Do More Better: A review of sorts

In my on-going quest for an organized life, I just read Do More Better by Tim Challies. To be honest, I started it during my outrageously busy time, then realized that I did not have time to implement ideas, and finally finished it this week!

I like the book. Challies starts with "why" we need to do more better: for God's glory. And what is "better": to do good for the glory of God and the benefit of others. He defines productivity as "effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm of the good of others and the glory of God." I work much better with a purpose and one that makes sense to me.

I'll be upfront with you: I am not implementing everything he suggested the way he suggested it. My life doesn't quite fit into nice categories simply because of the mix of "somewhat busy", "wildly busy", and "fairly quiet" months, and what works well for one month might not work for the rest. Also, Challies is very much a tech guy and I still prefer taking notes on paper and using my paper agenda. Just as with Redeeming Productivity by Regan Rose (see here for my review of his book), I read everything, started up things that I could see would help me, and will go from there. In fact, I'm now using my own system built from pieces of both books.

What did I find very helpful? 

First, listing my areas of responsibility and breaking down what each one actually looks like. That gave me the opportunity to decide if I wanted to keep being responsible for all the tasks, if I was missing anything, and what to do about it.

Second, despite my desire for non-tech methods, I did download a task tracking program (a free one, at least to start). I have all of my current and summer responsibilities set up and I can see what needs to be done. I have a number of lists for this week, upcoming, regular items, and long-term plans, some of which are broken down into many steps; for example, there are 31 different tasks under "Sunday School Fall Prep"! It's a good system and I can add things as I think of them so I don't have to worry about forgetting things.

I suspect that someone who has a different sort of work and life schedule than mine might benefit more from this book. That said, I'm glad I read it and found some help in getting things more organized so I can be more productive for God's glory and the good of others.