The Effective Faith Podcast

Toxic Productivity is being talked about more and more. 

But, if you want a solution to this ever growing and destructive problem, you need to know where it comes from.

When productivity tools and techniques are harnessed appropriately - they are inherently creative.  When productivity goes toxic - it becomes destructive.  It destroys our health, our relationships, and ultimately it makes us totally ineffective and unproductive.

This is episode 27 of the Effective Podcast: Toxic Productivity - What is it anyway. 

My name is Chris Wood and I run Effective Faith - helping you to be more than just productive.  At Effective Faith our aim is to intentionally focus on what matters most, to resist the ‘productivity’ idol and to help Christians live effectively for Christ in their everyday work

Year Planning. 

If you think you’ve missed the boat on this.  I’m here to tell you that is a lie. 

It is never too late to map out an Effective Year. 

So, if you haven’t planned 2024 yet, or you haven’t finished - this is the place to be.

Most of us can read but getting value from it can eludes us.

I suspect many people who don’t read, don’t read because they get little value from the books they read.  If you don’t get value from the books you read then reading it is a waste of time.

So - how can you read a book for all its worth?

There's no shortage of apps on the market today, all promising to revolutionise our productivity. It can sometimes feel like the app we use, the app we love, isn't flashy enough and so we get tempted to try and use the latest and greatest. Into this stream I want to interject and say "No! If the app works for you...USE IT!"

Recently I have been writing about how grace & humility are at the absolute heart of everything we seek to do.  These sit at the very core of our attempts to be more effective and to be more productive.  If we are a Christian believer then we will especially acknowledge this.  One of the things I have often thought about is where does prayer fit into our productivity and our desire to get things done.

Sitting over the top of our goals, our projects and our areas of focus is our vision and our values.  By vision, I mean our own personal mission statement.  That sounds a bit too grand for an individual person.  I mean, what is it that we hope to do in the short time we are living on this earth.  Having some kind of idea on this is, I believe, an essential part of living an effective life.  Therefore, we need to give time and focus to working out your personal vision and values for an effective life.

This week a listener question. We all struggle with focus and with organisation. We look at how to keep track of everything, plan ahead and prioritise and to keep focused without becoming overwhelmed and discouraged by what we can't get done.

Thomas Chalmers wrote his Essay in 1815 - The Expulsive Power of the New Affections. The only way to remove any unhealthy and unwholesome desires and habits from our hearts is to replace them with a new affections. This essay can help us in so many ways and Thomas Chalmers' thesis within it is at the heart of everything Effective Faith is all about.

This week we have another listener question - Our listener has been struggling to implement Time Block Planning for themselves and so this week I offer my thoughts on this approach to organising and managing your time.

E-mail is something that we all use every day. But we have a love/hate relationship with it. How can we stay on top of it? How can we manage our email effectively? Is email really all that great? And what alternatives might we use?

This week we are considering how to approach planning projects and what elements of a productivity system are most important? Should we start out with just some bits or should we try and set up a whole system all at once?

How do we know if we have the time to manage all the different requests that come into us each day? How can we keep focussed for the long term on what is actually important? How can we be sure we take time for important things that may not show up on our task manage or projects list?

We need an effective plan for the week ahead.

Most of us would like to be more organised but none of us want it to take over our lives. As we look at a question from a listener this week we consider how to become more effectively organised without it becoming a burden.

Know your enemy and know yourself. Knowing ourself is critical to our effective use of time and energy. Considering ourselves with sober judgement, with humility, is critical to knowing ourselves. If you want to be more effective, then consider yourself with sober judgement, with humility.

The technology and devices with us at all times have unlocked access to a wealth of knowledge that we often don't know what to do with.  There is so much value available to us right now and there is also a huge risk present in this access.  How do we have a healthy relationship with technology?

We all have 'stuff'.  Meetings, events, ideas, tasks, projects, notes files etc?  How do we keep track of it all?  Here is a basic guide to being effective with your time.

Imposter Syndrome is something that can plague us all.  It’s the feeling that we are a fake and fraud.  Whatever role we have, whatever we are setting out to do achieve, we convince ourselves that we are not qualified and we do not fit in.  That we are out of place.

Imposter Syndrome can be destructive to our effectiveness.

Imposter syndrome is a lie.

There are two ways to respond to this lie.  The wrong way and the right way.....

We all intuitively know, that if we spent all of our time on these small, mundane, every day maintenance tasks, then we would not get very far and we would not achieve very much.  We are never going to move the needle in our industry or achieve any of goals by cleaning our house, checking our e-mail, cutting the lawn, paying the credit card bill or any kind of other administrative housekeeping tasks.  In the grand scheme of things, they aren’t that important.  So why bother caring about them at all?  Why bother having a system for managing them at all?  Here’s how I look at it.

PACT - Patience, Action, Consistency & Time are the crucial building blocks to help us achieve what's important and be effective in life.

Managing the environment we are working is just as critical as managing our time and our energy.  This week we have some great tips on what to do to make our working environment as effective as it can possibly be.

With more and more apps and tools on the market than ever before, and all of them promising to solve your productivity problems, how can we decide which apps to use to help us be effective and get stuff done?