Biblical Productivity

A week or so ago I left the office on a Monday struggling to fight dissatisfaction with what I accomplished that day. This can happen often, and often I tell my heart to embrace the simple grace of reaching the end of the day and leaving work behind until the next day. I need to let it go, because that's all I can do. Well, on that occasion I remembered a series of blog posts by CJ Mahaney on Biblical Productivity that he did about a year ago. I read them last spring while I was still in college. Actually, I read them mostly while I was in my 400 level Strategic Management class, and I did not feel guilty for giving less than 100% of my attention to my classmates' presentations or professor's lectures on common sense management systems that you really just cannot learn in the classroom in any depth that would compare to plain and simple learning through experience. It was a senior level class, but still very general education-like.

Anyway, back on topic...I decided I should look up CJ's posts again, and I was delighted to find that they had compiled the series into one pdf document which I could print out. Tonight I read through about half of it in less than an hour, and it is just full of great reminders of truth and strong application in daily responsibilities.

Here are some things that stood out, this time around.

• Busyness does not mean I am diligent
• Busyness does not mean I am faithful
• Busyness does not mean I am fruitful

What came to my mind is that it works the other way around as well. I do not need to be busy in order to be diligent, faithful, and fruitful. I'm thinking of busy in the sense of constant activity and never-ending possibilities of tasks.

CJ says:

When considering our schedules, we have endless options. But there are a few clear priorities and projects, derived from my God-assigned roles, that should occupy the majority of my time during a given week. And there are a thousand tasks of secondary importance that tempt us to devote a disproportionate amount of time to completing an endless to-do list. And if we are lazy, we will neglect the important for the urgent.

He later asks, "What distinguishes a fruitfully busy schedule from a non-fruitful busy schedule? I think it comes down to two important points: understanding our sin and understanding our roles." (emphasis mine)

He talks about the importance of acknowledging your dependence on God each day, and he quotes Charles Bridges, "It is nothing less than self-idolatry to conceive that we can carry on even the ordinary matters of the day without his counsel....Be in the habit of going to him in the first place - before self-will, self-pleasing, self-wisdom, human friends, convenience, expediency."

CJ also quotes R.C. Sproul as saying:

I realize that all of my time is God's time and all of my time is my time by His delegation. God owns me and my time. Yet, He has given me a measure of time over which I am steward. I can commit that time to work for other people, visit other people, etc. But it is time for which I must give an account.

Under his post on Roles, Goals, Scheduling, CJ says "getting more things done does not mean we are getting the right things done. . . . . My busyness may be procrastination in disguise. . . .Each day the number of requests we receive normally outnumber the time allotted for the day." I find these all to be true in my work.

In another post, he writes about the theology of work and how we are all called to the vocation that God has us in. That is helpful to reflect on. He also helpfully pointed out that I am not called to do everything. "It is liberating to know that God has called me to fulfill specific roles." He makes a good connection that "If I'm not fulfilling my roles, my goals will be misdirected, and I will be vulnerable to all manner of requests and fail to devote myself to what is most important."

And this is where I stopped reading tonight:

...our biblical productivity depends upon a schedule, which depends upon clear goals, which depends upon clearly defined roles. Working toward clarity on understanding my present roles is my first (and most important) step in developing biblical productivity. Defining our roles helps to ensure that we are doing stuff that matters each day, knowing we have in some small way advanced the gospel and served others.

Right now, I think my schedule is the area that is most foggy to me. However, I thank God for clearly establishing several different roles in my life right now, as well as some goals that go along with them. It's very helpful to evaluate how I approach my days in connection to the gospel truths that I believe. This blog series on Biblical Productivity serves me to make important gospel connections from the everyday and even mundane activities in my life. If you like, check out the full series for yourself.

Also, CJ's wife and daughters wrote a nice little book relevant to this topic called Shopping for Time: How to Do It All and NOT Be Overwhelmed.

photo: Salzburg, Austria 2007