How Prayer is Like Productivity

There’s a lot of talk around a new version of OmniFocus that is coming out soon.  If you’re not familiar, OmniFocus is a productivity app that is quite popular with enthusiasts of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.  Because of its following online, OF will likely get a hero’s welcome when it finally is released.

People will download it.  About a week later, many of those same folks will stop using it.  Life will have gotten busy.  The shine will have worn off. Old habits will creep back in.  That powerful new productivity app will feel somehow, “ordinary”.

Folks will realize that, at the end of the day, no app can do the work for you.  You are the one who has to do the work. 

How similar is this to prayer? Let me share a story to answer that from my own life. 

A visit to my spiritual director a few months ago had me complaining about one thing or another.  The man is an absolute saint for putting up with me.  I don’t know how he does it.  When I came up for air and stopped talking, he calmly said, “and have you been praying about this?”

Right... praying about it, that would have helped. 

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“Pray as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on you.”

— St. Ignatius of Loyola

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What he was really saying is this, “you can’t expect God to step in and make your problems go away if you’re not even willing to do the slightest bit of work”.

I’ve heard that mantra many times in the months since then, you have to do the work, you have to do the work, you have to do the work.

In this way, productivity and prayer are very similar.  There is one significant difference that is probably obvious by now.  With productivity, it’s all about you and your colleagues.  When it comes to prayer, God is in charge.  He’s doing the heavy lifting.  His grace is mysterious and can be hard to figure out.  His ways, as the passage says, are not always our ways. 

Still, you’ve got to do the work.

Four Things That Make Morning Prayer So Difficult

Think of the last time you jumped out of bed and started your day with a smile.  Now look back at what made that morning work so well- what made the difference?  

When it comes to morning prayer, it’s easier for things to go off the tracks than for your morning to go smoothly.

Why is that?

In my experience, our mornings are the result of our evenings the day before.  I had one of these “good mornings” recently and it felt so good.  I got up at the right time, my morning prayers went well and my workday seemed to just “flow”.  

Most mornings get sidetracked as the result of the following:

1. We stay up too late the night before.  If you’re tired, you’re less likely to get up and get going in the morning.
2. We don’t have a morning routine down.  It’s a good idea to do the same things every morning in the same cadence- it cuts down on decision fatigue which can influence your desire to pray.
3. We haven’t laid out our tools in advance.  If you don’t know where you put your Bible and your journal, you are less likely to have a good experience of prayer.
4. We lack a structure for our prayers.  This is why the ACTS formula makes so much sense. It just works.

How are your mornings going lately?  Which of the factors above can you improve on?

Is Lent Stressing You Out?

It’s Lent once again and you’ve probably made anywhere from 2-3 Lenten “resolutions”.  Catholics have a love-hate relationship with these kinds of Lenten activities.

On one hand, we feel excited about doing something new for and with God.  We secretly feel that maybe, just maybe, this Lent we will draw closer to the Lord.  Will this be the year when I have a breakthrough?  Will this year be any different from previous years?

On the other hand, it can feel like drudgery.  The fasting bothers us.  The alms giving only reminds us that we aren’t that generous in the first place.  By the time Easter arrives, we are more relieved than anything. 

The other weird part of Lent is that we are, most of us anyways, pretty awful at making resolutions.  Think of the last New Year’s Resolution that actually stuck past February 1- I thought so.

I’m no different.  Some years during Lent have gone really well, others not so much.

This year, I’ve decided to give something up that’s a bit out of the ordinary: podcasts.  Hear me out.  I drive a lot of carpools each week, getting my kids to and from school  and sports practices.  There’s a lot of time in the car and sometimes it feels like a part time job. 

To fill the space, I listen to podcasts.  A typical week might offer me 20-25 podcasts.  I listen to casts about politics, sports, productivity, faith and everything in between. 

So far, my Lenten sacrifice has been difficult but good.

A bigger question is whether your Lenten sacrifices are stressing you out.  Are they?  What’s behind that stress?

1. A bit of friction might not be a bad thing. This might show you that you’ve been “soft” in the months (years?) leading up to Lent.  It might also be God telling you to sacrifice a bit more and to hang in there.  Sacrifice isn’t meant to be a cakewalk after all.
2. You may have set yourself up for failure.  Is your Lenten sacrifice unrealistic?  Have you taken on more than 1-2?

My advice would be to sacrifice only one thing for Lent.  The key though is to make it a meaningful sacrifice.  For me, it’s podcasts. For you, it may be something else. 

Finally, it’s ok to make a “mid-game adjustment” during Lent.  Pray for the wisdom and discernment to know what God wants for you to do during Lent.  After all, a Lenten sacrifice is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. 

Should You Pray if You Feel Like a Phony?

Phony people are everywhere.  They live in your neighborhood.  They sit in the cubicle next to you.  They go to the same church as you.  They put on a mask and pretend that everything is better than it is.  Inside, they are just as insecure as the next person. 

Let’s not be too critical though- each of us is a phony at some point. 

You may not be 100% phony.  It may only show up once in a while.  Like when you’re in a meeting and want to sound smarter than the next guy- phony.  Or, when you’re having someone over for dinner and you want to impress- there it is again. 

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who stands as one of the most significant spiritual figures of our time, called BS on phoniness.  He discussed it using the phrase “the false self”.  To Merton, there is the person you are, ultimately found in God’s love and mercy for you.  This is the person you must discover and embrace. 

The phony you (and me!) is where we get into trouble. 

Merton put it this way, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. … My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love — outside of reality and outside of life. And such a life cannot help but be an illusion. … The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God. … Therefore I cannot hope to find myself anywhere except in him. … Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him, I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find him (New Seeds of Contemplation, 1961, pp. 34-36).

Whether you feel like a phony today or it’s a general awareness that you have, the question remains: how ought you to pray when you know that you’re being phony?   

Think about it- when we are phony, we least want to pray.  It’s our ugliest place to be.  Yet, in some ways, it’s the best condition through which we should pray.   

Phoniness can be a blessing.  

If we can place it before God, acknowledging how we feel- fake, plastic, incomplete, God can do wonderful things with it.  Beneath it is a raw desire to draw close to the Lord.  Beneath phoniness is something beautiful and that is who we are in Christ- beloved by God. 

This is the ultimate journey: going through phoniness to our truest self in God- beloved. 

So should you pray when you feel phony?  Absolutely.  Simply close your eyes, talk to God from your heart and pray for the grace to be real with God.  Pray for the grace to accept yourself, where you are today at this very moment.  Embrace that.  Offer that “you” up to the Lord and pray that God does something extraordinary through you and in your moment of vulnerability. 

The Surprising Truth About Prayer

January and February are often times of the year when people try out new things.  In a quest for form new habits, we go on diets, save more money and go to the gym.  The seed inside of us, wanting improvement, is good.  

After all, it’s a good thing to be in better shape, to manage our finances more effectively and to eat healthy foods.  Rather than poo-poo this innate desire we all have to improve, we should celebrate it.

On one hand, forming new habits is easy but on the other hand, each requires a certain “barrier of entry”.  Let’s look at a few of them and consider the hoops that you have to jump through to really excel:

• Fitness: do I go to the gym or purchase equipment to excercise at home?  Do I work out on my own or with a buddy?
• Diet: do I ditch carbs or increase protein?  Do I have to drink eight glasses of water a day?  Should I eat three meals or five smaller meals?  Organic or regular food?
• Reading: do I buy traditional books or use a Kindle?  Sci-fi or fiction?  What if I don’t like to read? Does listening to an audio book count as reading?

Now, consider something that prayer has in common with each of the habits we’ve just mentioned: it takes practice.  Prayer, to truly become a habit that “sticks” must be done over and over again.

But, and here’s the wonderfully surprising truth about prayer, there is literally no barrier to entry.  You and I can pray right now.  No fancy clothes needed.  No apps needed.  No level of education needed. 

All that’s needed is to surrender to that seed of desire in you to be closer to God.  That alone, placed there first by God, is enough of an engine to get you going.  

Consider the words of 16th century mystic and Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila wh described prayer prayer in terms of, “being on terms of friendship with God frequently conversing in secret with him who, we know, loves us”.

As my father would say, “that’s a wow!”  Prayer is nothing more or less than building friendship with God.  We talk with Him in our hearts or out loud.  We listen to Him, even when it is hard to hear His voice.  We do all of this because we know, deep down, that He loves us and waits for us in prayer.

There’s no barrier of entry, only a surrender to the tiniest incling that we should pray.  When you sense that incling, drop everything and say a prayer.  

• When you see a car accident on the side of the road, say a prayer.
• When someone tells you some bad news, say a prayer.
• When you are stressed at work, say a prayer.
• When you read the news and hear of a natural disaster, say a prayer.
• When you know something or someone is “off”, say a prayer.
• When you start your day and before you go to sleep, say a prayer.

By praying when you have the smallest sense that you should pray, you will be building the muscle of prayer.  God waits for you there and wants for you to meet Him in the quiet and ordinary spaces of daily prayer.

Four Things You Can Do When You Feel Overwhelmed

I signed my kids up for basketball this week.  Here’s a snapshot of how it went:

1. Daily emails from the school reminding me of the signups.  
2. Creating an account online.
3. Confirming my account via email.
4. Paying for the two kids to play basketball.
5. Capturing my password and login credentials in 1Password.
6. Marking on the calendar the key meetings and events that go with signing two kids up for basketball.
7. Creating a project in OmniFocus so I can “park” all of my basketball-related items in one place.

If this was the only thing in my life, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  Two kids playing basketball… sounds great right?

Except that it’s only one slice of the pie.  Life as a forty-something dad with four kids has become exceedingly complex.  The basketball signup process is just one thing that I’m managing.  

Other (similar) projects include my daughter’s Fall Drama rehearsal schedule and what role parents need to play.  There’s winterizing the house before the first frost.  Then there’s the committee that I should never have signed up for but did out of guilt.  The conference calls for that commitment add another layer of stress.  

I could keep going… but I won’t because you probably have similar things on your project list.  We all add more complexity than we’d like to our lives.

“Noise is our accumulated list of projects, tasks and todo’s that need to be managed.  It’s life really. ”

And complexity equals one thing and that is noise.  

Noise is our accumulated list of projects, tasks and todo’s that need to be managed.  It’s life really.  Nothing more, nothing less.  

The key is this- do we have a system that is capable of helping us manage all of these projects?  Does a person really need to use a productivity app to manage basketball signups?  Can’t life be simpler than this?

Sadly, no it can’t.  Sure, when you’re about 10 years old life is simple.  You wake up and do whatever comes to you during the day.  But once you hit middle school and beyond, you’ve graduated to Project Manager status.  

Your system needs to keep up.  

The “problem” I have (and maybe you do too?) is that I get tired.  On some days, I just don’t want to have to manage projects in my personal life.  I don’t mind it at all in my “work life”- we use Nozbe for that.  

But it’s the Saturday morning kind of thing that bothers me.  It’s a tension to manage- having projects for my kids’ commitments and my non-work activities.  It just gets overwhelming at times.

You could just say, “the heck with it” and toss up your hands and hit delete.  This might be effective for a short while but is probably irresponsible or reckless for the long haul.

Instead, here are four creative strategies for when you feel overwhelmed by your system:

1. Visit with a spiritual director on a regular basis.  Visiting with my spiritual director, a Catholic priest, has been the most impactful decision of my adult life.  Without someone to talk to about deep things, most of us are left to wrestle with our internal world on our own.  Overwhelm is definitely one of the things that a spiritual director can help with.
2. Take an intentional hiatus from social media.   More and more studies show that the more time you spend on social media, the unhappier you are.  By hitting the pause button on your Facebook and Twitter usage, you’re making more time for simpler things that matter much more.
3. Reclaim your Sabbath.  When do you take “sabbath”?  When do you stop picking up socks around the house and sticks in the yard?  When do you enjoy doing something that truly makes you smile?  By reclaiming your Sabbath, you’re not escaping your overwhelming list of projects and todos.  Rather, you’re giving them a context of the rest of your life.  I recommend Terry Hershey's Sabbath Moments as a place to start if you want to reclaim your Sabbath.
4. Cut it out.  At a certain point, you just need to do less.  Which project can you cancel or delete? Which committee can you gracefully bow out of?  Which event can you skip?

We all get overwhelmed.  The real key is to respond with patience and calm.  Be compassionate with yourself and realize that you have much more agency than you think.  

You’ll get through it!