Your weekly roundup of insights and resources to help you get more done for the glory of God.
In Today’s Issue:
- Ultra-Processed Content
- You Might Be a Late Bloomer
- Is Our Ambition Being Used for God?
- Advice for Christian Writers
- Quote: David Murray on Sleep
Dear steward,
I’m on vacation this week, so there will be no new podcasts or articles from me. However, I have a great roundup of links below that I think you’ll find helpful!
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
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THE ROUNDUP
The best links I found this week
On Ultra-Processed Content (5 mins)
Cal Newport / Study Hacks
In this way, the users of social media platforms simulate something like the food scientist’s ability to break down corn and reconstitute it into a hyper-palatable edible food-like substances. What is a TikTok dance mash up if not a digital Dorito?
I really think this is a helpful analogy for thinking about our information diets. Most social media content is like ultra-processed junk food. It has little to no actual value, intellectually, socially, or spiritually—especially when compared to less processed forms of media.
We would be wise to limit our intake of this informational junk food and replace it with more nutritious stuff like books. Newport pushes the analogy even further in this episode of his podcast, which you might enjoy.
You Might Be a Late Bloomer (19 mins)
David Brooks / The Atlantic
This is a longer read, but worth it.
It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable—they didn’t just do the things early bloomers did but at a later age. Late bloomers tend to be qualitatively different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to or discouraged by our current education system. They usually have to invent their own paths. Late bloomers “fulfill their potential frequently in novel and unexpected ways,” Karlgaard writes, “surprising even those closest to them.”
Is Our Ambition Being Used for God? (4 mins)
Hugh Whelchel / Institute for Faith, Work & Economics
Ambition is part of our anthropology, something God has hard-wired into human beings made in his image. Ambition is not good or evil, but something God has given us for our own and the common good.
Completely Unsolicited, Totally Anecdotal, But Perhaps Marginally Helpful Thoughts on Being a Christian Writer (8 mins)
Samuel D. James / Digital Liturgies
I found this to be excellent advice to aspiring Christian writers, and it matches my own experience.
A DOSE OF WISDOM
Quote of the Week
On a more mundane level, I notice (and so does my family) that I am much more irritable, bad-tempered, and likely to end up in conflict when I’ve skimped on sleep. No amount of productivity is worth that damage to precious relationships.
David Murray
