Before you get good at anything, you have to put your time in. Just doing before doing well.
My wife listens to a lot of shows on CBC [http://www.cbc.ca] radio (the Canadian equivalent of NPR). Over the holidays she was sharing some details from an interview [http://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/a-survival-guide-for-thinking-because-we-re-a-lot-worse-at-it-than-we-think-1.4462109] Nora Young of Spark [http://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark] conducted with Alan Jacobs. It piqued my interest and led to me checking out Alan’s site [http://ayjay.org]. And that led to this article here, one of the best pi…
As we got closer to the end of the year, I wanted to take a moment to share the articles that inspired me the most. They cover a few of my favorite topics, ones that are discussed here regularly but are worth revisiting often. Note: these are not all written in 2017, but it is when I read them * How I got my attention back [https://backchannel.com/how-i-got-my-attention-back-c7fc9297d347#.wxurnculd] * The Daily Plan Bar [https://medium.com/rohdesign/the-daily-plan-bar-357972361096#.16g…
There are a few areas where I tend to keep an eye open for my next purchase. Notebooks. Pens. Bags. There are so. many. good. bags out there! One recent item I picked up has been fantastic: the Lanier [https://nockco.com/cases/lanier] briefcase and pouch from Nock. I’ve had my eye on this for a long time and finally picked one up after my birthday this fall. It’s a high-quality item that I wanted to recommend. If you’re not familiar with Nock, it’s the business of Brad Dowdy, formerly of Jet P…
Well, it’s been a year. Back in the fall of 2016, I made some big changes for my personal website and my weekly newsletter [https://chrisbowler.com/newsletter]. The biggest was to more intentionally focus on helping Christians fight the good fight. What is that fight? To master our will and hearts and minds and focus them on our reason for living. Our cause for joy. And the person for whom we have reason to celebrate this time of year (and all the year long). My goal is to disciple Christians…
Ha, talk about my worlds colliding. Cal Newport covers the Bullet Journal system (aka BuJo) and suggests how it could be improved to better meet the demands of the modern day knowledge worker. I thought it interesting that all his suggestions fit my own current usage: * I use weekly plans for my notebook, not the monthly log that BuJo suggests * My days are outlined in my calendar … not every hour of the day is there, but the major items get slotted in * He suggests keeping a deep work t…
Forget about goals. Instead, focus on habits. This is a common refrain of late. The likes of James Clear, Shawn Blanc, and Nir Eyal all make the case for habits being greater than goals. I won’t go so far as to tell someone to not set goals. But I do agree that habits are what will enable you to meet your goals. I still like to set an end destination in mind, but I’ve finally begun to see how powerful — and vital — the habits and routine are for getting to the finish line. What has made the mo…
A couple of weeks back, our senior pastor gave a message exhorting us all to live with a little less complaining. Or a lot less (he included himself as the target audience). Our church started a reading plan in September to get through the entire Bible in 9 months. And in tandem with this plan has been the pastors preaching from current reading. That has brought us to Numbers. If you're familiar at all with the desert years for Israel, you’ll know complaining is a common theme. One passage has…