For the past several Mondays, I have been posting a number of links to articles, posts, books, etc. that I have found helpful. (You might consider subscribing to this blog by e-mail. You can subscribe here.)
For Your Thinking
You might enjoy reading this post by Michael Barber, a young Catholic scholar entitled “New Document Promotes Priority of Scripture in Theology.” Very interesting. (Thanks to Scot McKnight for this post.)
Ernest Hemingway’s favorite books.
Audio of James Bryan Smith (and others) from the recent Aprentis Institute conference in Dallas. These talks flow out of The Apprentice Series.
I am not sure how I became aware of this, but this magazine, which targets women, looks very interesting. (As the father of two adult daughters, I am interested in publications that speak to women and the values of those publications.)
You might enjoy the following regarding productivity and organization.
Jeff Goins has written a great post entitled The Best Way to Pursue Your Life’s Work. I found this post very helpful. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by my work, I find that I am attempting to start big instead of small.
Also see his very fine post: 3 Important Habits for Building Influence that Matters.
Hello Jim
I enjoyed your productivity posts by Jeff Goins. One of the best pieces of advice I received was a complete exercise of rhetoric but makes a lot of sense. The advice was this “the key to success is to stay between the lines”. This gentleman drew vertical parallel lines. The moral of the story was if your lines are too far apart, one can never manage the area in-between and will lose focus and become overwhelmed. The other side of the coin is that if your lines are too close together, your market may not be large enough, or you will never be “seen”. When I asked how he determined the “right” size for the lines, he said find wisdom ( and he selected this word specifically). Which lead to the next post on building influence, that I have read twice now, is to find and build the new right small network… be strong and courageous by telling people; “this is what I am thinking and I need your help because I do not know all the answers.” I say “new” because these people will not tell you what they think you want to hear because they are your friend. This will assist in defining the area between the lines, and WHERE to start small so something is planted and has the opportunity to grow.
Very good posts and I hope my comments add some value.
Kind regards
Walt
Walt,
This is very good! I particularly like your thinking regarding where to start small. Thanks.