Scott Cheatham’s Weblog

Miller's Excellent Book

One of my favorite Christian writers is Calvin Miller.  Miller weaves excellence in his storytelling with deep insight that’s able to be grasped.  My first introduction to Miller’s writing was his 2002 tale of “Pastor Sam” in “The Sermon Maker”.  I recently re-read the book and thought I’d share some thoughts on it with you.

“The Sermon Maker” is a tale of a preacher who feels like his preaching’s gone dry.  It doesn’t help that he has a lady in his church that critiques him at every turn.  In a moment of desperation, Pastor Sam cries out to God who answers his prayer by sending “Sermoniel”, the angel of hermeneutics (fancy word for sermon preparation).  In the three short sections of the story, Sam is challenged to look at his preaching in a different light, consider his relationship with God, and how he lives as a shepherd amongst his congregation.  Without giving too much away, the story weaves through various trials that come up during this process with Sermoniel popping in from time to time to right the well-meaning preacher.  The ending I’ll leave untold but it’s worth the read.

This book was Miller’s fable on learning a preaching method he calls “Narrative Exposition”.  Learning the art of telling a story to captivate listeners without compromising the power of the gospel message.  An interesting feature of this book is that the story is told only on the “odd” numbered pages while the “even” numbered pages are reserved for detailed notes Miller ties to footnotes in his story.  You can read the book by trying to follow the notes as you go but for me, it was easier to read the story first and then go back and read the notes.  A few years after this book’s publication, Miller wrote a detailed book on the subject titled “Preaching – The Art of Narrative Exposition”.

For me, the story was as enjoyable the second time around as it was when I read it six years ago.  Most anyone who presents God’s Word each weekend knows the feeling of having “struck out” with the message.  I think we all can identify with Pastor Sam when he struggles with his inner self-esteem, his “agitator” Emma Johnson, and the dialog he has with Sermoniel.  You can sit down and read this book in a night or you can break it up into three short sessions (one session for each section of the tale) and review the notes on each section before proceeding to the next.

The Sermon Maker is still available as a paperback so you can get it reasonably.  I hope Miller makes more of his works available as ebooks because this is one I certainly would like to have a digital copy of as well.  It’s a great book and highly recommended to all who preach and study God’s Word.

There’s a nice post from Brad Lomenick about using our days wisely.  He writes a story from a decade or more ago when he was mentored by a man who gave him this advice:

One of the things that will always stand out to me from our time together was the phrase he constantly used- “your 20’s establish your 70’s.”

You can read the rest of the post here.

Even now as a 40-something, I aspire to invest my time with a mentor and to be a mentor to someone else.  I have two local pastors in my life, both over 70+ years of age, who are some of the wisest men I know.  I’m blessed to have them as mentors.

It’s been a crazy last few days at the Cheatham household so I’ve had little time for my writing endeavors.  I’ll try to catch up later in the week.  I wanted to pass along a link to an excellent review of Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” by Mike St. Pierre.  A great quote from Mike in reviewing Godin’s writing style:

He knows that book readers have the equivelant to ADD so he makes things short and sweet.

Just like this post!  Read the rest of Mike’s review on his well written blog: “The Daily Saint”.

Farhad Manjoo of Slate’s online news service reports that several Amazon Kindle customers had books deleted from their eReaders in a sweeping move by the online retailer here’s a comment that should make you take notice:

As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

You can read the entire column here.

As an owner of a Sony Reader, I’m more convinced I made the right choice in purchasing the Sony Reader over the Amazon Kindle.  The Kindle’s connectedness to the internet, which is built in on all  models, can be a great convenience to owners but in this case, it highlights a clear flaw; that you could lose your purchases at any time without your knowledge.  I’m sure this technology applies to all readers but at least with the Sony Reader, you disconnect the product from the internet when you are done purchasing a product.

Amazon’s explanation was that they accidentally sold some pirated ebooks and that might be legitimate but what assurances do we have in the future that ANY entity might be able to utlize this technology to control devices that we pay for and products we install legitimately?

Something to think about!

Pencil Point Protector/Extender

As readers of my blog know, I’m partial to fine quality wood pencils as my preferred writing choice.  These pencils cost a bit more than your average pencils do so once I’ve used them for a while and the sharpening has stunted them somewhat, I used to grudingly throw them out.  I say grudingly because there was another good inch or two of usable pencil and for what I pay for them, I wanted to squeeze out as much use as possible.

Pencil extenders are available at fine stationary stores and the internet and I have some of those but they aren’t the best for just carrying around in your pockets on a day to day basis.  Enter the clear plastic pencil point protector and extender from the Pencil Things website.  Don Bell at Pencil Things threw one of these in as a gift when I ordered some pencils from him earlier this year.  At first, I didn’t think I’d use it but then, I realized I had a great answer for all those pencil stubs I was throwing away.  As you can see in the picture, the device holds your pencil stub and effectively extends it so it’s usable for that extra inch or two I mentioned earlier.  The protector-extender is 2 1/2 inches long and has a hollow body that hold most pencils securely when they are placed inside of it.  When you store your pencil “tip” side in, the device acts as protector and you can slide it in your pants pocket like I do with my note pads or index card stacks that I take notes on.  When you want to write something, you simply turn the pencil around and the device then “extends” your pencil so it’s usable.  Almost like a retractable pen which I’ve used in the past.  The problem I had with many daily “telescopic” pens though was that they leaked (which made a mess in my pocket) and after a short time, they wore out and wouldn’t be retractable for long.  This protector-extender fits nicely in my pocket and takes up very little room and the best part is the price.  If you buy them on the Pencil Things website, they are only 40-cents each! That’s right…less than a half-dollar!

I’ve used mine for several months now and it’s not wearing out or breaking.  The plastic is thick enough to last but not so rigid that it makes the device unusable.  Besides, for the price, you could replace it easily and still have some to give to your friends who will admire the “geek” factor of your latest productivity tool.  I’ve already been asked a couple of times where these could be bought but no store I know of sells these locally.  For me, it’s given the stubs of my Mongol, Oxford, and Palomino pencils new life as “pocket” pencils that I can use for a while longer when writing in my Hipster PDA.

Pastor and author Robert J. Morgan has written a nice article about “Why Go To Church” for his blog.  I liked this comment:

I need a weekly counter-cultural experience to counter the culture that I’m in.  I need to counteract the popular culture in my life.  When I go to church, I’m participating in a global weekly network of a billion people who are doing the same thing at the same time;

You can read the entire piece by clicking here.

Leo Babauta's ZTD eBook

The growing ebook market has given rise to a host of new authors writing on the subject of productivity.  These authors are oftentimes bloggers who have been writing snippets on the topic for a while now and decided to compile their writings into an ebook.  For many, these writers are buried due to the stacks of published books waiting to be reviewed.  Viral marketing of their work (such as this writing) is the way most all of their readers have heard of them.  So today, I wanted to share with you three quality ebooks you can purchase and enjoy immediately without breaking your budget.  One note, I’m not paid by ANY of these authors and profit nothing by promoting their work other than to spread information I hope you find useful.

1. Zen To Done (Leo Babauta). ZTD is the first ebook I purchased.  Even before I purchased formatted books for my Sony Reader, I decided to take the plunge into the ebook market with Leo’s first work.  ZTD is the culmination of ideas gathered on Leo’s popular Zen Habits blog.  I’ve reviewed this elsewhere but will post a full review soon.  In short, Leo distills the popular points of David Allen’s GTD and Steve Covey’s 7 habits and add in some other ideas and innovations to create ZTD.  The book is a quck read, effective, and worth the $9.50 purchase price.  You can buy a copy here.

2. Todoodlist (Nick Cernis). Nick is a British author who writes for his Put Things Off blog.  Todoodlist is a collection of funny stories and some productivity ideas built around Cernis’ “Todoodlist” sytem.  You can read my review of his ebook here.  Todoodlist is available as a download for $14 at this site. I purchased this as well and my only advice would be for Cernis to drop the price to under $10.  With Amazon and Sony offering many formatted ebooks for this price and most ebooks on the market today being budget minded, I think dropping the price would trigger increased sales.  There’s something psychological about saying the ebook is “under ten dollars”.

3. The Little Book of Productivity (Scott H. Young). This is the only ebook of these three I do not own at present.  I’ve read the first chapter which Young allows you to download for free.  Young’s blog, much like Leo Babauta’s, is a collection of ideas on productivity and this book is the culmination of that work.  The book is a collection of 99 ideas divided into seven chapters.  Several independent reviewers give the total work high marks.  I might pick this up at some point when I’m caught up with my other reading but wanted to give you a tip for now so you could check it out if you wish.  The ebook is $9.95 and is available for download here. You can also download the sample chapter at that site as well.

As you seach the blogosphere for ebooks, you will find many good free ones as well.  That’s another blog post altogether.  The growth of this medium has spurred me into working on an ebook I hope to release in the next year or so (Lord willing) but I have to work on it as time allows.  For now, enjoy these and others you find that address topics you enjoy.  It’s only going to get better for this market in the years ahead.

A new operating system to rival Windows will launch about this time next year.  On Wednesday, Google announced its new Chrome OS will release on netbooks and will build on its increasinly large Web 2.0 market.

This is a natural expansion for Google.  For years, they have had to rely on other operating systems like Windows and Apple (not to mention Linux) to bring their products to consumers.  Google has created a series of applications that move all of our data to the web and reduce the need to store files on our hard drives.  The new Chrome OS will build on this strategy and be a lightweight (i.e. it’s NOT going to eat up a lot of hard drive space), fast moving system for the growing netbook market.

This helps budget minded computer users as well.  I haven’t used Microsoft Office for a long time now.  Google Docs takes care of 95% of all of my file needs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.  I use another third party application online to manage my banking accounts and everything is online making it easy for me to manage all of my business whereever I travel.  All I need is a web connection to keep things up to date.

I’ve been wanting to buy a netbook for some time now but might just wait a few more months to see how this develops.  My only concern is that developers come up with new software designed to run like Google and that it will run with or without a connection like Google Gears allows.  There are a few times where I might need to access a file when I’m not online and much of our church software (song presentation) is running on third party applications that could be ported over to the Web 2.0 format.

In any event, competition is a good thing.  Having Google as a competitor will make its rivals better innovators.  I can’t wait to see what Google’s OS will do.  You can bet I’ll be one of the first to give it a try once it’s available.

A File In the Noguchi System

Are you ready for a new way to file your “stuff”?  Perhaps the old file cabinets just aren’t doing it anymore?  While traditional methods of filing still very much have value, I’ve found a way that works for me and it came all the way from Japan.  It’s called the Noguchi system named after it’s apparent creator Yukio Noguchi.  I say apparent because Noguchi’s website is entirely written in Japanese and he’s never marketed this approach outside of his home country.  Years ago, I first read of this system at a website no longer in existence.  Since then, many have asked for a more thorough rendering of the system with appropriate diagrams on how to use it.  It’s really simple and not much explanation is needed but for those of you new to the system and wanting to try something different, let me give you a basic rundown of how the Noguchi system works.

At right you can see what a file in the system looks like.  To get started using the Noguchi system, you need to purchase some A4 or 9 x 12 envelopes at your local office supply store and then cut off the tops where you see the dotted line.  From there, you place a document that you want to file in the envelope and then label it at the side.  As you can see in the picture, the title of the document goes first, followed by the date, and then you can color code the file with a marker or label if you like.  Personally, I use the 1/2″ x 3/4″ self adhesive neon labels you can but at any office supply store.  I use different colors to code files for family, professional, church, school, or tax documents (I gave my tax documents their own color so I could find these easily when preparing my returns at the end of each year.

How to File a Noguchi File

Once you have your file completed, then it’s simple to put into the new system.  You simply file the document at the far left of your filing stack.  You file these documents vertically on a bookshelf.  Thus, the need for multiple filing cabinets is eliminated.  As you can see in the diagram at left the files are always filed to the far left thus, the most active files in the system will always be in the left side of your stack.  Using this system, when you access a file you automatically re-file it to the far left when you are done.  Lesser used files naturally migrate to the right of the stack.  The “Holy Files” that you see referenced in the diagram are old files that you no longer need in an active stack but you do not wish to discard. A simple filing box from the office supply store can quickly put these files in a place where they are easily found if needed months or even years later.  In most cases you will find several files will eventually wind up to the right and can be discarded whenever you choose to cull old files.  (For me, this is usually at the end of August).  After nearly four years of using the system, I have very few “Holy” files and my stack stays fairly neat and tidy.  I store everything from manuals, tax forms, medical records, church purchase orders, and insurance forms.  Obviously, there’s more but the beauty of this system is it can be naturally tailored to your use.

Another plus is that I find myself filing things much more quickly now than before.  I can quickly grab an envelope (I cut up several at a time) and label it when I need to file papers.  It takes a minute or so and the paper is quickly put away for easy retrieval when I need it.  The only horizontal file I really use anymore is my “43 folders” tickler file that is set up per David Allen’s instructions in “Getting Things Done”.

Many bloggers are asking for more thoroughness with the system but honestly, that’s all that’s required and all that I remember reading from the initial site that told of its design and use.  I’m sure if Noguchi really wanted the money, he could come up with an ebook to sell for $5 on the system to make it more complex but the beauty of the Noguchi filing system is it’s simplicity.  To try to add things to it would take away it’s very reason for using it.

The Noguchi system isn’t for everyone.  I know of many very “Concrete” and “Linear” thinkers that might find this a bit alarming.  But for someone who’s an “Abstract” organizer like me, the system does what I need it to do without creating a lot of clutter and stress.  So now you can think (or file) outside the box when it comes to storing your important documents.  Let me know if you try this and share your thoughts with me.

Screen Shot from GTDagenda

A few weeks back I received an email from Dan Baluta, creator of the online “Getting Things Done” application “GTDagenda”.  I was asked to try out the software and give it a review.  I wanted to be as thorough as I could so I asked Dan for a few weeks to actually use it on a daily basis as it’s designed to be utilized.  For the past month or so, I’ve used GTDagenda and gradually added my work to its various features.  I’m pretty comfortable navigating through it now so as I completed my re-reading of “Getting Things Done” this past week, I wanted to let you know about this software and see if you think it’s for you.

To begin with, GTDagenda is an online application.  This means you can access your task lists anywhere and even on your mobile phone.  I’m not an iPhone user but there’s an iPhone application you can add to your phone to use GTDagenda or you use one of its other mobile applications depending on your phone service.  I’ve gradually been moving all of my data to Web 2.0 applications where possible so this was a natural progression for me.

The screen shot at right is a good look at the “summary” of what GTDagenda provides.  Your goals in the top left are based on your levels of focus, the primary subject of Allen’s latest book, Making it All Work. As you identify your various goals, you will then begin to think about the outcomes of what you want to achieve and that will begin the process of “Project” lists.  Each project can then have any number of “Tasks” associated with it.  GTD fans are well aware of this process.  Each night, you review your various projects and their associated task lists and you then can mark certain tasks as “Next Actions”.  You can also add loose tasks that have no reference point as well.  You can then review your “Next Actions” list, print it, or write them down to add to a supplementary paper system.

Of course, you can use any number of context tags to add to your tasks so you can review by @call, @home, @errands, etc.  Again, these tags are familiar with Allen fans but they simply just divide the tasks so you do what needs doing depending on where you are and how much time you have.

GTDagenda is the first system I’ve used that gently nudges you to think about your various tasks and to what ends you are doing them.  If you define your goals ahead of time and strive to focus on things that will move you forward towards them, it does cause you to pause as you add a task to see if this task fits a project and ultimately, a goal.  The system incorporates all of Allen’s main points in GTD so fans of the system looking for an application that can manage everything from the most mundane tasks to their career and personal goals will like this.

Another addition that I enjoy is the “checklist” feature.  For repetitive daily and weekly tasks, you can set up your “checklist” area on GTDagenda and review them daily.  For me, I include such things as taking out the trash, working out, my daily devotional time, and routine weekly tasks associated with the church I pastor.  You can find numerous applications for this feature I’m sure.

One other thing I want to point out is that the system is customizable.  If you use other systems like Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits” or Leo Babauta’s “Zen to Done”, Baluta includes instructions on how to customize the various modules to work within these systems.  If you read my early morning post on developing a system, this site is pretty self-explanatory and you can devise something that works for you I’m sure.

GTDagenda has several levels of membership from free on up so it’s affordable, easy to use, and I think it works well for what I do to manage all of the inputs coming at me each day.  I will give it a solid recommendation for you and your productivity friends to try and see if it will work for you.  Let me know what you think when you try it out.  I think you will like GTDagenda!

On the web: https://www.gtdagenda.com/