Here are 20 helpful quotes from Tim Challies new book Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity:
Productivity—true productivity—will never be better or stronger than the foundation you build it upon.
Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose.
- The simple fact is, you are not the point of your life. You are not the star of your show. If you live for yourself, your own comfort, your own glory, your own fame, you will miss out on your very purpose. God created you to bring glory to him.
- Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.
- You are responsible before God to excel in productivity.
- Although we complain about being busy, we also find that it validates us, as if we have only two choices before us: doing far too little or far too much. We somehow assume that our value is connected to our busyness.
- Busyness and laziness are both issues that arise from within. They are deficiencies in character that then work themselves out in our lives.
- Busyness may make you feel good about yourself and give the illusion of getting things done, but it probably just means that you are directing too little attention in too many directions, that you are prioritizing all the wrong things, and that your productivity is suffering.
- The absence of productivity or the presence of woefully diminished productivity is first a theological problem. It is a failure to understand or apply the truths God reveals in the Bible.
- You have limited amounts of gifting, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm, but unlimited ways of allocating them. For this reason productivity involves making decisions about how to allocate these finite resources.
- Your primary pursuit in productivity is not doing more things, but doing more good.
- You rely on tools to do work you cannot do yourself or to do tasks better than you could otherwise do them.
- We are committed to productivity and to a distinctly Christian understanding of it. Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. The reason we use these tools is that they enable us to be most effective in that calling.
- Doing good to others and bringing glory to God is not something you can possibly think about every moment of every day, even though it is what you are called to every moment of every day.
- A productivity system is a set of methods, habits, and routines that enable you to be most effective in knowing what to do and in actually doing it. An effective system involves identifying, deploying, and relying on appropriate tools. When functioning together, these tools enable you to operate smoothly and efficiently, dedicating appropriate time and attention to the most important tasks.
- Getting things done is not only a matter of managing time, but also a matter of managing energy.
- You do not exist in this world to get things done. You exist to glorify God by doing good to others. Remind yourself often of this important truth.
- Your responsibility is to plan, organize, and execute to the best of your ability, but to realize that circumstances and providence may interrupt and delay even your best laid plans.
- Prayer is an indispensable part of biblical productivity, because it causes us to acknowledge that God is sovereign over all of our plans, and it pleads with God to help us make wise and God-honoring decisions.
- As Christians we are called to serve God by serving others. In each of our areas of responsibility we are to serve and surprise. As we turn to our weekly checklist, we will work toward this question: How can I serve and surprise in the week ahead?