PastorHacks

Sorry...

Sorry- Yesterday's AND today's posts, previously scheduled, seem to have disappeared- seems like a Typepad issue. Dog gone it. Trying to figure out what the deal is... Apologies for the lack of content today. I'm in Southern Cali for a wedding and not sure if I can get something else up...

Purge!

My wife and I are (insanely) considering putting our house on the market right now. The combination of an impending birth (#3!), no yard and a Gestapo-like HOA are lighting a fire under us to move. The housing market, and the improbability of finding what we want/need for what we can afford is spraying cold water all over the fire... but I digress.

Recently we packed up a bunch of stuff we weren't really using in an effort to declutter the house and ready it for showing.

I gotta tell ya'- it's really nice. I'm looking at all this clean space where once there was piles of stuff I thought I might use someday, wanted to keep around just in case, and I'm thinking... did I really need all that?

David Allen asks- Do you want to have the most productive year yet in 2008? It starts, he says, with clearing the decks:

"It's time to purge.

The end of a year is a great metaphorical event to use to enhance a critical aspect of your constructive creativity -- get rid of everything that you can!

Your psyche has a certain quota of open loops and incompletions that it can tolerate, and it will unconsciously block the engagement with new material if it has reached its limit."

He gives some great practical ways to do this:

"Do you want to feel more useful? Hand off anything that you are under-utilizing to someone who can employ it better. Make sure you really let it go, with no strings attached.

Want some new visions for your life and work? Clean up and organize your boxes of old photographs. Do the same with the digital photos that have been accumulating on your computer.

Want to know what to do with your life when you grow up? Start by cleaning the center drawer of your desk, or the catch-all drawer in your kitchen. You won't know how good you'll feel until you do it."

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Read the rest here

Motivate!

43 Folders highlights some good suggestions on how to motivate yourself...

“Incentivise yourself, e.g. ‘If I spend an hour cleaning and tidying, I definitely deserve

when I’m done’.”

“I set the timer for one hour every weekend and make myself tackle chores before I’m allowed to do anything else. When the beeper goes off, I stop and do something fun for a while. Repeat all day Saturday until everything truly essential is done.”

“Don’t look at everything all at once! Otherwise you won’t get anything done other than worry about all the stuff you need to do. You have to pick at it, otherwise it overwhelms you.”

“Just pick one thing and do it, I pick the smallest thing if I’m feeling unmotivated. As you start chipping away the motivation will come to tackle the larger things.”

What others ways have you come up with to motivate yourself, to do those parts of the job that aren't necessarily glamorous or fun, but which, when gotten out of the way, free you up to do the more important things... if you can get them done, that is...???

Memos to the Disorganized: David Allen

"Completion of open loops, whether they be major projects or boxes of old stuff we've yet to purge and organize, prepares the ground for cleaner, clearer, and more complete energy for whatever shows up. We're often not sure what's next or what to tackle. At that point, just clean or complete something- something obvious and right in front of you, right away. Soon you'll have the energy and clarity to know what's next, and you'll have cleared the decks for more effective responsiveness on every front. Process your in-basket, purge your emails, or clean your center desk drawer. You've got to do it sometime anyway." -David Allen, Ready for Anything

Here's the ideal...

David Allen of GTD fame has a metaphor he uses... "Mind like water."

Now, before you turn me in to WatchBlogs™ for being a New Age sympathizer, let's hear how he describes this ideal state for dealing with all the things (input) that comes our way.

He says "Behind all this lay the 'mind like water' concept, an image I'd come across years ago while studying karate. When you throw a pebble into a pond, what does the water do? It responds with total appropriateness to the force and mass of the rock. It does nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't overreact or underreact. It doesn't react at all. It simply interacts with the whatever comes to it and then returns to its natural state. The water can do that only by design. A human being can act this way only if he or she has a conscious system in place and if that system is built on principles that can withstand chaos and stress."

I find it odd that those of us (pastors) who preach the merits of life abundant and "peace that passes understanding" seem so often to live lives of neither.

Why is that?

Partly, it is the nature of our job. We're not just dealing with our own emergencies. In many ways, we're dealing with the life emergencies of everyone in our pastorate. For example, I worry not only about my own marriage, but the marriage of many others, in many different places on the continuum of health. Stress.

But a big part of it is a mess of our own making. We're the ones who live lives without margin, who over commit and underpray. We're the ones trying to run an organization (whether we like it or not) but who resist  accountability  for  our time and how we spend it, as if such a thing were an affront to our authority.

I'm coming to realize that, at least for me... and maybe for you... my disorganization is killing me. It's very literally sapping all the 'bundance out of my abundant life and leaving precious little peace.

Which is why I do this blog.

You know the old saw about the preacher and his/her pet hobby horses? That the guy who preaches a lot on lust is probably preaching to himself?

That's me.

But rather than lust (no, not perfect in that area) and preaching on it week in and week out, I do this little blog. It forces me to think about the level of crapitude in my systems, my inability to live with any sense of margin, my complete lack of organization and the resulting emergencies which cost me and my family so much. Got to get to a point where shalom is a reality in my life, and the peace that Jesus brings isn't drowned out by the chaos I create.

Got to get my act together. Mind like water. Hacking my life, my attitude, my systems to the point where I can deal with what comes my way appropriately, without over reacting, or underreacting.Working hard and trusting God with the results.

Wish me luck and hang in here at PastorHacks... gonna be fun.

memo to the disorganized

(Gordon MacDonald includes these "memos" in his book Ordering Your Private World)

"If my private world is in order, it will be because I have made a deliberate decision to begin the "ordering" process. Now!"

memo to the disorganized

(Gordon MacDonald includes these "memos" in his book Ordering Your Private World)

"If my private world is in order, it will be because I have chosen to press sabbath peace into the rush and routine of my daily life in order to find the rest God prescribed for Himself and all of humanity."

memo to the disorganized

(Gordon MacDonald includes these "memos" in his book Ordering Your Private World)

"If my private world is in order, it is because I have begun to seal the "time leaks" and allocate my productive hours in light of my capabilities, my limits, and my priorities."

memo to the disorganized

(Gordon MacDonald includes these "memos" in his book Ordering Your Private World)

"If my private world is in order, it will be because I have made a daily determination to see time as God's gift and worthy of careful investment."

memo to the disorganized

(Gordon MacDonald includes these "memos" in his book Ordering Your Private World)

"If my private world is in order, it will be because, having faced up to what drives me, I listen quietly for the call of Christ."