What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done

by Matt Perman, John Piper (Foreword by)

Overview

By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God's plan, What's Best Next gives you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do.

There are a lot of myths about productivity—what it means to get things done and how to accomplish work that really matters. In our current era of innovation and information overload, it may feel harder than ever to understand the meaning of work or to have a sense of vocation or calling.

So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity?

Matt Perman has spent his career helping people learn how to do work in a gospel-centered and effective way. What's Best Next explains his approach to unlocking productivity and fulfillment in work by showing how faith relates to work, even in our everyday grind.

What's Best Next is packed with biblical and theological insight and practical counsel that you can put into practice today, such as:

• How to create a mission statement for your life that's actually practicable.
• How to delegate to people in a way that really empowers them.
• How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you.
• How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day.
• How to have peace of mind without needing to have everything under control.
• How generosity is actually the key to unlocking productivity.

This expanded edition includes:

• a new chapter on productivity in a fallen world
• a new appendix on being more productive with work that requires creative thinking.

Productivity isn't just about getting more things done. It's about getting the right things done—the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. You can learn how to do work that matters and how to do it well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310533986
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Edition description:	Expanded
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	640,377
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Matt Perman is the director of career development at The King’s College NYC and cofounder of What’s Best Next, an organization that helps empower Christians to be more productive in all areas of life, and to do so in a way that is God-centered and gospel-driven. Previously, he served as director of marketing at Made to Flourish and was director of strategy at Desiring God for thirteen years. He is the author of What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done (Zondervan, 2014). Matt has an MDiv in biblical and theological studies from Southern Seminary and a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. Matt is a frequent speaker on the topics of leadership and productivity from a God-centered perspective and also consults with businesses and nonprofits, focusing on startups devoted to solving large global problems. He blogs at www.whatsbestnext.com.

Table of Contents

Foreword John Piper 11

Preface: Busting the Twelve Myths about What It Means to Get Things Done 13

Introduction: Why We Need a Uniquely Christian View on Productivity 17

Part 1 First Things First: Making God Supreme in Our Productivity

1 Why Is It So Hard to Get Things Done? 35

Introducing the villains

2 Why Efficiency is not the Answer 43

Putting effectiveness over efficiency

3 Why We Need to be God-Centered in Our Productivity 51

How seeking to be productive without God is the most-unproductive thing in the world

4 Does God Care about Getting Things Done? 61

Why knowing how to get things done is essential to Christian discipleship

Part 2 Gospel-Driven Productivity: A New Way to Look at Getting Things Done

5 Why the Things You do Every Day Matter 73

Productivity is really about getting good works done

6 Put Others First: Love as the Guiding Principle for All of Life 85

The gospel calls us to put others before ourselves; this is not only right, but also the way to be most productive

7 How the Gospel Makes Us Productive 103

The only way to be productive is to realize you don't have to be productive

8 Peace of Mind without Having Everything Under Control 117

Don't turn productivity into a new law: productivity and Philippians 4

9 The Role of Prayer and Scripture in Our Productivity 123

God-centered character as the foundation of all productivity

10 The Core Principle for Making Yourself Effective 131

Know what's most important and put it first

Part 3 Define: Know What's Most Important

11 What's Your Mission? How not to Waste Your Life 147

Setting a God-centered direction for your life

12 Finding Your Life Calling 169

Discovering why you are here, and how vision differs from mission

13 Clarifying Your Roles 179

Our roles are not simply areas of responsibility, but callings from God

Part 4 Architect: Create a Flexible Structure

14 Setting Up Your Week 195

The (almost) missing component in GTD

15 Creating the Right Routines 209

The six routines you need to have

Part 5 Reduce: Free Up Your Time for What's Most Important

16 The Problem with Full System Utilization 223

Avoiding the ringing effect and why you need to reduce

17 The Art of Making Time 227

Delegating, eliminating, automating, and deferring in the right way

18 Harnessing the Time Killers 241

Harnessing multitasking, interruptions, and procrastination

Part 6 Execute: Do What's Most Important

19 Weekly Planning 257

If you can do only one thing, this is it

20 Managing Email and Workflow 265

The five steps for processing your work

21 Managing Projects and Actions 275

How to connect your actions to your life so they actually get done

22 Daily Execution 289

Nine principles for making things happen every day

Part 7 Living This Out

23 Productivity in Organizations and Society 301

Why we must care about productivity in all of life

24 The Greatest Cause in the World 311

Productivity, world missions, and how our faith relates to our work

25 Productivity in a Fallen World 325

We need to get a larger view of suffering, minimizing our own suffering when we can, but embracing it with joy when it is necessary for the good of others

Conclusion 343

Toolkit

Recap: What's Best Next in 500 Words 347

Getting Creative Things Done 349

Knowing What's Best Next: The Easy Reference Guide 353

Recommended Reading 355

The Online Toolkit 359

Learn More and Pass This On 361

Acknowledgments 363

Notes 365