Unlock the secret to unparalleled productivity by diving into the concepts of Cal Newport's "Deep Work" with me, Todd Rhaodes, on the Healthy Church Staff podcast. Ever find yourself at the end of the week wondering what you've actually accomplished amidst a sea of emails and meetings? This series promises to shift you from the shallows of busywork into the depths of truly impactful tasks.
Join me as we explore strategies that will not only help you identify deep work opportunities but also fend off the ever-tempting lure of procrastination. Learn how to schedule your day to make the most of your cognitive capabilities, and discover a simple technique to initiate a focused state of mind—even when distractions are vying for your attention. Tune in and transform the way you tackle your to-do list, yielding results that matter.
Unlock the secret to unparalleled productivity by diving into the concepts of Cal Newport's "Deep Work" with me, Todd Rhaodes, on the Healthy Church Staff podcast. Ever find yourself at the end of the week wondering what you've actually accomplished amidst a sea of emails and meetings? This series promises to shift you from the shallows of busywork into the depths of truly impactful tasks.
Join me as we explore strategies that will not only help you identify deep work opportunities but also fend off the ever-tempting lure of procrastination. Learn how to schedule your day to make the most of your cognitive capabilities, and discover a simple technique to initiate a focused state of mind—even when distractions are vying for your attention. Tune in and transform the way you tackle your to-do list, yielding results that matter.
Hey there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders, publicchemistrystaffincom. Hope you're having a great Monday so far. Today we're going to start a new series Last Monday I mentioned this, but I think it's really important and it's a series based on the book by Cal Newport entitled Deep Work Uninterrupted, undistracted Accomplishments, and what we want to do here is talk about this week, about a whole series of things that you can do to actually get some things accomplished and to feel like you're moving the marker and the gauge is moving a little bit here.
Speaker 1:
We're going to start today by again just identifying deep work versus shallow work. Deep work, as we if you didn't listen last Monday, go back and listen to it. It's here on the podcast feed talking about how to get things accomplished. But we talked about deep work and shallow work. But just to bring you up to date, deep work is any kind of focused, uninterrupted, undistracted work that pushes its brainwork right. It's cognitive abilities. When your cognitive abilities are pushed to the limit, that's deep work. On the other hand, shallow work are tasks that really you can almost do in your sleep. They aren't nearly as brain draining. They're not as cognitively demanding and difficult as deep work, things like answering emails, attending unproductive meetings oh my goodness, how many of those have I been to in my ministry career those are examples of shallow work. So how should we respond to just this idea once we've categorized everything that we do is either shallow work or deep work? And don't get me wrong shallow work it's not that you shouldn't do shallow work. Shallow work's important. You need to. People get upset if you don't answer your emails or go to their meetings. But if we're not careful and if we don't schedule our deep work, those time periods where we're uninterrupted and we're really working hard and really focused and really undistracted so that we can get something, if we don't schedule those deep work times, a lot of times they won't happen. If we can go a few days, even a week, without really even diving in and doing any deep work, we get distracted by a lot of shallow work the emails, the social media, all of those kind of things. My question, first of all, is to start off and say let's look at last week, today's Monday, do an autopsy on last week and retrospective. On last week, did you do much deep work? If my guess is, if you didn't schedule it, you probably didn't do as much as what you should have.
Speaker 1:
Deep work really demands uninterrupted blocks of time that are dedicated to tasks that really need your deep mental attention. It's all about prioritizing your tasks and making what's important. A lot of times we know we need to do something, but the hardest part for me is always getting started. Once I get started, I usually do pretty good, but it's getting it on my calendar and getting it rolling. Once I get in there and get going on it, I do pretty good, but you also need to make sure that, as I said, it's uninterrupted and it's got to be deep work. So focus on one task and you got to give it your all. You got to give it some really rigorous mental commitment.
Speaker 1:
So technology is cool and all, but can we talk? Technology has become a constant source of distraction. Technology social media in particular has become a real crutch for many of us myself included at times, to keep us away from the deep work and to keep us stuck in the shallow work. And even though we've got more technology today than we've ever had, deep work is more important than ever. So what I'm gonna ask you to do as you start off this week. This Monday is this week. Let's try and prioritize deep work. If you're a procrastinator, as Taylor Swift would say, procrastinators are gonna procrastinate. Right, but prioritize the deep work, put it on your calendar and just get started One of the ways that you can start even on a small basis.
Speaker 1:
If you're like Todd, I don't have three hours to sit and do something. One thing there's too much going on. I'm pulled in too many different directions. Start with this. I don't know if you've heard of this or not, but I've used it before. It's called the Pomodoro Technique and probably Botch Francisco's name, but it was invented by Francisco Cereo back in the late 1980s. I think it's the 1980s and this is what it looks like. And maybe try this and there are some free, I think.
Speaker 1:
If you go to Google and you just type in Pomodoro P-O-M-O-D-O-R-O timer, I think they actually have one built right in. It's free. But here's what it looks like 25 minutes of deep, focused work. 25 minutes. You set the timer, you close your door, you turn off your phone, you turn off all of your alerts and you do 25 minutes of deep work. You've got 25 minutes. Come on, you can do that 25 minutes of deep work. Then you take a five minute break. That kind of clears your head, clears your mind. Go out, take a walk, go get a cup of coffee, go to the bathroom, whatever you need to do After that 25 minutes, take a five minute break and then, if you'd want to rinse and repeat, that would be great. If you can do, say, two sessions of Pomodoro a day, you, believe me, you will be incredibly impressed at what you can get done just by hunkering down and doing the work, even if it's just for 25 minutes.
Speaker 1:
Okay, here's what I'm gonna leave you with today as you start your week. Deep work is absolutely essential. It's not optional. Shallow work a lot of times is if Solomon would say, it's like spitting into the wind but you don't get anything out of it. You don't ever make any progress.
Speaker 1:
So this week, block some time, maybe try out that Pomodoro effort, but it only takes 30 minutes. If you're just gonna do one, put some time on your calendar. Think of something that you really wanna get accomplished this week. Put it on your calendar. Put 30 minutes or an hour on your calendar. Turn off all of your distractions at that time. Change your setting and location if you need to, so that you won't be bothered, so people won't be knocking on your door. And what this is gonna do is it's gonna help you promote some balance and recognize the need that you do have for the more mundane tasks, to shallow work other social media, the phone calls, email Not that's not important, but allocate appropriate times that you can really dig in and do the deeper work. So this week we're gonna be talking about some other skills that you can develop over this week. Even they're not difficult things, but they're important things and you need to do them. And we're gonna talk about how your work as a church staff member is difficult. We're gonna talk about how your work as a church staff member is important and we're gonna talk about how your work as a church staff member is fulfilling. And then we're gonna interweave, intertwine some of this deep work and shallow work into our difficult, important and fulfilling things that we do. And then Friday we're gonna wrap it up with discussion, quick discussion, on how to maybe retain your use of social media. So I'm looking forward to that as well. So I hope you come back.
Speaker 1:
Subscribe if you haven't already subscribed. Wherever you listen to this podcast, make sure you subscribe. If you would leave us a nice word here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever. Leave us a nice review. That would be great, all right. If you ever need to get ahold of me for anything, if there's any way that I can help you, or you just have to podcast some feedback or an idea for a next podcast, reach out to me anytime. My email address is podcast at chemistry staffing. Podcast at chemistry staffing. And I hope you'll join us again tomorrow as we look at how difficult your work is and how we can team it.