Get It Done

I’ve always been a student of personal organization and to do lists. Not necessarily because I’m super organized, it’s because I’m lazy. Truth be told, I don’t like to work. I want to spend time with my family and do the things that I enjoy. That means that I have to optimize getting all of the things done that I don’t really want to do but have to do, including my job. In my on-going quest for the best personal system I’m always trying to find something that follows these simple rules:

• My system must be as simple as it can possibly be and still be effective for me.

• My system must be Mac and iOS-based, it’s what I own and is always with me.

• My system must lower my stress and make me think less about the things I need to do so that I can relax.

• My system must require little to no maintenance.

• Bonus, my system should help make me better.

I’ve had three major influences and several minor influences along the way, which have helped get me to where I am today. There is, and will always be, room for improvement. Here are my three major influences:

1. My Dad – every Saturday morning, there would be a yellow legal pad with lists of what needed to be done that day. There was a list for my Dad, for me, my brother, and my sister. Until the list was done, there was no playing or anything else. My Dad showed this example and I did my best to follow it. To this day, I make lists. I function on lists. Lists get all the information out of my head and in front of my eyes so that I can prioritize and plan what I can do today.

2. Asian Efficiency – these two guys wrote a fantastic primer to using a tool called OmniFocus, which is what I use. It combines some methodology from Getting Things Done by David Allen with how to most effectively use OmniFocus. I like to think that these guys updated GTD for the modern world with step-by-step and detailed instructions on how to get started.

3. Inbox Zero – there cannot be two systems of record. Either your e-mail is your list of things to do, or you keep your list somewhere else. I don’t care which, but you can’t have two lists. That is just confusing. I keep my inbox empty. If I can do it quickly, I just do it. If I can’t do it quickly, then I create a quick task to do it later in OmniFocus. I also try to only do email a couple of times a day and I don’t live on it all of the time. That makes me reactive and I want to face the day proactively.

I use OmniFocus as my source of everything that I need to do. I use Evernote to keep all of my notes. Finally, I use Microsoft Outlook for my work and personal e-mail. I use all three of these software tools on all of my devices every day.

I will let you get the OmniFocus primer from Asian Efficiency if you want to learn specifically what I’m doing in OmniFocus, but essentially I do every day based on three lists.

Morning Routine

The first list I look at every day is my morning routine. When I wake up, my goal is to do the same thing every day, almost on auto-pilot, to jump start my day and get ahead. My morning routine list is called “Get After It”, which I got from Jocko Willink. This list is a recurring list of tasks in order, which happens every single day. Mine looks like this:


Objectives

This list is different every day. As part of my morning routine, I pick the things that I’m going to do each day. Sometimes I’ll plan things for a future day, which will show up on this list. For example, I needed to power wash the patio the day before my son’s birthday party. So, I put it on my list and set it to be due the day before the party. It then shows up on my objectives list for today. All of my not due items are all in projects. I scan through these projects on a regular basis and set due dates or put flags on important items. Not important items just sit there, they don’t get done.


Evening Routine

My evening routine is the same as the morning routine. There are things that I do every evening to get squared away. This routine is very important to me because it sets up a good night, which means I want to get up early and keep it going. If I finish my nighttime routine, then I have a sense of peace, sleep better, get up early, and keep the cycle going.


The last part of my system, at a high level, is to use an inbox. This is straight from GTD and this functionality it built into OmniFocus. Whenever I randomly think of something that I need to do or an idea for later, I put it in my Inbox in OmniFocus. As part of my morning routine, I sort that Inbox and pick my Objectives for the day.

There you have it, this is my routine at a high level. I’ll likely write more detailed blogs on individual parts, but I wanted to get the overview out there.

Jon

A Post It a Day

You should buy stock in 3M. Why? Because I write a lot of post it notes and I hope after reading this, you do too. A few years ago I was in a life group at our local church. I forget what study we were doing. It was probably a book about raising kids that was adapted from a marriage book; those are not great and I’ve read more than my fair share of them. If you know what I’m talking about, great. If not, I won’t call these authors out, but I will get on with my point.

During the group discussion, it was mentioned that doing small things for your spouse, consistently, goes a long way. Someone in the group, I really wish I remembered who, said that they leave post it notes in their kids lunch boxes. I thought, what a great idea! I started leaving post it notes for my wife that week.

I don’t write her a note every day. I tend to go in stretches where I do and stretches where I don’t. I have noticed that when I leave the notes we seem to get a long better and there is a little more love in the air around the house.

Here is my advice on loving your wife with sticky backed paper:
* Get mixed colors you think she’ll like, nothing is more drab than pastel yellow everywhere
* Buy brand name, they stick better and this isn’t a place to cheap out
* A black sharpie fine point will be your magic wand
* Stick them in different places, my wife loves when she discovers a sticky note randomly in her day
* You don’t need to quote Shakespeare, keep the notes short and sweet
* Quantity over quality, just say what you’re thinking and do it often

The questions I think you’re asking at this point are these:
1. Why are you telling me to use Post-It notes?
2. What do you / I write on them?

The most important question, why?

I write Post It notes for my wife and leave them in random places around the house because it makes her feel loved. It requires almost no time, money, or effort on my part and brings joy to my wife. How many things can you think of that check all of those boxes? When Sara see’s a note, she knows that I was thinking about her when she wasn’t around. She is reminded that she is important to me, and if I get the words right, it makes her feel special. Guys, give it a shot. Pull out an old pad of post it’s you have sitting in a drawer somewhere, grab a sharpie, write “I love you” on it, and stick it somewhere she’ll see it tomorrow. It’s that easy to make you’re wife smile and think you’re awesome.

Post it #2. When do I write it and what do I write?

When is completely up to you. You know your wife, I don’t. Personally, I try to leave her a. It’s daily. I have good streaks and bad streaks but that is my goal. Judge your own situation. Do it daily, weekly monthly, whatever works for you but do it consistently and do it more often than your gut is currently telling you to.

Lastly, what to write. Remember, the most important thing is that you took the time to write the note, what is on it is secondary. I would start with “I love you” and continue to write simple things. For example, tonight I wrote “you mean the world to me” and stuck it up on the cabinet in the kitchen. You can Google saying on what to write and I’ll put a few links at the bottom for you to get started. If you can, try to think of the cute little things that you say to each other or little moments that you remember. Just make them short, it’s amazing what you can do with

Writing Post It notes for your wife and putting them up around the house is one of the simplest things you can do that will make a big positive difference in your relationship.

In His Name,
Jonathan

I order my Post It’s on Amazon and use Smile to support a local school. You can order them here.
Here is a quick google search to get your creative juices flowing.

Love and Respect

My wife is a very wise woman. Her and I had both had long-term serious relationships before we met each other. I took the opportunity to spend most of my 20’s playing, while my wise wife decided that, after a failed relationship, she would take ownership of her part in it and learn to be better. There were two books she read that she encouraged me to read when we started dating. They were Love and Respect and The Five Love Languages. The concepts in these two books became foundational to our relationship. Not because they’re the ultimate guides on how to have a good marriage, but because they gave us a common language and set of tools from the start, when everything was perfect, to communicate when we had problems. I truly believe that taking the time together to read and discuss these books early in our relationship helped us to thrive and grow into the couple we are today.

This blog is a very brief synopsis of Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. Hopefully this blog inspires you to go ahead and buy the book. Or buy two copies, one for you and one for your current / future special someone. Emerson is a Christian author and pastor who has written many books, but I find this one to be his ultimate work.

Love and Respect is largely based on Ephesians 5:33. “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” NIV Emerson states that a man must show love to his wife and a woman must show respect to her husband.

Love

Women desire to be loved above all else. Paul writes that husbands are to love their wives as much as the love themselves. And really, who do you love more than yourself? 😉 Emerson does a wonderful job of citing scripture and building an argument around why this it true and biblical in his book and I won’t repeat it here. As men, it is our mission to learn how our wife receives love. Does she love being touched? Does she love gifts, no matter how large or small? Does she love it when you do the dishes or straighten up the house for her? Figure out how your wife hears love and do that as much as you can. It will energize her more than you can possibly imaging. As men, I know we often feel that there is nothing we can do to make our wives happy. We feel that our wives don’t like us or that we’re not doing enough. I can tell you from my experience and from many men from my church, this works. No matter how bad or messed up things are, do something simple out of love for your wife everyday. The rewards will pile up quickly and you will be stunned and amazed.

What happens when you’re wife does not feel loved? Well, the opposite. She’ll be upset, angry, maybe even mean sometimes and you won’t know why. Well, no more excuses, you now know why. Sure, sometimes everyone has an off day, but men have the power to love their wives through just about anything.

Respect

Men desire to be respected above all else. This is by far the most controversial part of the book. Again, Emerson does a wonderful job rooting this concept in scripture and for this blog, please trust that it’s in the book. The main problem most people have when thinking of this is that respect is something that needs to be earned. I agree, and that is true for most relationships, but marriage is special. Marriage is a different relationship. When you get married, you enter a covenant with one other person, whom you chose, to put their needs above yours and to stay with them forever. This is the only relationship like it. Women, step one is to stop being disrespectful to your men. We are not children and we don’t want you to be our mothers. We want to feel in our hearts that you look up to us, seek us for guidance, and truly respect who we are and the choices we make. It’s so easy to be disrespectful to your partner without even thinking. Step one is to actively stop doing that. Step two is to think of ways to show him respect. Ask his opinion of something, and then listen to him. Even if you don’t follow is advice he’ll be delighted that you asked for it.

The interesting thing ladies, is if you start to intentionally show outward respect to your husband, he will initially have some sort of shocked reaction, but then the most beautiful thing will happen. Love will uncontrollably pour out of him. Don’t believe me? Try it!!! Right now, go tell your husband how much you respect him for something and then ask his opinion of something else. Watch him completely light up and show you love in ways you never thought possible. I double dog dare you!

The Crazy Cycle

The unfortunate reality of marriage is that most of us spend the majority of our time on the crazy cycle. It goes like this. Men do unloving things to their wives, as a result, women act disrespectfully to their husbands, which causes husbands to be more unloving, which causes wives to be more disrespectful. It starts small and snowballs fast.

How to end this crazy cycle and start being happy again:
1. Be the adult, yeah you, the one reading this blog
a. If you’re a woman, be respectful to your husband even if it’s the last thing you think he deserves
b. If you’re a man, be loving to your wife, even if it’s the hardest thing you could possibly think of
2. Continue to be the adult until it clicks in your spouse. All of a sudden they’ll be the person you married again. And the funny thing is, they’ll naturally be loving or respectful back because that is the way we’re made.

The Energizing Cycle

It’s the opposite of the crazy cycle. If you’re happy and you show more love and respect to each other, you’ll fuel each other’s souls. No matter what is going on, deep down you love your better half. Show them and you’ll light them up. In return they will light you back up and hence the energizing cycle. You don’t have to wait for something to be bad to try the concept of love and respect out. If things are great, make them better. There is no limit to how happy you can be in your marriage. How far can you go?

Hello World!

Hello, and thank you for visiting my blog. As you may have guessed from the title, my name is Jonathan. I am many things. I’m a Christian, husband, and father. I’m also in technical sales and work in the IT industry of Silicon Valley. There are several blogs about all of these things individually, but the reason that I’m writing this is because I haven’t been able to find many good blogs that put them all together. Sure, there are blogs on how to be a good Dad, blogs on how to be more productive at work, blogs on how to study the Bible, and blogs that skim the surface of work life balance. What I have found is that you can’t work on any one of these areas without neglecting the others. Life needs to be looked at as a whole. Sure, it’s helpful to break it into parts to develop or improve in certain areas, but then you have to put it all back together again. My blog is an attempt to do this. It’s an attempt to reach people in my position that at the same time have crazy work deadline, toddlers who take an hour to put to sleep, dishes in the sink, and a strong desire to watch a little TV before bed.

Wow, that was a serious introduction. I’m also about a lot lighter things. I use way too many Apple products, I like nice leather bags, and I have a dog whom I love yet never seem to be able to train. I hope to cover some of these things too for fun. Lastly, and strangely, productivity is a hobby of mine. I love to be more efficient with my time, I forget almost everything I’m supposed to be doing, and I want to spend as much time as possible with my wife and kids. Having routines  and finding ways to track the things I’m supposed to be doing is a constant evolution in my life and I’ll touch on some of that too.

So, a blog about everything, huh?

We’ll see where we end up at the end, but this is my quest. I would like to show other Christians, spouses, parents, and professionals what our family does, why we do things the way we do, and how it works out. I hope to inspire others and, frankly, just help them get started. I hope to write about a blog a week, but like most things in life, there will most likely be short bursts and long gaps. 

Please enjoy and I look forward to reading your comments and getting your feedback.

-Jonathan