An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Are you stuck? Productivity low? Seemingly unable to get things accomplished? If so, you’re not alone. And how to fix that problem is our topic for today.
Hi, I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and we’re talking to Matt Perman, author of How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to your Productivity.
Matt, great to have you with us.
Matt Perman:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Fred Zaspel:
Tell us what your book is all about. And what is the contribution you hope to make?
Perman:
I’m going to start with the second part that question, what is the contribution I hope to make? And it’s simple, but also bold. I’m trying to change the way we live our lives as Christians, and I’m trying to do it through the topic of productivity. Now, what’s the change I’m trying to make in how we live? It’s simply this: that we would live our lives in a way that’s more loving, which we all know is very biblical. But the thing we overlook is, first, how to love well – what does it look like to love people well in our churches, families, and communities? But second, we overlook the place of love in the workplace. That love is actually to be brought into the workplace and if we do our work in love, it furthers the common good and creates a solid testimony to the Gospel. Now, how am I doing this? Through the lens of productivity, because productivity affects all of us every day. Productivity is how we get things done. It affects the work you are doing all day long in your job, it affects your family life, your community life. It’s how you schedule and get things done, manage distractions, plan, all that stuff. And I’m saying if we can bring love and a biblical ethic into how we go about our productivity, that can have a significant impact on the world.
Zaspel:
Maybe this is a bad question, but what is the difference between being stuck and just being busy? What does being stuck look like? And are there symptoms of “stuckness” that we might alert us to the problem?
Perman:
Yes, certainly. Sometimes people are just busy and what we need to do is ask this question: are we busy with the right things? Sometimes we are really busy because we are doing important and valuable things; but, sometimes we’re busy just because we feel important by being busy and we’re not asking if the things were busy on are the things that really need to happen. One of the ways we get stuck with busyness is in what can be called the urgency addiction. That’s when we make our productivity choices, what we’re going to do next, on the basis of what’s urgent, what’s pressing for our attention, as opposed to what’s really important. And one of the main goals of this book is to help you get unstuck from being busy. But there are also other types of stuckness. There’s a whole bunch of different ways we get stuck in our productivity and that’s the focus of the book – how we get stuck in our productivity. There’s not just busyness, there’s distractions and interruptions and most of us get very frustrated by those, so I have a chapter on how to do your work with high focus and overcome distractions. There’s just not understanding the nature of our jobs very well, so I have a chapter on preparation. There’s things like – there’s a great book called The War of Art out there which talks about what’s called the resistance, this self-created block, to doing the work you know you should be doing which takes the form of procrastination and dread and distracting yourself, so I have a chapter on dealing with things like that and how to be a professional in your work.
Zaspel:
Just what do you have in mind when you talk about “productivity”? Productivity can sound very administrative – what does all this have to do with the average person?
Perman:
Yes, totally, it can sound very administrative. The typical definition of productivity is getting more done in less time. And that’s helpful, we all need that. We all need to get things done more quickly. We need to get more things done. But that definition is not sufficient, because it doesn’t take into account what things we are doing. It doesn’t matter how fast we’re going if we’re doing the wrong things to the first place. For example, if I go to the store to grab a carton of milk for someone and I come back with a carton of orange juice, it doesn’t matter how fast I got to the store. I was ineffective; I got the wrong thing. So our definition of productivity has to take into account what it is we’re doing. I define productivity as this: it’s getting the right things done in the least amount of time and in the best possible way and for the right reasons. When we look at this as Christians, in other words, our motives matter, because God weighs the heart. There’s lots of great secular productivity books out there and they give us great strategies and tactics, but they don’t deal with motives. And that means you could follow everything those books are saying and still not be productive before God because you’re doing things from the wrong heart, from the wrong motive. So, as Christians we need to come in – and this is at the heart of being gospel-centered in our productivity – we need to ask, “Why am I doing this?” And our motive needs to be first, love for God and second, love for other people. And so, I sometimes redefine productivity as this: fruitfulness in good works. So when the Bible talks about being fruitful as Christians, that’s really productivity. And I say let’s bring these great productivity strategies to help us be more fruitful in our Christian lives or the church and the world.
Zaspel:
So you’re talking about productivity, but not only in the workplace, but really in all of life as a Christian.
Perman:
Absolutely in all of life because you know, we only have one life. And there are different parts of our lives – there’s work, church, community, individual time, and so forth. But, it’s all one life. So I argue that we need to give just as much intentionality to our personal lives as we do our professional lives. Now, certainly, our work lives are a huge part of our life and so we do need to apply productivity there and I talk about that a lot. But the systems I’m giving and the principles I’m giving also apply outside of work to help you manage your whole life from a center of sound principles.
Zaspel:
Okay, what does a “gospel-centered” approach to this problem look like? This may be a new way of thinking for many. What is “gospel-driven productivity”?
Perman:
Yes, exactly. This goes right to the heart of the book. A gospel-centered approach to productivity involves just a few things. As I alluded to earlier, it really goes to motive; but it goes like this – first, you realize we are justified and accepted by God apart from works, apart from works in any sense. God justifies us through faith in Christ alone, not through faith and works. Whether those works are done for conversion or after conversion, it’s faith alone in Christ that justifies. Now, having been accepted through faith alone, now we are to live for God. We are to live the Christian life. And, interestingly, when asked how do we know how to live as Christians, the motivational structure of Paul’s thought seems to be he has says look first at the Gospels, and at Christ. And we see at the heart of the gospel is Christ giving himself up for our eternal welfare. So we look at the pattern of Christ in order to identify how we should be in our lives and how we should live in everything. And what that means, to make it simple, is gospel-centered productivity means doing everything you do from love for God and love for others. Now, love for God means, in a sense, you can think of it as you do your work as an offering to God, that you do it for him, ultimately, not first for anyone else. And that means you’re living for an audience of one. And the question is, what will please God, what does he require? And you do your work to please him, not appease him, but please him. And not to find your ultimate significance – because you already have that, you’re justified, accepted, a child of God through faith alone so you don’t need to do your productivity to vindicate your existence and prove your worth and feel significant. You have that through faith. You do it out of gratitude, out of love for God and you offer your work to him. If you think of productivity this way that means what you’re doing all day long can be done as worship. What you’re doing in your job, even sending emails, going to meetings, if the meeting is boring, you can console yourself by saying, hey, I can do this this meeting as an act of worship by contributing the best I can, staying alert, and having a mind toward God during this meeting.
Then the second component is love for others. And sometimes that seems ambiguous. Sometimes we’re skeptical, even. Like if I walk into a bakery and I see a sign that says, “These cookies are baked with love,” I’m immediately skeptical. I’m thinking, are the cookies actually really bad and they’re trying to make up for that by saying, “We have good intentions, we’re baking them from love.” So sometimes I’m skeptical when I hear people say, “I’m doing this for love.” Nonetheless, it is crucial because Paul says in 1 Corinthians, let all that you do be done in love. And if we do something from love we will do it with excellence because we care about the experience people have. So love is actually the driver of excellence. Doing something from love means this: sometimes we are vague and ambiguous. What does love mean? Jonathan Edwards really nails it when he says the essence of love is goodwill toward others. You want the other persons welfare. So when you’re doing your job, you’re writing emails to someone, you’re creating a marketing plan, you’re making a sandwich at Chick-fil-A, or whatever you’re doing in your job, you need to think about the end-user and be doing your work from a desire to benefit them and make their lives better. And then you look at how you’re doing your work and you do it with excellence because you want the other person to have the best possible experience. That’s how we feel about people we love. If you do your work like that, from love for others, that means your whole day can be filled with love and good works. Because you don’t have to wait to volunteer at a soup kitchen to be doing good works, you can be doing good works in your job, the very activities of your job, when you do them from love. So gospel-driven productivity transforms the way that we think about and do everything.
Zaspel:
What are some specific obstacles to productivity you address?
Perman:
This comes down to part of the main message of the book. We want to be productive, and a lot of times we get stuck, and so we need to know how to overcome obstacles. Some of the specific obstacles I seek to address in the book – first, not knowing what to do with our lives. Sometimes we’re stuck because we don’t know where we’re supposed to go, and we need to learn how to develop vision and create goals. Other large obstacles we encounter are distraction, interruptions, procrastination, busyness, and plans that just don’t work. Also, messy desks, even. I’ve got a chapter towards the end on how to organize your stuff, organize your house, set up your desk using some solid principles so that you don’t have stuff being a mess, getting in your way, so you actually know how to organize things for maximum efficiency. There’s challenges in our leadership. There’s challenges of feeling torn. I think of the roles in our lives, like, if I’m a better worker, then I’m not going to be as good of a husband. Or if I’m going to be a good father then I’ve got to sacrifice my work. So that the question of balance is huge. All of these are ways that we get stuck, and I address these specifically in various ways and then I also try to give the reader an overall approach that allows them to live their lives effectively, with balance and avoid falling into these pitfalls.
Zaspel:
Give us a brief overview of your book so our readers can know what to expect.
Perman:
Okay, excellent. There’s really four components to getting unstuck and living a life of flourishing in a Christ-centered way. First, we need to know the correct principles. Instead of starting right away with our vision and what we want to do with our lives, we need to first ask a deeper question – what does God want us to do with our lives, how does he want us to live? We need to get anchored in those truths so that then we are equipped to set a vision for our lives that is truly good and honoring to God and not self-centered. Understanding God’s truth shapes our character and gives us the compass we need to make good decisions, even when the path is not clear. So, principles are the first thing.
And then second, is what I call… by the way, you can think of those principles as true North – we’ll have a sort of pioneering metaphor here. Those principles are true North, they are the North Pole. And then the second component is what I call personal leadership. Personal leadership means knowing and defining where you’re going. You can think of it as the compass. So, the earth has a magnetic pole, the North Pole, but if you don’t have a compass you’re not going to know which way is north. Or if you don’t know where the North Star is… So you have to have some kind of device that points in the direction of true North and personal leadership is that articulation of true North that keeps you focused and oriented, knowing the right way to be going. And that comes down to developing a vision for your life, setting goals and having certain guiding principles in place, like knowing how to be a professional, making sure we’ve done the preparation we need to be effective in our work, and things like that. And defining our values, that’s personal leadership.
Now it’s not enough to define the direction you’re going and have the compass that points North, though, because lots of people have a great vision and don’t know how to implement it. So that comes to the third part, which is personal management. That’s the discipline of actually getting things done, making things happen every day. You have your vision, now you gotta do it. So you create specific plans – how am I going to be spending my time? And I’ve got a chapter that helps you identify the key responsibility areas for your job so you can be focused on the right things. I talk about how to get into the zone and do your work in a distraction-free way so that you get more done in less time with more satisfaction because you’re in a flow state. You’re fully absorbed in your work. You’re not bored. You’re not overstressed. You’re not distracted. You’re in the zone. Like, if you played sports, you would have experienced that in sports. You can have the same thing in your work and it makes you incredibly productive, and I talk about how to do that. I talk about how to make sure your plans work by starting with your time, rather than your tasks, which is kind of a surprising reality, but there’s a whole chapter on that. All these have to do with personal management. You know the right things to do from personal leadership. Personal management is doing them more quickly and with less stress. So that’s personal management.
The last part of the book – I call it the laser – is how you obliterate some of those specific obstacles that still come up no matter how well were managing ourselves and leading ourselves. I tried to give an overall approach for problem-solving because you can’t predict all the stuff that’s going to come up. I actually recommend using the scientific method as one of the biggest approaches to overcoming obstacles that come up to us. That means asking what the problem is and developing a hypothesis for why things are happening this way. Then you test it out with actions and refine your hypothesis until you identify the core problem and what works. There are obstacles for leaders that I have a chapter on and how to overcome those, and a few other types of obstacles so that we are equipped with this laser to obliterate these fallen trees that fall on our path as we are using personal management to get to the destination that we’ve identified. So, that’s kind of the book in a nutshell.
Zaspel:
This topic is not new to you – how does this book complement your earlier book, What’s Best Next??
Perman:
In What’s Best Next? I try to give a comprehensive productivity system: how to develop your mission statement, how to use to-do lists in project plans, how to delegate. A comprehensive approach to productivity. How to Get Unstuck gets a bit more specific. It focuses especially on productivity obstacles, and then also it brings in some principles I would have liked to have in What’s Best Next? but didn’t fit. Things like urgency and importance – that underlies everything in What’s Best Next? but I wasn’t able to go into detail on it. Well, Unstuck has a whole chapter on urgency and importance. Starting with your time, not with your tasks. Get the knowledge you need. Preparation. See yourself as a professional. Mindset. Those are some other chapters that I would have loved to have in What’s Best Next?, but they didn’t fit. They come in naturally in How to Get Unstuck. So, How to Get Unstuck ends up helping you have a complete picture of gospel-driven productivity when read together with What’s Best Next? But you don’t have to read What’s Best Next? first, you can start with either book; both books stand on their own.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Matt Perman, author of the new book, How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to your Productivity. I suspect that a lot more of us need this book than realize it!
Matt, great to have you with us – thanks so much.
Perman:
Thanks so much for having me.
