Deadline

You don’t earn more points by finishing early, either in school or in work. Meaningful projects need to be completed on time, and it’s usually beneficial to take all the time you’re given. There’s no extra credit for being the first one done, a lesson I learned math test after math test, when my paper would come back marked all over in red, highlighting sloppy, thoughtless mistakes. I wanted to just be done.

We carry lists of to-do’s and deadlines in our heads every single day. Make dinner. Fold the laundry. Write the proposal. Wrap the gifts. Save for the down payment. They’re a weight, these lists, and the fantasy of their immediate relief is very enticing. But if it matters enough to go on a list, it deserves all the time we can give it.

In my early years of being a pastor, when I had to preach every week, I tried to have my sermon finished by end-of-day Thursday so that I could take my Friday and Saturday “off.” But I never liked those sermons; something got lost between 5 pm Thursday and 10 am Sunday. Once I gave myself permission to do some sermon work on Friday and some on Saturday, I felt better about what I was producing.

Could the trick be working when we’re not actually working? For projects that require a lot of thought and deliberation, making use of “down” time to cogitate on them for five minutes here, ten minutes there, can actually enrich the final product–and lessen the stress of the deadline.

Three Questions

Three questions I’m asking about the things I’m working on: who is this for? Whose is this? Who is with me?

Who is this for? What is the imagined audience or user? The curriculum I wrote yesterday was for a Confirmation class. The podcast Matt and I are making is for adults who might come to a Sunday school class. Not only are the curriculum and the podcast different mediums, they have different audiences, and their built with the audience in mind. Neither of them can be for everyone, or else they work for no one.

Whose is this? Am I ultimately responsible for what happens with this? For the curriculum, yes. If I don’t write it the class won’t have it. But for the podcast and lots of other stuff, I’m not. I like that. I really like getting clear at the start: whose baby is it? It prevents people looking at each other accusingly and saying, “I thought you were doing that.”

Who is with me? For curriculum, I have a terrific team of leaders who help me teach it. They were recruited and they accepted. They’re enrolled. We’re a team. And beyond us, there is a committee overseeing our work and a board the committee reports to. The board is elected by the congregation, so, ultimately, they’re all with me. But getting clear about the team level feels critical, because these are the people who care the most and have committed to leave the stands for the playing field, and their caring is the fuel that drives the project.

Them

I used to think the advice “Never let them see you sweat” was for your benefit, but now I wonder if it isn’t for theirs. It depends on who we think “them” is.

If it’s hostile onlookers hoping for us to fail, then controlling our perspiration denies them the satisfaction. That’s the assumption behind the advice as an advertising slogan and pop song (The first lyric gives it away: “They’re out to get ya”).

That’s probably an unnecessarily competitive and uncharitable view of our peers. I mean, are you like that? Do you lay in wait for others to bomb and take delight in their strains and struggles? I doubt you do.

What if “them” is a crowd of supporters and collaborators who are pulling on the same rope you are? In that case, not letting them see you sweat is for their benefit and yours; they’re looking to you to lead, and if you’re looking like you got it then they will too.

Extra note: Matt and I did not sweat recording these new episodes of our podcast, out today. Enjoy!

Clock

I spied an electric analog alarm clock in the back corner of a drug store in a small southeastern Kansas town and impulsively bought it. Because I was on vacation, feeling an easier rhythm than the workaday, and because I was in Kansas, where strangers holler “Good afternoon!” from across the street, I was taken by the urge to simplify life by replacing my phone as the alarm on my nightstand, to make a new effort, back home, to banish the phone from the bedroom.

The clock glows bright blue into my face all night, and whenever I open my eyes I see the hour and the minute, and I am gripped with anxiety about the passage of time.

How do people live like this?

FYI

There’s so much information. It’s so easy to find. It even feels like we’re trying to hide from information sometimes. For your information, I think we need less information.

Or, at least, we need more perspective and point of view and proposal to go with all this information.

For my information, no thank you. For my consideration, please.

The News

The News is a product of media. Before there were newspapers and radios and televisions and blogs and Substacks, did anyone seek out The News as the commodity we think of when we say “The News?”

It seems like we get what we go looking for when we look for The News. We get outrage and conspiracy or we get dispassionate analysis. I used to think the latter was The News while the former was something else, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. Now I think The News is whatever we want it to be; “mainstream media” and “right-wing media” feel more and more like meaningless terms to describe variations on the same thing: The News.

Television seems to have made The News into something particularly harmful, and I’m thinking more of cable news than your local broadcast station (Sinclair Media, I know). Once companies started programming for round-the-clock content, The News became a commodity that had to be produced constantly, without stop. And once those companies were joined by other companies, The News became a fierce competition for eyeballs and attention requiring screaming analysts and ubiquitous red chirons for “Breaking News.” It’s useful in a rapidly unfolding crisis, perhaps, but as a source for meaningful insight into what you’re going to do today or tomorrow, it’s a major distraction.

What if you dropped cable news from your diet? Would things happen without you knowing, or would your phone make sure you knew anyway?

Edit

Video and audio projects require editing, something that is done poorly by committee, and also something that needs done by someone other than the producer. If the person who shot the video or recorded the audio sends an edit to everyone who was involved, asking for feedback, it’s likely none of them will scrutinize it closely–because everyone else is looking at it too, right?–which makes it likely mistakes will get missed.

For those of us who like working on teams and committees, it’s probably best to make the final edit someone’s job. Designate the task to one person: watch or listen from start to finish and flag anything that needs fixed. It doesn’t have to be the same person’s job every time, but for every project, it needs to be someone’s job.

I’ll go first.

Rigid

If there’s text on the screen for people to read, don’t read it to them.

If a packet of material was distributed ahead of time, don’t read the material at the meeting.

I’ve become rigid about these rules in the meetings and interactions I lead. Rigid is rarely good.

But am I wrong?