The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Feel Like You Never Get Much Accomplished? Here's Your Solution!
Ever feel like your workweek slips through your fingers, with more tasks added to your list than crossed off? You're not alone, and that's precisely why we're exploring Cal Newport's life-altering concept of Deep Work. I'm Todd Rhoades from chemistrystaffing.com, and in our latest Healthy Church Staff podcast, I'm here to arm you with the strategies that will transform your productivity from a stagnant pool into a flowing river. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about engaging in the kind of work that demands your full attention, aligns with your church's mission, and leaves a lasting impact on your community.
Forget the quicksand of shallow tasks; we're talking sermon prep, long-term strategic vision, and pastoral counseling. These are the cognitively demanding tasks that should be at the forefront of your weekly agenda. I'll walk you through how to identify these deep tasks and prioritize them, ensuring that your time isn't hijacked by the endless stream of emails and routine communications that can so often distract us from our true calling. It's time to shift your focus and step into a week of meaningful, impactful work that not only satisfies your soul but also serves your church in the most profound way. Join me, and let's embrace the deep.
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Hey there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast For this Monday. My name is Todd Rhodes, I'm one of the co-founders of chemistrystaffingcom and today, to start off your week, you ever have a week where you just feel like man, I just think anything accomplished, and if you have a bad week, maybe the next week you're thinking got to make up for last week, or maybe you're just motivated or you're unmotivated. On this Monday I wanted to talk about something, a concept I learned from Cal Newport in his book. It's Called Deep Work, and actually this is an area of passion for me. I think we're going to do a whole series on this book in a week or two, but today I just want to introduce this topic to you.
Speaker 1:If you feel like you're not getting anything accomplished, I want to give you some solutions, and again, it comes from Cal Newport. You can find that book over at Amazon or wherever you buy your books. It's called Deep Work, and here's how Cal kind of defines the subject of deep work. It's focused on uninterrupted, cognitively demanding tasks, and deep work is opposed to shallow work, which he defines as routine tasks that create less value emails, mundane meetings and so forth and the challenge is to the challenge to try and make it feel like you're getting a lot accomplished is it's pretty simple actually. According to Newport, you need to increase the amount of deep work you do and decrease the amount of shallow work that you do. And the increasing challenge today is that so much of the shallow work that we do is due to all of the advancements in technology, and we'll talk about that in a second. But really, when you think about it, especially on this Monday I'm always more reflective on Mondays, aren't you? At least I am the mission of the church. Really it should transcend the mundane. It really deserves our utmost priority. That's why you accepted the call to be at your church and it really deserves our deepest work. And if we're really serious about making some meaningful progress this week, it's going to require some deep work, not shallow work, not busy work, but some real deep work. So let me first of all unpack kind of the differences in what we all do, to all do as a church staff member, or some of the tasks that you're doing this week, and classify those as to whether or not they would be considered, according to Cal Newport anyway, deep work or shallow work. So here's some examples of deep work.
Speaker 1:Sermon preparation, sermon study for your message that's deep work. It requires some deep theological reflection. It requires you to really come up with some original thoughts and integrating scripture and historical facts, cultural insights. Sermon preparation is deep work and it's important work. A strategic planning developing long-term visions and goals and strategies for your church, for church growth, for your community impact that's another thing that demands some focused thought and you really got to put on your thinking cap and decide how to solve some really problems with some creative problem-solving ability. A strategic planning is deep work. It's not shallow work.
Speaker 1:Counseling a lot of times, if you're counseling, it demands your attention. Providing in-depth pastoral care and counseling means that you have to be listening carefully, you have to show empathy, you have to be thoughtful, personal, give personalized advice and really think through and have a pastor's heart. That's deep work. Writing is also deep work, whether it's for a book, a blog, even your message, as we mentioned, detailed communications, engaging writing really requires deep focus and creativity. If you're in the process of planning new ministries or program, this is deep work. Just your personal development, engaging in your education, in learning new skills, in your personal spiritual practices all of those things are deep work. Those are some of the more important things that if you really dig down and do those things this week, you will feel like you got something accomplished.
Speaker 1:So much of our deep work is shadowed by the prevalence of our shallow work. Let's take a look at some of those. These are the things that kind of rob your time a lot of times from the things that are really important, the things that make you feel like you're getting things accomplished and the things that really make a difference. So some types of shallow work include email correspondence just the mundane managing emails. Routine communications. That can often be done quickly without really deep communication. Administrative tasks, a lot of times scheduling meetings, managing calendars, other kind of office work that don't really require really any intensive cognitive effort on your part. Social media posting updates, responding to comments, getting that dopamine push.
Speaker 1:While it can be important for community building, usually it's more surface level stuff. A lot of times. Attending meetings are shallow work. Participating in regular meetings, committee meetings Unless they're really focused on decision making and strategy, they often will fall into, according to Cal Newport, into the shallow work category. Any kind of routine management tasks overseeing the maintenance of the church facilities, managing supplies, coordinating volunteers for services. All those things are vital, but they don't require deep work and then just your basic content creation the things that you have to do, communication things like for newsletters and bulletins you still have a bulletin Website updates, all of those that a lot of times follow a template.
Speaker 1:Now that we've identified deep work and shallow work and we're going to get into this when we do, we're going to do a five day series here on the podcast about this book and about how to really dig in here, but just some 30,000 foot takeaways. Okay, deep work really helps in complex problem solving and analysis and core job functions, and the thing about deep work is you have to schedule it. I actually put have blocks of deep work on my calendar, and you know why I do that, because if I don't do that, I will. Deep work is hard and you can't be interrupted, and if I don't speak for myself, I don't schedule deep work, I won't do deep work. I'll end up spending an hour and a half on social media and doing some of this shallow work. That, really, at the end of the day, I think what did I really get accomplished today? Not much of anything.
Speaker 1:In order to really get things accomplished, though. You really need to understand and value the urgency of deep work for the success that you're going to see not only in your day, but your month and your year and in your ministry at your church. And here's the thing that I've identified, and you probably know this too, from times that you've really been zoned in on what I would call deep work here. Deep work is far more satisfying and life giving it, and it really helps you move the needle. It helps you feel better about your work. It helps you feel better about your calling in your church. So what should you do this week? What is my encouragement to you this week? I would encourage you to, if you're in charge of a staff if not, if you just in charge of yourself, that's awesome to distinguish and categorize your tasks.
Speaker 1:As you're doing things today and this week, ask yourself is this deep work or is this just shallow work? Now, the shallow work is bad, but you need to have a mixture. You can't be doing all shallow work. If it's in your power, foster environment for deep work. That means, if you're able to in your culture to reduce distractions, setting up work schedules, those kind of things that's extremely helpful. Make sure that you don't want to be an ogre about it, but if you're going to be entering into a time of deep work, maybe hang a little sign on your door, say, hey, I'm going to and don't bother me for the next hour, or something like that. Distractions are the enemy of deep work. If you're distracted by your cell phone or a phone call or somebody knocking on your door, unless it's an emergency, that's going to disrupt your deep work. We'll talk about that when we get more into the series.
Speaker 1:We're really looking forward to unpacking this. I am. I believe it's next week, if not it's the following week. I've got it scheduled, but we're really going to unpack some practices that will help boost your deep work. I'm convinced I know it has for me and my work at chemistry staffing. Deep work has allowed me to make so much progress and get so much done, and it's something that I personally need to schedule. If I don't schedule it, I find that I do much more shallow work than deep work. I hope this is helpful. I hope this gives you kind of something you begin to this week. If nothing else, as you go about your day to day, everything that you're doing, think to yourself is this deep work or is this shallow work? And then hold on to that and come back here on the podcast and we'll unpack that very soon on our series on deep work. Thanks so much for joining us. Talk to you tomorrow.
