Mike Schmitz
Do you ever find yourself reacting to something, then immediately saying something like, “I can’t believe I just did that?” It may not be your fault – at least, not entirely. Join Joe & I as we take a look at the triggers in our own environments and consider how to overcome them – without doing or saying something that we’ll later regret.
I read a lot of books. But more important than adding to my bookshelf or being able to say I read the latest New York Times Bestseller, I want what I read to stick. I approach every book I read with the mindset that I’m going to take away at least one new idea – even the ones I don’t really care for. I want come away from each book I read as a different person than I was when I started it.
Read MoreIn a recent episode of Focused, my co-host David Spark & I interviewed Laura McClellan (a.k.a. The Productive Woman). It was a fun conversation, and one of the things we hit on was the topic of mastermind groups. I’m a big fan of mastermind groups, and a member of one myself. But for someone new to the idea I can see how the idea would be pretty intimidating, so I wanted to share some thoughts on how you can get your own mastermind group started.
Read MoreIn a recent Focused episode, David and I talked about a lot about calendaring and I mentioned I’d share a picture of my current NeuYear calendar. Here it is:
We’ve even got a special Focused branded version of this with shading for those of you who like the 12 Week Year. A perfect complement to the Personal Retreat Handbook if I do say so myself.
A couple of weeks ago, David & I talked about “moving the needle” in one of my favorite episodes of Focused to date. David shared his system for making sure the things he was getting done were in fact the right things, and it got me thinking about what happens after you identify what moves the needle for you.
Read MorePurposeful productivity is not a destination, it’s a journey. You’ll never fully arrive at it, but it is indeed a worthwhile pursuit. That is why I created Faith-Based Productivity to help people who are on their own purposeful productivity journey connect to their calling, discover their destiny, and live the life they were created for.
Read MoreFaith-Based Productivity is intentionally not like most other online courses. Depending on your perspective, that is either a strength or a weakness.
The course doesn’t give you a 5-step formula for reaching your full potential. It can’t straight-out tell you what your unique purpose and abilities are (no one can). But the course will help point you in the right direction and get you asking the right questions, helping you to uncover your unique talents and abilities.
By understanding your own passions and skills, you can connect to your “why” and live the life God meant for you to live. This course will help you discover the will of God for your life and leverage whatever resources you possess to push past an average existence and do something awesome – no matter where you are or what you have when you start. But it’s still up to you to do the work.
Read MoreI know, I know – you’ve seen this before. Except not really. The development of Faith-Based Productivity has taken some unexpected turns the last couple of months. Today I want to share with you the short story of what exactly it is and how we got here.
Read MoreI’m a big advocate of productivity. But I’m not a big fan of how most people approach the topic.
Productivity is not cranking more widgets. Productivity is not doing all the things. True productivity is saying “no” to the things that don’t matter so you can say “YES!” to the things that do.
But that’s not what most people think of when they hear the word “productivity.” They conjure up a mental image of heartless efficiency – getting their tasks done faster so they can squeeze in a few more from the never-ending in their task manager.
Read MoreThere’s a fascinating discussion about the most recent Michael Hyatt episode of Mac Power Users over in the MPU forum where a couple fo listeners started responding to what Michael Hyatt calls his Freedom Compass. Michael talks about it in his new book, Free to Focus, but the TL;DR from the podcast episode is this:
Everything you do can be broken down into one of four quadrants:
It’s an interesting mental model, and I mostly agree with Michael’s argument that if you are able to align the things you care deeply about with the things that you are good at, that is where the magic happens. The one thing I would nitpick here is the use of the word passion.
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