Do More Better

Facing the end of another year often thrusts us in evaluation mode—it does me, anyway, and I suspect I’m not the only one. Usually before looking at what was accomplished, I tend to focus on what wasn’t accomplished. “Surely I could’ve done so much more!” I find myself lamenting. The danger in that assessment is to turn around, face the new year with a stiff upper lip and a healthy dose of resolve and declare, “Next year, I’m going to do more!”

The title of Tim Challies’ book might lead one to think it’s just the thing for such resolve. Kind of. It depends on what word in the title you emphasize. Is it DO More Better? Or is it Do MORE Better? Actually, emphasize the third word. Challies isn’t merely interested in motivating us to DO more or to do MORE. Whatever it is and however much, his helpful little book is intended to guide us to doing it BETTER.

So building off of Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever, with its emphasis on setting and achieving goals, Do More Better is, as the subtitle suggests, “a practical guide to productivity.” With our goals in mind and, per Hyatt’s advice, written before us, we turn to Do More Better for some nuts-and-bolts guidance on accomplishing them.

Challies makes clear from the onset that he’s writing with a Christian worldview, suggesting that our purpose in being productive is not self-centered but God- and others-oriented. Leading us through a “productivity catechism” (10-16), the author brings us to a uniquely Christian definition of productivity: “Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.”

With the definition established, we’re next confronted with three primary “productivity thieves”:

• Laziness. Not only the stereotypical “couch-potato” syndrome, but yielding to any siren call that takes us away from the task at hand. And the distractions in the digital age seem endless.
• Busyness. Challies points out that “busyness cannot be confused with diligence…faithfulness or fruitfulness.” Instead, it’s likely an indication that we’re “directing too little attention in too many directions…prioritizing all the wrong things.” (21)
• Thorns & Thistles. Everyday unexpected or beyond-our-control challenges, such as being stuck in traffic, a cancelled flight, the flu.

Facing these thieves requires accepting the dual calls to action and to character, emphasizing that the necessary action—a structured, organized life—will be achieved only by a person of solid character.

From here Challies now leads us to consider the essentials for developing a productive life. The starting point is to identify our areas of responsibility, such as Personal Life, Home/Family, Work/Business, Church, Social. In each area, we have a role (or roles) to fill, tasks to perform, and/or projects to complete. Listing every role, task, and project in each area of responsibility is a critical and valuable exercise to help us do more better.

With the “responsibility audit” in hand, the next exercise is to prepare a limited mission statement for our areas of responsibility. Fortunately, Challies doesn’t insist on one of those general whole-life statements. I agree with him—it’s a bit overwhelming. He helpfully offers some examples from his own life to get the wheels turning in our heads.

This exercise allows you then to evaluate tasks, opportunities, projects, and so on, in a given area. If you’re being led off mission, you can drop, delegate, or perhaps do it anyway. Challies points out that sometimes “off mission” opportunities can be just what God intends for us to do at the moment for “the good of others and the glory of God.”

All the above takes the reader through the first four chapters of Do More Better. In chapters 5-8, Challies gets into the nitty-gritty of tool selection essential for productivity. He identifies three kinds of tools and offers recommendations in each:

• Task management. Recommends ToDoIst.
• Scheduling. Recommends Google calendar.
• Information management. Recommends Evernote.

His recommendations are based upon personal experience, to be sure, but he has chosen them because they complement each other well, which further enhances productivity.

At this point, Challiles states a simple but powerful organizing principle:

“A home for everything, and like goes with like.”

I appreciated the brief, memorable way he expressed this, finding myself quoting it often in many areas beyond personal productivity!

The next three chapters build on the three tool selections as he explains his reasons for choosing each and shows us how to use them effectively.

How many times have you read a good “how-to” book, gotten excited over some of the ideas, and implemented some changes in your life…for a while. Before long, things reverted to the way they were. Challies recognizes this tendency, so he includes an entire chapter addressing the need to “Live the System.” In other words, the productivity tools need to be a symbiotic system that are simply a part of your life.

“A productivity system is a set of methods, habits, and routines that enable you to be most effective in knowing what to do and in actually doing it.”

The balance of the chapter goes into great detail explaining how to set up that system and make it work. The final chapter encourages us to maintain the system consistently. After all, he notes, “there is nothing in this world that coasts toward order.…It needs consistent maintenance if it is to continue functioning smoothly.” (97) Incidentally, portions of this chapter dovetail nicely with Hyatt’s recommended review processes.

Do More Better ends with two bonus chapters. The first, “Tame Your Email,” offers “6 tips for doing more better with email.” Those of us who are bombarded with dozens or scores or even hundreds of emails everyday will find benefit in these tips. The second bonus chapter, “20 Tips to Increase Your Productivity,” offers just that. A few I found helpful:

• Use a password manager. I discovered 1Password through this tip.
• Move around. “Sometimes a change of scenery is as good as time off.”
• Turn off notifications – i.e. on email, Facebook, etc.
• Take breaks
• Exercise

On a final personal note, I read Do More Better just after it came out in 2015 and benefited greatly from the practical advice. I readily saw the value in the various tools Challies recommends and have been using them ever since, though with limited success. He’s absolutely correct—you have to live the system. I need to revisit the whole process to do more better in 2020!

About the author (from the book):

Tim Challies is a Christian, a husband to Aileen, and a father to three children aged 9-15. He is a book reviewer for WORLD magazine, a co-founder of Cruciform Press, and has written several books including The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and Sexual Detox. He worships and serves as a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario and writes daily at www.challies.com.