Your weekly roundup of insights and resources to help you get more done for the glory of God.
In Today’s Issue:
- Time Debt
- Bearing Good Fruit
- The Battle for Attention
- A New E-Ink Device
- A.W. Tozer on Hurry
Dear steward,
A 2023 Pew Research survey found that 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they “feel too busy to enjoy life.”
Perpetual busyness can certainly steal our joy, but it can also be an obstacle to our faithfulness. Paul Washer once said,
One of the greatest attacks of the enemy is to make you busy, to make you hurried, to make you noisy, to make you distracted, to fill the people of God and the Church of God with so much noise and activity that there is no room for prayer. There is no room for being alone with God. There is no room for silence. There is no room for meditation.
I’m obviously a big believer that learning to better manage our time can help us to calm the busyness of life, so we can focus more on what matters. But I’ve also learned that having a well-managed calendar or to-do list only goes so far. For the chronically overcommitted, busyness is more of a mindset malady than a productivity problem.
What if we evaluated our commitments with the same sobriety we exercise when considering taking on debt? What if we saw every “yes” as a tiny loan with its attendant interest rate? How might this change our relationship to over-commitment and busyness?
I’m convinced this single mindset change might just be the ticket to escape the busyness trap. And that’s the topic of this week’s podcast: Time Debt and the Busyness Trap.
THE ROUNDUP
The best links I found this week
WHAT’S NEW
How to Bear Fruit in Every Good Work (4 mins)
Clay Randall / Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics
God does not desire for us to grow in intimacy and Christ-likeness (who we ARE) while not actively engaging with the world around us (what we DO). He wants us to also be productive. Certainly, what we do should involve explaining the good news of Jesus to those around us. However, it also means living out and incarnating that good news in whatever social and cultural spheres he has placed you. One of the primary spheres in which that happens is in your profession.
The Battle for Attention: How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age? (32 mins)
Nathan Heller / The New Yorker
A study conducted in 2004 by the psychologist Gloria Mark found that participants kept their attention on a single screen for an average of two and a half minutes before turning it elsewhere. These days, she writes, people can pay attention to one screen for an average of only forty-seven seconds.
Meet the DC-1: A 60fps Paper-Like Computer
This is a cool-looking product. Not sure how the tech works, but the DC-1 from Daylight Computers is supposed to be like an e-ink display (think Kindle e-reader, or ReMarkable tablet) but much smoother and without the ghosting. It’s also very pricey.
On Redeeming Productivity
Time Debt and the Busyness Trap (21 mins)
Why you constantly take on more than you can handle, and how viewing commitments as debt can help you slow down.
A DOSE OF WISDOM
Quote of the Week
God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.
A.W. Tozer
