In this episode, our first special guest – J.R. Duboc – talks about how he manages to balance his busy work, doctoral studies, and Catholic spiritual life. Not only that, he still manages to find time to write articles for this blog! Amazing. I also answer an email question from a seminarian that desires to be a good priest and pastor!
Carlos, a seminarian from Edmonton, Canada, asked if I could give him some resources that he could use to organize his time and tasks more efficiently. Rather than bog him down with long winded articles from my site (ha!) I shot him three resources that I believe are key to finding a way to better organize your time.
Inbox Zero - an effective way to handle email (mentioned in the podcast).
In the interview with J.R., we discuss why GTD is the productivity method of choice for this French Catholic. The surprising thing is that, although he is an advocate for GTD, he is very honest in relaying that it took him about 2 years to fully implement it into a habit. Forming productive habits is necessary in order to perform extraordinary work. It’s just like prayer, unless you form the habit it’s unlikely that you will excel spiritually.
We also talk about how being productive and efficient with your work is actually very much inline with Church Teaching. In fact, J.R. notes that David Allen‘s (creator of GTD) ideas about work come very close to the philosophy of JPII in regards to sanctity and purpose through labor (see his encyclical on human work. very cool stuff). Work makes you holy, but working as efficiently and effectively as possible (using that noggin of yours) makes you even holier.
Overall, this is an exciting interview that you won’t want to miss. I’d love to hear your questions and feedback for either me or J.R.! Leave me a voicemail 24/7 at 714-643-5301.
Every new year we come up with new things that we would like to change – and that is no surprise. It is also not surprising that most of the goals that we would like to complete fail within the first two weeks. There is a very simple reason for this: big life-changing goals are hard to make into habits. While they may be difficult stick to, your new year resolutions are not impossible to accomplish. However, if you expect to change long-ingrained habits, you need a concrete way to track progress toward your goals.
David Seah is a designer who created the Concrete Goals Tracker. The original purpose of the goals tracker was to allow him to ensure that he was spending time doing the things that truly made his business better. The great thing is, he made an editable version – which means that you can use it for just about anything that you want.
The Concrete Goals Tracker allots points for specific tasks that help to further an overall change that you want to see. For example, since I am freelancing I use the goals tracker to make certain that I am spending the majority of my time doing things that will sustain and grow my business. Although writing blog posts may be fun, it does not pay the bills (or the taxes involved with a business). However, that doesn’t mean that blogging and self-promotion is not important to a business, but they are not as important as signing up new clients.
Just to reiterate, the purpose of the goal tracker is not to be a task management system that you use forever. You will most likely use it for a few weeks to a few months in order to change your mindset and habits toward your goals. For a full explanation of the free template and to actually download it, you can head over to David Seah’s site.
