Godward Toil

eProductivity blog honors mothers, challenges fathers

eProductivity guru and brother-in-Christ, Eric Mack, posted a touching tribute to his wife, and a biblical challenge to fathers and husbands yesterday.   

A Heritage of Habits: GTD for the family

I desire to have children who are fruitful and focused for the Lord, and family that lives in a next-action mindset, ready to take whatever next steps in faith we are called to take.   

In that vein, I have been thinking a lot over the past two years about how to incorporate the GTD methodology and other principles of productivity in our family's life, and how to instill these practices in our children from a very early age.   I mindmapped a bunch of ideas about this a couple of years ago, including how to leverage knowledge of child development to instill next-action thinking in kids.    Here is an example (.pdf) of one such map (note: it's pretty busy, so you'll need to zoom in to read small font in some parts).  I have others that I hope to share as I blog more about this.   

I was inspired to re-look at these old maps by a terrific post by Micheal Sliwinski that I read today at GTD Times.  The article offers good, concrete advice for families based on Michael's experiences implementing GTD at home.   I recommend checking it out if you're thinking about how to do this with your family.    From what I can tell, Michael Sliwinski will be contributing regularly about this topic, so I'm eager to learn more from his experiences.

The inspiration to revisit my maps and ideas about GTD in the family comes at a good time.   First, I am preparing to teach a three-part seminar in Sunday School at our church.   This seminar will build on the pilot seminar I presented a year ago to three couples from our church.   The presentation this month will have many more participants, God willing; and I suspect those who attend will be at various points in the life cycle.   I know that family life and child rearing is important to this group, so I need to refocus myself on these ideas in order to be as helpful and relevant as I can be.   

Second, it's a good time for this to resurface because our family is preparing to move to new home in June.  So, we're in major planning and set-up mode.   We're doing lots of things to try to build GTD into our new living space.   For example, we've dedicated what was the dining room in the house to be a "family office," with the idea of having a dedicated productivity hub for the kids.   I'm also building a home office where I'll have my own hub.   It's an exciting time to think through how we want to order our lives and our children's habits.

With a move and a job change coming in the next two months, I doubt I'll blog any more than my usual 2-3 posts per month.   But I'm eager to use some of these opportunities to gather and pray through my developing ideas about GTD for God's family.

Do you (I) need an Internet diet?

Eric Mack has written a great post about a three-month "Internet Diet" where he unplugged and really got things done.   It is a persuasive and, for me, convicting post.   I highly recommend it.  Before you read it, ask the Spirit to do Psalm 139 in you as you read:

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts! 
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting! 

Link to Piper Health Wealth Prosperity Message .mp3

Here is the .mp3 of the full Piper sermon excerpted in the video posted earlier today.   

[Via comment on Between Two Worlds by Tony Byrne, pointing to comment by Rae at Purgatorio]

Hyatt: Don’t Leave God Out of Your Plans

Michael Hyatt is CEO and President of Thomas Nelson, a large Christian book publishing company.  I have linked to him in the past, and yesterday he wrote an excellent post that gets at the relationship between our work and God's, which I have explored here in the past. 

GTD overview for creative types

There is no shortage of GTD resources on the web, but Mysterious Flame recently did a nice concise overview.  The author of this blog is interested in productivity in creative endeavors. 

Eric Mack e-Productivity Conference Going Strong!

Eric Mack's eProductivity conference is going strong in Manila.  He cleverly live-posted text and and picture of his audience as part of one of the sessions to demonstrate the ease and power of setting up a website.

I had the privilege of offering some input on some of the the conference content, and I've been praying for Eric and his team, so it's exciting to see the conference in full swing.

Erratum: Mack conference not until November

Eric Mack was kind enough to comment on my post about the work he is doing in Manila.  He also graciously pointed out an error in what I reported:   his most recent trip was to plan the conference, which is scheduled for the last week in November.   I hope Eric will forgive me for my poor reading comprehension.  I guess the good news is that it's not too late to book a ticket to Manila to attend the conference!         

Eric Mack posts from Philippines productivtity conference

Eric Mack blogged this week from a productivity conference in Manila, Philippines that was hosted by a massive  Evangelical church (Cathedral of Praise) there. Eric was the featured speaker.  For anyone interested in the intersection between productivity and Christianity, I recommend reading the posts about the Philippines Conference (and his blog in general).

For those who don't know about Eric Mack, he is a Christian who also is a well-known blogger and eProductivity expert. Eric has worked for many years in the consulting, productivity, and technology worlds. He has worked with David Allen Company for years.  Of interest, he also graduated in 2006 from the Master's College with a degree in business (a speech he gave at 2006 convocation is worth listening to).