Scott Cheatham’s Weblog

As I sit to relax and write I’m thankful for many things.  A good church family, my wife, and my kids.  This week, my wife and I attended the funeral of a young man only 23 years of age who died very unexpectedly.  It gave me pause to reflect on the value of life.  We complain about not having enough money to pay bills, cars breaking down, and other things failing. This week, I lost my computer for most of the week with a motherboard failure.  I took some time from writing and elected to wait until the unit was back in my office, safe and sound with it’s new gear.  It runs better than it did new.  I’m blessed.

But I’m also blessed with knowing Jesus as my Lord and knowing that when the Lord calls me home, I’ll be ready to go and meet him. Every funeral I do reminds me that we all have that appointed time no matter our age, social status, or financial standing.  Our worship this morning was God honoring and a blessing to me and to many that attended. Our bible study afterward was led with great conversation, a thorough study of the passage, and great application by our group.  Again, I am blessed.

So with the weekend worship behind me and another week to plan, Here’s the general breakdown of what lies ahead this week…

Monday I will finish my series on personal growth.  Check back here in the morning for the final installment that I wanted to post a week ago before my computer blew up.

Tuesday, I am planning for a fall harvest outreach campaign for our church that I plan to announce next Sunday. We have had a tremendous summer but the fall season awaits and with it, many families’ desire to return to church. We’ve yet to really let our new neighbors know we are here in our new location so this fall season will be our first real opportunity to do so. Pray for us if you are so inclined.

Wednesday, I plan to finish the outline for our final message in a series of sermons I’m preaching this month.  Also, I plan to post a long overdue book review of Bob Franquiz’s latest book “Zero to Sixty”.

Thursday is letter writing day for me.  I like to write letters and drop them in the afternoon mail so they arrive at homes by Saturday reminding folks of service the next morning.

Friday is another blog post and another book review.  I’ll leave you in suspense!

Of course, many other things play into my daily schedule but as you’ll see in tomorrow’s blog, daily planning makes all the difference in executing your plans.

For those who emailed me, I’ve been away from the blog this past week due to computer problems.  The motherboard on my office computer blew up and I had to replace it.  I tried writing at other locations but I couldn’t stay focused so I took a break.   It seemed weird not being able to write at all but the time away did me some good.  I’ll admit though it’s nice to be back in my office working with my main computer.

I’ll be back to finish by personal growth plan on Monday and then wrap up the week with two book reviews.  Thanks again for your emails and questions!

I’ve been asked by many friends about my use of the Moleskine (or Piccadilly knockoff) notebooks.  There are many uses for this versatile little pocket notebook but more and more popular is the PDA “hack” for pocket moleskines.  Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d share this post for a moleskine hack.  It comes from the “Art of Manliness” blog and author Stephen Young:

Of all the tools in your arsenal, without a doubt the most important is your pocket notebook. Notebooks are the obvious precursor to PDA’s and computers, and still have the upper hand on these gadgets in that they are quickly accessible, absolutely customizable and completely unique. No other technology will allow you to easily compile lists, sketches, calendars, notes, plans, links – exactly the way you want them.

You can read the rest of his post with instructions on how to set up your notebook by clicking here.

Again, you do not need a moleskine to make this work.  Any pocket notebook will do.  Piccadilly makes a nice copy of the moleskine for about half the price and it can be purchased at most Borders bookstores.  As fall approaches, now is the time to look at getting better organized.  This little hack may just be what you are looking for!

I’ve had some great feedback on my post regarding Twitter and its many applications.  Since becoming a Twitter user, I’ve found it to be a great way to connect, share great ideas, link to others, and much more.

John Richardson at the “Success Begins Today” blog has now put up a great post with even more helpful uses of this micro blogging service:

What sets Twitter apart from its competition is its timeliness. Thousands of people are sending tweets at any given time about everything imaginable. It’s this live data that can be incredibly useful.

Read the rest of his post here.

John’s blog always has helpful details on it.  I hadn’t considered some of the ideas he shared here.  That’s what makes the blogosphere go ’round!

Have a great day.

Josh Kaufman at “The Personal MBA” has a great post on learning how to manage your energy.  Time management and being productive in whatever calling you have requires learning to work with your body instead of against it.

Kaufman’s thoughts go hand in hand with a blog series I wrote last year about being “Fully Engaged”.  There’s some good stuff in his application ideas.

Share your thoughts on this if you use any of these ideas!

Today, I’m sending you to the site of Robert J. Morgan and a delicious salad idea he shared a few days ago..

It was easy, healthy, tasty, and refreshing; and it’s going in my recipe file.  Since tomatoes and peaches are in season, you might want to try it.  It’s as simple as this:

Read the rest of the simple recipe by visiting his site.

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!

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.