Your weekly roundup of insights and resources to help you get more done for the glory of God.
In Today’s Issue:
- Habit-Tracking Sheet
- Psalm 24 on Stewarding Your Life
- 3 Prayers to Renew Your Work
- Your Vocation Isn’t Radical Enough
- Weakness Is a Gift
Dear steward,
Mark Twain said, “A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.”
His point was that it takes time and diligence to break a bad habit or form a good one.
One of the most practical applications of this truth is the age-old advice that if you want to build a new habit, you should track it.
The simplest implementation is just mark on a calendar every day you did the habit (or didn’t do it, if you’re goal is to break a bad habit).
The main benefit of tracking habits is visibility. Instead of operating on hunches, you’re working with data. Just about every time I start tracking a new habit, I discover that I thought I was doing the habit more frequently than I really was.
- You think you’re reading your Bible daily, but it turns out to be more like 3x a week
- You think you’re exercising 2-4x a week, but on average, it’s more like 1x
- You think you’re only snacking at night 1–2x a week, but really it’s 4–5x
We have this tendency to take our best weeks and assume that’s the average. But when you start tracking things, it forces you to be honest. And I think that’s one of the reasons we avoid this age-old advice.
Everyone knows they should track their habits. But how often have you actually done it? We’ll say it’s too much of a hassle, but really, we’re hiding from the truth. Change is painful. And sometimes we’d rather live in delusion than face the road ahead.
But if we’re serious about growth, shouldn’t we be serious about tracking the habits that will help us grow? Even if that means going through the hassle of tracking them for a season?
If you want to take the plunge into tracking your habits, here’s a simple printable worksheet you can download.
That sheet comes from POWER Mornings, my course that helps believers build 5 unbreakable daily habits for spiritual and personal growth. For the month of June, the course is marked down to $19 when you use the code JUNE2025 at checkout.
Brought to You by Shortform
Have you ever heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit?
Want to know where that came from? A 1960s self-help book written by a plastic surgeon. Maxwell Maltz observed that it took about three weeks for his patients to get used to their new looks. No research, just an anecdote from one dude. Yet, hundreds of thousands have based their habit goals on this “common knowledge” that it turns out was completely made up. And didn’t even have anything to do with habits to begin with!
The science about how we change, what works, and why, is constantly developing. And it’s hard to stay on top of it all, and to sift through what’s true and what’s not.
That’s where Shortform comes to the rescue.
Shortform provides summaries and analyses of over 1,000 nonfiction books. One of my favorite features is how they will point out if there’s a disputed point in a book, like a study that has disproved something the author is saying, as in the case above.
Shortform doesn’t just save you time; it helps you become a more discerning reader. And it helps you get the facts.
Give Shortform a try with a 20% discount using my link: shortform.com/reagan
Weekly Word
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,”
– Psalm 24:1
God owns it all. Your time, your energy, your gifts? All His. So today, work diligently not just for gain, but as a faithful manager of His resources.
Worth Your Time
- Three Prayers To Renew the Way You Work (4 mins) These three prayers serve as excellent models for seeking the Lord throughout the workday in decision-making, disappointment, and more.
- Your Vocation Isn’t Radical Enough (54 mins) This was an interesting discussion about the doctrine of vocation and how the church talks about it today. It will get you thinking more deeply about your own beliefs about calling and how that squares with the Scriptures and history (Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts)
- Three Ways Weakness is a Gift (4 mins) Darryl Dash shares several reminders for when we’re faced with the idol of competence. Your weakness is a gift.
Words of Wisdom
“A Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal.”
– R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man
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