired to sustain this kind of lifestyle (short-tem memory can only hold 5–9 things at any one time). Tony Schwartz wrote an excellent book titled “The Power of Full Engagement” where he talks about how we really need to manage is our energy, and when you’re attention is being pulled in a million different directions your energy is constantly being depleted – it’s very inefficient. It’s like having 25 programs open on your computer at a time. You can only use one at a time, but having them all open will kill your battery pretty quick. You can skip back and forth between your different programs, but you won’t actually get anything done that way.

Jim Elliot, the Christian missionary, once said “wherever you are, be all there”. That is my goal this year – to escape “emergency scan modality” and quit putting out fires so that I can be fully engaged in whatever I’m doing at any given time. I intend to live my life in “Full-Screen mode”, eliminate distractions and focus on what’s really important.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore, but my 3 words for the year[1] are:

  1. Focus
  2. Order
  3. Fun

All of these (to me) revolve around the theme of being present. I need to focus on what’s important by putting in their proper place, which ultimately will allow me to enjoy my time with my 4 young boys. I don’t want to take them for granted and I don’t want to miss one opportunity to build a fort, read a story, or snuggle at bedtime. I won’t be able to make it happen 100% of the time, but I want to be fully there as much as I possibly can.


  1. an idea I stole from the Productivityist, Mike Vardy – I highly recommend you listen to his podcast “Mikes on Mics”.  ↩

Success

March 17, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

Success is on the other side of inconvenience. – Dale Bronner

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Details Matter

March 17, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

Details matter. It’s worth waiting to get it right. – Steve Jobs

He would know.

Max Capacity

March 12, 2014 By Mike Schmitz

I’ve been on a bit of a productivity kick for awhile now.

For me, the issue is bigger than just finding more efficient ways to do things. It’s a matter of stewardship, of doing the most with what you have, and hearing God say “well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your master.”

So when I read 2 Kings 4:1–7, I see more than a woman who’s desperate. I see a woman who:

1) worked with what she had
2) tapped into God’s abundance as she increased her capacity

She had the oil to start with. She didn’t have much, but that doesn’t matter in God’s economy. God will work with whatever seed you are willing to sow, and He always works by multiplication so it doesn’t take long to increase.

But the oil stopped flowing as soon as she ran out of vessels. In other words, when she reached max capacity, the provision stopped.

Now she had enough to meet her desperate need, but how many Christians never get to the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10 because they reach “max capacity”?

In Deuteronomy 7:22, God tells the Israelites that he won’t give them the whole promised land at once because they wouldn’t be able to take possession of it. My goal is to help people increase their capacity so they can walk in God’s abundance, achieve their God-given destiny and take possession of their promised land.

So productivity to me is not just a passion – it’s the key to walking in your destiny. I hope you see the importance of it too and I hope when it’s all said done you too can enter into the joy of the master.

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A blog by Mike Schmitz about the intersection of faith, productivity, and technology.

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