Productivity

Daily Gleanings about the importance of focus for productivity and a case study in thinking about productivity in the context of full-time church work.

Daily Gleanings about the importance of community for enabling productivity in settings and times where you feel like you’re under pressure.

Daily Gleanings about planning preaching and coordinating it with academic work.

Daily Gleanings from Michael Hyatt about the importance of consistent effort over time and this effort’s relationship to (mega)batching.

Daily Gleanings from Todoist about how to do a weekly review to keep perspective amid hectic weeks.

Ben Blackwell provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Ben stresses scheduling time both for writing and for rest.

Ben Blackwell provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Ben stresses scheduling time both for writing and for rest.

Daily Gleanings about the challenges inherent in knowledge work and ways of balancing productive work with healthy engagement in the rest of life.

Daily Gleanings about focus and Focusmate.

Daily Gleanings about improved cross-compatibility among word processors in Zotero and about exporting information from PhraseExpress.

Daily Gleanings from Freedom about avoiding procrastination and Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s thoughts on how to foster focused work as a busy academic.

Daily Gleanings from Freedom about distractions (digital and otherwise) and how to overcome them to improve your focus on what matters.

Daily Gleanings about how David Allen would design software for GTD and how to use Todoist to leverage the Eisenhower matrix.

Daily Gleanings about simple productivity improvements to try and better understanding the importance of networks for work in biblical studies.

Daily Gleanings from RBL about Heath Thomas’s commentary on Habakkuk and Rocketbook about maximizing productivity.

Daily Gleanings about complex systems, their failure, and remedies for these failures, as well as brief suggestions for restoring motivation.

Daily Gleanings from Dropbox about Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” and Freedom about time tracking.

Daily Gleanings from Freedom on the new Insight extension for Chrome and on how to manage time effectively and cut the clutter of distraction.

Daily Gleanings from Michael Kruger about ordination exams (with applications for new faculty) and from Todoist about “eating the frog” for productivity.

Daily Gleanings from Todoist on the Pomodoro technique and Peter Gurry on the Harklean Syriac.

Michael Thomas discusses the importance of sleep for knowledge work through the lens of a couple key anecdotal narratives. Todoist has published a helpful introduction to “GTD practices and what [they] think is the most intuitive way to implement the[se practices] in Todoist.” The essay comments, in part, that “the key to GTD isn’t the techniques or tools you use to execute tasks but rather the habits you employ on a daily basis to think about and prioritize your work.” ...

Freedom discusses how to use their “block all except” whitelisting feature to block out distractions and interruptions. For more discussion of Freedom, see these prior posts. John Meade surveys ch. 4 of Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten’s How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?(YUP, 2018) and promises a follow-up post “attempting to engage the authors on one of their examples from chapter 4 with a view to showing how they think diachony and TC work together.” ...

Daily Gleanings about the “Text and Canon Institute” and improving performance by minimizing distractions.

Daily Gleanings about Hume’s critique of miracles and the downsides of email.

I had two main takeaways from “Free to Focus” that I’ve already started implementing: megabatching and using technology to avoid distracting technology.

Doist provides a “complete guide to deep work.” The essay is mainly geared toward summarizing the advice of Cal Newport’s Deep Work with some additional insertions from Digital Minimalism. Both books are definitely worth reading. But Doist’s essay is a thorough crash course on the basics. ...

Gleanings on perfectionism and recent articles in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism.

Now that we’ve surveyed Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus,” we can to offer an assessment of its proposal. In a phrase, it’s “GTD for Essentialists.”

Gleanings about focus, distractions, and Paul’s thought about incorporation in the Messiah.

Continued review of Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus.” We discuss the three elements of “acting” on what you’ve identified as most important to pursue.