If you are looking for another Catholic site that melds work, productivity, and spirituality – then look no further. The Daily Saint, run by Mike St. Pierre, is a fantastic blog/podcast that really hits at the heart of the Catholic word ethic. He has a plethora of resources to help you kick butt at work and to focus on the things that truly make a difference.
Thankfully, Mike agreed to an interview on the Productive Catholic Podcast. Let me tell you, I am seriously in awe of how much this guy gets done. Not only does he find the time to spark a Catholic reformation and leadership revolution within a school of hundreds of kids, he manages to care for his family, and maintain his blog on a regular basis. It’s no doubt that he knows how to be effective.
In the podcast we talk about how he utilizes a hybrid form of GTD. While he uses an electronic means to keep track of tasks, he spends some time every morning planning his day in order to build a productivity anchor.
We also talk about how working smarter, not harder, is something that everyone should be striving for. Just working for the sake of working is not what leads to holiness, but working effectively, setting boundaries, and finding the best way of doing things is something God wants.
Lastly, one very interesting discussion was on leadership, and how it is a skill that is extremely important to every Catholic. Being a true leader involves inspiring others to be better in every way possible – that includes work. The church needs more leaders that can teach others the value of being effective. Currently, work is dominated by the secular and by secular leaders. Of course, not everything secular is bad, but if we want to spark a Catholic reformation of work, leaders need to teach younger generations how to become successful and make a difference in the working world for Christ!
If you are involved with Catholic social media, then you will love this interview. This episode features Matthew Warner, the creator of flockNote and the author of the blog Fallible Blogma.
We discuss how a father, husband, and Catholic managed to become an entrepreneur and create a valuable service to parishes and catholic organizations around the world. FlockNote allows parishes to reach their parishioners is ways that they never could before. Each member of the parish can choose how they want to be communicated to, and leaders can easily organize events and disseminate news. There is a whole host of other capabilities, too.
We also talk about time management and how Matt chooses what is important. Although there are countless opportunities to support the Church and also new creative ventures, he finds a way to weed out those things that may not be valuable to his overall goals. If you would like to find out more about Matt and the work that he is doing, check him out at Fallible Blogma. It was a blast to have him on the show, and I hope he finds to to come on again.
I highly recommend taking a look at using flockNote for your parish or organization. With the money that you spend on one snail mail shot to your parishioners, you could send unlimited messages to people in the way that they’d like to receive it. It is a fantastic way to keep everyone connected, informed, and in your community.
Are you looking to help the Church by putting your talents to good use? Or maybe you have a question on how to find the time to get important things done in your life? If so, leave me voicemail on the feedback line. I’d love to here about what you have going on and what you are doing to make a difference.
In this episode I give a HUGE thank you to some folks that sent in some emails recently. God has been tugging at my heart to return to updating Productive Catholic on a more consistent basis, and the feedback that I’ve received from some of you really confirmed that God wants me to continue. I had good reason to be away, my lovely wife decided that she wants to work full-time, and so I decided to work harder on my side-business so we could make that happen (if you don’t believe me, check out the Wall Street Journal article about it!). So once again, thank you for the feedback!
I also mention a few sites on interest in these episode. The first is True Manhood by Dave Dinuzzo, a great blog on manly purity. Next is Matthew Warner’s site Fallible Blogma, a great social commentray blog from a Catholic perspective. Lastly, I talk about The Daily Saint, a fantastic Catholic productivity blog done by Mike St. Pierre. I highly recommend his site, and I even play a little snippet from his podcast. (Maybe I can get him for an interview soon?)
For those that are new to Productive Catholic, I give an overview of the purpose of the site. Namely not just work as a means to holiness, but efficient valuable work as a means to holiness. I also touch briefly on tithing your talents and just how valuable your time is.
Since productivity is at the heart of this blog, I give you my top 3 productivity methods: Getting Things Done, Autofocus, and Franklin-Covey. Which of these are what I use now? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out, and why!
Lastly, what makes this blog and everything about it so exciting is your comments, questions, and feedback. If you have any of those, please leave me a voicemail at 714-643-5301 and you’ll get to hear your voice on the podcast!
Not too long ago, I was followed by Petros Media on my Twitter account. Unfortunately, somehow I got distracted and never got around to checking out their site. Boy was that a huge mistake. Petros TV is a fantastic site that brings together Catholic media projects and video into one easy place. Whether it is from CatholicTV, EWTN, or independent film-makers, the site is a great collection of some of the best Catholic media out there. Think of it as being the “Catholic Hulu” (it even looks like it).
If you get a chance this week, head on over and check them out. They publish pretty regularly, so there is always something new. We need more Catholic art, so please support them in any way that you can. Whether it’s commenting on their site, or donating to their cause, whatever you can do in support of them will help the Church tremendously (I am big on supporting Catholic art if you can tell).
Well… something interesting happened last week that took me a while to process. If you have been following my blog for a while, you’d know that I had been trying to convince my pastor that he needed a new Church website. Well, for a while it looked like I was going to get my wish and be able to tithe my time to the Church and build a cheap and killer web community for them. However, last week I got a call from my pastor that changed everything. In a nutshell, I was denied the web development opportunity that I desired. I was a little hurt and sad, but thanks be to God, he made what seemed to be a defeat into an even greater victory. How is that? Well, you’ll have to watch the video to find out! Read the full story
Thank you to everyone that participated in the search to find the top 5 Catholic web apps that are currently available out there on the interwebs. Although there is a lot of growing that needs to be done in the Catholic web development community, you all had some great suggestions! Now, without further delay, and much ado, here are the top 5 Catholic web apps!Read the full story
If you are deep into the Catholic blogging community, then this post will be of no surprise to you. So, over at Fallible Blogma, Matt Warner had a really cool idea about Catholic bloggers supporting Catholic speakers by writing about who they were. At first I was like, meh. I’ve heard a lot of Catholic speakers and I had a group of favorites so I wasn’t that excited about writing about a lesser known speaker (especially since one of my favorite speakers was already taken). However, I decided to do it anyway. Read the full story
Last week I asked for help in deciding what were the top 5 Catholic web apps out there on the Internet. Well, time is beginning to run out, and there are still a lot of voting to be done. As of right now, thanks to Suzanne Sadler, Jeff Geerling, and Steve from Catholic Q and A, Catholic Culture Site Reviews is out on top, with a number of other applications trailing close behind. I am sure there are other Catholic web apps out that deserve some love and attention. Read the full story
Hey guys! I love the web (if you haven’t noticed), and it’s only getting better and better every day. But I can’t keep track of everything. That’s why I need your help to find out which Catholic web applications out there are the best of the best. I have already listed a few in the side bar of my blog (i.e. flockNote, 4Marks, CatholicNewsLive etc.), but I am sure that there are many more out there that are just dying to be found. Read the full story
Wow. Trust me, you are not alone in wondering what the heck the title of this post means. I don’t usually do this on Productive Catholic, but @HumanaeVitae suggested that I try this post last night when I got writer’s block and couldn’t think of a good post. The question of impassibility is in various places of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, but as my friend pointed out Question 82 of the supplement to the Summa is where the meat is. Rather than writing a whole treatise on the concept (since that has already been done by St. Thomas) I though that I’d make a short video that detailed my thoughts on the subject. In short, you will see that the problem of impassibility is nothing a little alcohol can’t fix.Read the full story
Last week I asked for help in deciding what were the top 5 Catholic web apps out there on the Internet. Well, time is beginning to run out, and there are still a lot of voting to be done. As of right now, thanks to 
