by Aarron Pina | Feb 3, 2017 | Uncategorized
Here’s a quick note on two special needs for Seasons of Life that are pressing and promising:
Bring That Day to the Kineo Leader’s Conference:
This is a conference for church leaders where I will have opportunity to bring That Day directly to our target market – pastors who want to see their people more engaged in living everyday with eternity in mind.
They represent churches from 7 states including IN, LA, VA, and GA. This could be very big for the kingdom and for Seasons of Life. Funding this will allow me the bandwidth to bring my A game to pastors really dedicated to kingdom building. In order to provide this special P/R performance for them at no additional burden to their respective churches, we’re inviting you, our key supporters to contribute to bringing That Day to their day.
Could we do it for free as a “marketing write off”? Sure, under normal circumstances, but right now it’s just not financially feasible to do much pro bono work until things really stabilize later in the quarter. So, we’re praying a few people might band together to help “prime the pump” with us. Would you be one of them?
GTD Training, Atlanta
I’ve been practicing a lot of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) methodology for a little over 10 years now and teaching key pieces of it for a few years through Clean Slate.
GTD is the gold standard for personal productivity training and in 2017 will be in cities including Mumbai, Edinborough, Dublin, Tokyo, and… Atlanta. They will sell out and I only get one chance to get their certification before they’re off to another city.
Their blessing (and branding) could open a ton of new doors for us with our Clean Slate workshop, not only in churches, but also in businesses. Your help in getting me there in part or in full would be greatly appreciated.
The training is $600 and will (always does) sell out.
I’d love for you to pray about helping us with these two specific opportunities as urgent and important needs. To give, use our online portal
here.
by Aarron Pina | Oct 29, 2012 | Uncategorized
Prisoners of Our Own Device
Overwhelmed? Overloaded? Overcommitted? Overworked? Overburdened?
Me, too. Or, should I say “I was living that way, too.” Until God broke the dam and gave me some great relief. Many of you have been following these strange posts on my Facebook page about “inbox = empty” and wondering either “who cares?”, “is it Christian to hate him?”, or “how can anyone get their inbox to empty so often and why is Aarron Pina taunting me?!”
Let me explain.
About 6 ot 7 years ago I read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and implemented a good portion of it, experienced great success for a time, but eventually fell off the wagon enough times that I think I broke (and subsequently, lost) my spine. About 2-1/2 months ago, after reading over our family mission statement which includes part of Romans 12:2 (“…be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds”), I started listening to David Allen’s podcasts and re-implementing the GTD system.
Ever pray to God for a breakthrough and hear no response only to find out He was silent now because He’d already clearly told you something several times before? God had given me an answer, freely and without reproach, but this time He made me uncover it when I was so fed up with my own mess that I moved Heaven and earth to find His answer:
1. Track your commitments. (Wait, something fell through the cracks?!)
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5)”
Every one of us has (at the 10,000 foot level) between 30 and 100 “projects” at any given time. (A project is any multiple step activity that when all the steps related to it are checked off, it can be considered “done” – closed-ended.) These commitments need to be tracked or they will “fall through the cracks”. Every one of us has (at the 20,000 foot level) between 10 and 15 categories of commitments, called “Areas of Responsibility” or “Areas of Focus” that cannot be completed because they are ongoing and open ended. Ex. “market research”, “bills”, “customer service”, “health”, “strategic planning”. These, too, must be tracked. Some people call this “getting organized”, but what I’m suggesting is a larger, richer, system of workflow management that includes “organize” as a component without being limited to just getting there.
2. Run the Prison, Don’t Let the Prisoners Run You
God is a god of order and He designed our minds to be like “steel traps”, capturing thoughts and storing them. But, most of us are very sloppy in the way we run the penitentiary of steel traps in our head. I was taught a long time ago that when it comes to lust, there’s no excuse for sloppy thinking. However, the verse above isn’t just limited to lustful thoughts. Yes, we need to get unruly, unwelcome visitors like lust out of the lobby, but we need to make sure the rest of the prison stays in control.
The “to make it obedient to Christ” part means, from a practical standpoint, identifying a thought as either godly or wicked. Here’s a simple question I’d been blowing off hundreds of times a day, resulting in towers of clutter on my desk: “What is this?” Every email, every memo, every assignment, every “note to self” can either be acted on or not. That’s helpful information. It’s either a prisoner, a prison worker, or a visitor. Unfinished business is like an extra inmate with no place to go – accumulate enough of them and the guards… the prison… will be overrun and out of control.
Identifying each thought (email, commitment, inspiration, project) is vital information to me now, because I know there are only four possible places something can go once identified:
- A. Do – if it’s something that I, and only I, can do and it’s less than two minutes (I have a sand timer on my desk called the “2-minute Nazi” to hold me to this) I’ll knock it out, immediately. If it’s something that requires other input from other people or that takes longer than two minutes it gets “Dated”.
- B. Date – I’m funny like this: if it’s on my calendar, it’s pretty likely to get done on the day it’s listed on my calendar. If the answer to “What is it?” is “something that cannot or should not be done right now, it goes into my “tickler” file (see below for definition) on the appropriate day or gets scheduled on my calendar in a “free” block, so it doesn’t fall through the cracks so easily. No stray prisoners allowed in the hallways!
- C. Delegate – If this is something that should be done or worked on until done but just doesn’t fit into my job description (Disciple – Grow – Promote), it must be delegated. This is like transferring a prisoner to another facility into someone else’s care until their sentence is served.
- D. Dump – Can I tell you about two of my newly favorite tools in my office? The trash can and the shredder. Love ’em. Now, I even know how to use them so well, they get emptied sometimes twice a week! How awesome is that? Talk about freedom. Get them out of the prison if they don’t belong there and you keep the prison clean!
3. Roll Call – the Glue that Keeps It Running
Every week, I now have a sacred hour or two on my calendar called “Weekly Review”. Read Getting Things Done and you’ll get a better feel for what it looks like or email me about our upcoming “Getting Things Done God’s Way: Restoring Order to Your Mind, Work, and Life” workshop in January and I’ll get you more detail. Essentially, this is a time for me to clean out all of my inboxes (virtual and physical) update all of my “next actions” lists, get clean and clear on what commitments are still waiting for other peoples’ inputs, etc., and check off items that may have moved so fast I couldn’t track them in the moment – “Mom called, she’ll be coming for dinner on Sunday, at 5:30” – great, I don’t have to call Mom about that.
Freedom Found? Be Encouraged.
For me, staying on the GTD wagon for 9 weeks, the payoff wasn’t just increased productivity. I’ve never felt like I literally “found” two extra hours of time in a week before, but that wasn’t the payoff, either. It was an even cooler reward than I had imagined. Have you ever emptied out your sofa or even the back seat of an old car and found $20? A five? Okay, enough change to buy a #4 breakfast at the drive thru? It’s like all this STUFF was in the way covering a buried treasure.
My treasure was more than cash. It was an unexpected gift from God: once I had uncluttered my inbox, my “to do” list, and my “current commitments” pile, it was clear I had been making dozens of choices based on either fear of rejection or the approval of men. Idolatry no matter how I looked at it. That was a set of commitments I knew just what to do with: I wrote them on paper “fear of rejection” and “approval of man”, said a little prayer “Lord, you have set me free from these. Let me stay free, indeed”, rolled my chair to the shredder, and listened blissfully as is churned away.
Free at last, free at last…
AP
by Aarron Pina | Oct 22, 2012 | Uncategorized
Doing Two Things at Once… Have you ever been on the phone with someone while you were driving to work, get to work and think “Wow, how did I get here?”
Auto-Pilot Explained
There’s great brain science out there that explains this phenomenon. Without getting hyper-biological, let’s just say that God designed our brains to do really great things. One of those things our brain yearns to do is to embed familiar routines into the “auto-pilot” section of our brain. We’ve subconsciously trained ourselves how to get to work by storing “directions to work” in the routine-function section of our minds (also called the basal ganglia). When we shifted our “full” attention to the phone conversation, auto-pilot is what helped us arrive at work instead of Peru.
Much of what you and I have learned as children has been broken down into easily recalled “chunks” (how to go to the bathroom, how to lift a glass, what to say when someone gives you a toy, how to respond to someone who yells at you, etc.) and stored it in autopilot. This saves us from wasting time and energy rethinking the routine each time we have to do it.
The Old Testament teaching from Proverbs 22:6 is echoed in Jesus’ teaching “…but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. (Luke 6:40)” Which, begs the question:
Who (more often, what) has been your teacher?
We’ve All Been Discipled by Someone
Many of my teachers growing up were contrary or marginally average examples of godly behavior. It took time in the Word and the Holy Spirit to expose to me the places where I’d learned wicked examples of auto pilot. Today, I was interviewing a mental health professional and he reminded me that when men and women are under great pressure they tend heavily to fall into default modes of thinking learned from their childhood/family of origin. The brain science I’m reading right now fully confirms this assertion: while we may have new ways of thinking and be a “new creation” in Christ, we don’t always let go of our old programming. Could this perhaps explain why some of the following passages appear in scripture:
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12.2a)”
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5)”
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil. 4:8)”
All Things New?
When we come to faith in Christ, we do, indeed, become new creations, but this does not mean our most basic programming is completely erased. How much good would we be to God’s kingdom if our mind were erased, personality wiped clean, and we had to learn reading, writing, even potty training all over? We have been “trained up (Prov. 22:6)” for a reason. But, submission to God in all we do, abiding in Christ and walking by the Spirit, demands that we are constantly renewed in our minds. We have much to relearn and the Holy Spirit who is our teacher, but we must dedicate time and mental bandwidth to the process.
- Take an inventory of “pretension that set up against the knowledge of God” and pray – multiple times daily – that the Holy Spirit will renew those old, bad, faulty thought patterns, giving you a “new” auto pilot. But, make sure to do this on paper – soon, I’ll be posting on how your brain isn’t designed to hold too many important things in the forefront – there’s great practical value in getting things out of our heads and onto paper.
- Think on these things – don’t just say “I’m going to not do x.” There’s great truth to “garbage in, garbage out”. Ask God to fill you with new desires and that’s likely what you’ll get. We’re in charge of our minds and what we consciously let in. Memorize the fruits of the Spirit – (Gal 5.22-23) and Philippians 4:8 and actively pray that God leans you toward these new ways. Life in Christ is not about good behavior, rather a changed heart that puts out godly behavior. But, let’s at least have a Holy Spirit Wish List.
- Say “no” to self-condemnation when you “fall off the wagon”. Looking in any mirror can show any of us far more faults than we’d care to think about tackling. But, at least now, we’ve got a more exhaustive list of what to pray for. Remember that while you are imperfect, God is leading you to perfection that will only be complete in His Kingdom reign.While you will make mistakes, Christ already paid the price for them – no sense beating yourself up when Christ has already been beaten for you.
This January, I’ll be running a half day workshop called “Getting Things Done God’s Way: Restoring Order to Your Mind, Your Work, and Your Life”, where we’ll be covering how this stuff is just as related to getting your inbox to “empty” as it is to sharing the gospel at work and loving your enemy while you’re under attack.
Be Encouraged
God wouldn’t have put this stuff in the Bible if He didn’t intend to help us on the journey.
in Christ,
AP
by Aarron Pina | Sep 10, 2012 | Uncategorized
Just Do It!
“Call. Ask. Read. Pick up. Reply. Go to.” Action words, right?
I choose these words everyday because David Allen told me I had too many “non-action words” on my action list and passive words like these don’t help your brain, they just make you scratch your head in wonder. Words like “Mom” and “Bicknell Project” can’t really be “done” because they’re not discrete actions that can be completed. They’re just categories that need to be broken down into a list of “doable” steps. Bookmark that thought. We’ll come back to it.
 |
Ever have 1,100+ emails in
your inbox? Beastly. |
Meet the Beast
A few years ago, I looked at my inbox and it had over 1,100 items in it and I would nearly get a headache just looking at the computer screen because… well, where do you start with 1,100 emails? My inbox extended probably 50 screen lengths and had become a woeful Beast that would stare me down from the moment I fired up my computer.
Since I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), I’ve been able to get my inbox to empty two to three times a week. Caveat: “been able to” and “have done” are definitely two different matters. But, I can recall uttering the words “free at last” more than once over these years, simply because I knew the impossible could be done, and I’d seen it happen at least once myself.
 |
GTD, by David Allen, a field manual
for slaying the beast at work, not for
abiding in Christ. |
Today, I have Microsoft Outlook’s rules automatically re-route 80% of my incoming mail into reliable, categorized folders, keeping my inbox nearly clutter-free and with less than 40 items in my inbox at all times. Can you imagine the freedom I feel every time I sit down at my inbox to see that it’s less than one screen long? The Beast is, at long last, dead!
Same Beast, Different Face
When I first grasped the concept of what sin really is and the fact that I could sin in my mind without taking any external {Call. Ask. Read. Pick up. Reply. Go to.} action, I could hear the familiar snarl of the email beast echo through my head. Suddenly, I realized that my average day was filled with far more sin than I’d ever considered. It was as if I was being brutally Spammed in my inbox… my “sinbox” was well over 1,100… million.
Word Problems, Again?
Over the years, I’ve also realized there’s an enemy of God out there – a deceiver, liar, and accuser – who knows that when I recognize my sin my natural propensity is to become overwhelmed by the massive clutter in my inbox. It’s usually spam in the form of guilt, shame, and condemnation. Sometimes, it’s even accompanied by a self written email like “Idiot! You know better!” Yet, Jesus is there, always, telling me to abide, to remain in Him. Now, “abide” and “remain” don’t really fit well on my “action words” list. It’s one of those words that makes you scratch your head in wonder. So, how does that work?
Jesus gives us a key to reconciling this problem in John 14:16-17, Jesus reminds us that abiding is such an impossible task that He’s going to send the Holy Spirit to help us do it. In other words, it can’t be “done” because it’s not an item that can be completed. Instead, I want to encourage you today with a word that doesn’t appear in this passage – “reconnect”. It’s a simple word that in my GTD world means “get back on the wagon”. In Jesus’ terms it means – “get back into the vine”.
 |
Refresh/reconnect – The key
to “abiding in Christ”. |
Sin is the natural result of disconnecting from the “vine” (read John 15). If we ever spent a day fully connected to Christ, truly abiding, two things are certain: 1) we’d never want to disconnect again and 2) we’d be so filled with pride that we’d immediately disconnect (1 John 1:8). Truly, it can’t be done… apart from the Spirit. Because of the cross, the beast is already slain. If we can, by the Spirit rather than by our own effort, wrap our heads around that concept, there is a freedom greater than any empty inbox can bring waiting in the next heartbeat.
Be Encouraged
Jesus is the original “Getting Things Done” master: the beast is, indeed, dead – sin has been conquered and so have the enemy and the world. With our debt paid in full, our sinbox is clean. The clutter of guilt, condemnation, and shame can be deleted in an instant by simply refreshing our browser. In Christ, by the Spirit, to the glory of the Father, you and I can be clutter free in one keystroke: realign… refresh… reconnect.
Abiding with you,
AP
For a quick assessment (45 seconds or so), go to www.gtdiq.com. For one-on-one coaching in either GTD or in abiding in Christ, email aarron@seasonsoflifeministries.org.
