jeff mikels

Here is my activity/productivity list for the day:

• Devotional study of Psalm 116 (BI: Those who know God’s salvation respond with love.) — 30 minutes
• Prayer bike ride through a new neighborhood — 60 minutes
• Blog about my productivity experiment — 40 minutes
• Work on processing audio for Sunday’s sermon — 25 minutes
• Make lunch for kids and watch AFV with them — 60 minutes
• Finishing sermon audio process and upload — 30 minutes
• Reloaded home Email Server — 20 minutes
• Converted a Simpsons video for my Palm Pilot — 10 minutes
• Blogged my sermon — 10 minutes
• Made dinner for the kids and watched a movie with them — 2.5 hours
• Hanging out with Jen, working on miscellaneous household things for the rest of the evening.

Analysis

According to my productivity experiment, here’s how my day broke down.

Personal

• Prayer: 60 minutes
• Bible: 30 minutes
• Other Books: 0 minutes
• Total: 1.5 hours

Family

• Time with kids: 3.5 hours
• Time with Jen: 2 hours
• Total 5.5 hours

Mission

• Direct contact: 1 person (15 minutes)
• Spiritual conversation: 0
• Strategic planning : 0
• Total 15 minutes

Routine

• Managing home: 20 minutes (fixed email server)
• Managing church: 65 minutes (blogged Sunday’s sermon)
• Total 1.5 hours

Wow! As I look at this list, I’m thinking “That’s how I’m starting my week long productivity experiment?” It doesn’t look very productive to me. I’m going to have to do better.

Popularity: 25% [?]

I’m entering into a week of experimentation. I’m experimenting with myself to see how productive I can be.

Just yesterday, I preached a message on how we can actually find fulfillment in our pains and struggles, and I was thinking that something uncomfortable for me is the bearing down into a routine of productivity. Along those lines, I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about how much I’m really capable of and whether or not I’m really capable of more than I usually accomplish in a week.

Therefore, I’m embarking on a contest with myself to see just how productive I can be for only one week. (I like short sprints better than long races, so I’m telling myself that it will just be for this one week.)

My plan is simple. I intend to write one blog post every day detailing what I did that day according to a few key productivity markers. I’ve chosen these “markers” to be the measurables by which I can attempt to see daily improvement. However, these are in rough form right now, so I’m sure they will change over the course of this week or any other week I do this experiment.

Productivity Markers:

Personal

• How much time have I spent in prayer?
• How much time have I spent reading the Bible?
• How much time have I spent reading other books?

Family

• How much time have I spent with my kids?
• How much time have I spent with my wife?

Mission

• How many people have I had direct, personal contact with?
• How many people have I had a spiritual conversation with?
• How much time have I invested in strategic planning for the church?

Routine

• How much time have I invested in managing home details — and what did I accomplish?
• How much time have I invested in managing church details — and what do I have to show for it?

Suggestions? What are some of your suggestions for how I should be measuring my productivity?

Popularity: 24% [?]

I thought this article at Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox was interesting. For my own reference, here are the first 5 suggestions and the ones most relevant to me personally:

1. Blog your city — Talk about upcoming city-wide events, upcoming service projects of your church, share photos of the city, neighborhoods. Use your blog to love on your city and her people. Click here for an example. 

2. Blog the news, pop culture, issues — Weigh in on these things with a biblical perspective (and, a loving one). Click here for an example. 

3. Blog on money and personal finance — That’s what this “anonymous” guy does on his blogs. He blogs on something dear to his heart — money — and his company — Moose Tracks Ice Cream — gets great publicity.

4. Blog on marriage, family, and parenting — Give tips, offer links to relevant news and reports, and, of course, your sermon series on those topics.

5. Blog devotional comments throughout week — Invariably you will come across golden nuggets of truth in your sermon preparation time that will not make it to the pulpit on Sunday. Use these chips of gold to take your people deeper into the Word.

Popularity: 15% [?]

A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink .

Daniel Pink has written a very interesting book about the coming shift from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. He makes an interesting claim that the Information Age is already over and a new way of doing business has begun. The book is mostly about business principles, but it has a lot to say to churches and church leaders (something I’ll tackle in an upcoming post). » Click here to read the rest. «

Popularity: 13% [?]

The title of this post comes from a video posted on Guy Kawasaki’s blog about a Chicago company called Threadless that has users create designs for T-Shirts and then sells the finished product. I thought it was an interesting way to talk about there business, and I haven’t finished watching the video yet, so I’m posting the link here for my own future reference. You might like it too.

If you have the time to watch it, post a comment about what you think about “creating and monetizing” a community.

Popularity: 10% [?]

One of my favorite blog sites is http://presentationzen.com because it takes a critical look at the way people present information in a public setting. As a pastor, I’ve been presenting information to people for a while now, and I’ve been using powerpoint to be a visual aid in the process, but this site has changed my thinking quite significantly on what it takes to give a good, entertaining, and memorable presentation. If you want to improve the way you communicate to groups of people, whether you use powerpoint or any other visual aids, you should give this website a good bookmarking.

Not long ago, the author of the site posted a list of significant books in the form of a Christmas buying guide. After reading it, I went to the library to pick up as many as I could find. I’ve only made it through one so far (and my library only had a couple of them). My next post will be a summary of the lessons I’ve learned from reading that book.

Popularity: 5% [?]

This past week, Jen and I had the privilege to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit via satellite. Over the past five years, I have been able to attend four of these events live at the South Barrington campus, and they have been remarkably impacting for me.

This year, though, it was a little too far and a little too expensive to attend the main campus, so we went to the Noblesville satellite location, and even though it was by video, it was still incredibly powerful. I have really appreciated all the leadership resources that Willow Creek puts out.

Well, they have just announced a leadership training opportunity that has all the others beat. It’s called [South Haven][sh] and it is an intimate » Click here to read the rest. «

Popularity: 8% [?]