Seven Lessons for Productivity
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | 90 months ago, we started a little podcast
00:00:08.540 | called Ask Pastor John, and today we reach episode 1500.
00:00:13.540 | It's incredible.
00:00:14.840 | This is only possible, of course, with the support
00:00:17.640 | and the engagement of so many listeners out there
00:00:20.800 | around the globe.
00:00:22.400 | Your prayers, your listens, your emails,
00:00:25.880 | your suggestions, and your continued financial support.
00:00:29.760 | Thank you so much for being a partner with us
00:00:33.120 | to make this podcast possible.
00:00:35.640 | And when you mix all the play counts together
00:00:37.840 | from the various podcast players that people use
00:00:40.120 | and the APJ app that was developed early on,
00:00:43.920 | plays from the website, and of course,
00:00:46.020 | all of the YouTube plays that have accumulated
00:00:48.220 | in recent years, if you add them all together,
00:00:50.880 | we are quickly closing in on 200 million episode plays
00:00:57.620 | all time, 200 million.
00:01:01.680 | That baffles me.
00:01:03.340 | It's especially remarkable because as some of you know,
00:01:06.320 | we designed this podcast to cover us in 2013
00:01:08.800 | when Pastor John was in Knoxville for a year.
00:01:10.920 | We wanted a way for his voice to remain very close to DG,
00:01:14.280 | and it worked.
00:01:15.320 | But we had planned to end the podcast with episode 400,
00:01:18.880 | but episode 400 was really the beginning.
00:01:21.120 | It was the beginning of our launch into the stratosphere,
00:01:23.660 | and that epic episode, number 400,
00:01:25.680 | really propelled a growing momentum
00:01:28.320 | that has just continued to grow year after year ever since.
00:01:33.000 | So Pastor John, here we are, 90 months later.
00:01:36.240 | Let's step back and ponder this.
00:01:38.320 | Talk to us about work, especially how you work.
00:01:41.840 | People look at your ministry and say you've written a lot,
00:01:44.040 | spoken a lot, accomplished a lot.
00:01:46.400 | What have you learned about your own personal productivity?
00:01:49.620 | Do you have any wisdom about productivity or creativity
00:01:52.960 | that you wanna share with us at this APJ milestone?
00:01:57.180 | - Well, I have thoughts.
00:02:00.400 | I'll let you and others judge whether it's wisdom or not.
00:02:03.880 | You know as well as I do, Tony,
00:02:06.440 | that podcasts like this don't come into existence
00:02:09.760 | merely because of one person.
00:02:12.920 | It wouldn't exist without you curating the questions,
00:02:16.020 | mastering the systems, editing the episodes,
00:02:19.320 | serving them up to Desiring God,
00:02:21.160 | and it wouldn't exist without the team of computer experts
00:02:24.080 | at Desiring God and the spreading experts.
00:02:26.800 | So I think first lesson, first piece of wisdom perhaps
00:02:31.440 | that any productive person needs to learn
00:02:34.640 | is that no man is an island.
00:02:38.300 | We are part of a body and the hand cannot say to the eye,
00:02:43.300 | I have no need of you.
00:02:45.800 | And if I let myself go down that road even further,
00:02:48.600 | I hear the Apostle Paul ringing in my ears,
00:02:52.520 | what do you have, Piper, that you did not receive?
00:02:55.400 | And if you received it,
00:02:56.740 | why do you boast as though it were not a gift?
00:02:59.560 | And then I hear him say,
00:03:01.360 | I worked harder than any of them.
00:03:03.080 | Nevertheless, it was not I,
00:03:06.400 | but the grace of God that was with me.
00:03:09.360 | Paul is just so eager not to take any credit
00:03:13.760 | for his productivity as an apostle.
00:03:17.080 | And if I keep walking down that path,
00:03:19.800 | I realize I've got a wife
00:03:22.400 | who has been spectacularly supportive for 52 years,
00:03:27.400 | never complaining.
00:03:30.840 | I pause here, Cody, to think,
00:03:32.600 | now are you exaggerating, Piper?
00:03:34.240 | My memory is flawed,
00:03:35.760 | so everybody should take this with a grain of salt.
00:03:38.360 | But to my memory, I do not recall Noel Piper ever
00:03:44.120 | getting in my face gently or angrily
00:03:48.200 | about my studying and writing and speaking like I do.
00:03:53.200 | So I can't imagine what life would be like without her.
00:03:57.960 | But I have been recently pondering,
00:04:01.840 | especially since this milestone was approaching,
00:04:04.440 | I have been pondering milestones
00:04:07.840 | and looking back over 50 or 60 years,
00:04:11.660 | wondering how did that happen?
00:04:13.920 | How did books and sermons and lessons and classes
00:04:16.960 | and "Ask Pastor John" episodes come into being?
00:04:20.040 | And I've got a few thoughts that might encourage others
00:04:24.560 | who are on the way with me toward heaven,
00:04:29.100 | and they want to be fruitful and productive as they go
00:04:33.460 | and not waste their lives.
00:04:34.760 | So here's a few thoughts.
00:04:36.440 | Number one, get a clear vision
00:04:39.920 | for why everything exists, including yourself.
00:04:43.960 | Few things have been more helpful to me
00:04:47.620 | than realizing what Jonathan Edwards would call
00:04:50.800 | the end for which God created the world,
00:04:53.720 | including the end for which he created me.
00:04:57.080 | I used to carry around in my wallet, Tony,
00:04:59.680 | a piece of paper that basically said,
00:05:03.000 | "You exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God
00:05:06.200 | in all things for the joy of all peoples.
00:05:07.880 | Never, never, never, never forget it.
00:05:10.320 | Carry it in your wallet,
00:05:12.840 | if not in your conscious head all the time.
00:05:15.840 | Know why you are on this planet."
00:05:20.160 | That's number one.
00:05:21.000 | Number two, it's been powerfully animating to me
00:05:25.640 | to realize that as a human being,
00:05:29.400 | I am destined to be a maker.
00:05:34.200 | Now I got this insight in college
00:05:36.120 | when I read Dorothy Sayers' "The Mind of the Maker."
00:05:39.960 | God is the great creator, maker,
00:05:42.920 | and he created humans in his image
00:05:44.960 | as secondary creator, makers.
00:05:47.780 | The Lord God took the man, put him in the garden
00:05:50.320 | to work it and to keep it,
00:05:51.880 | and we'll see how that's making and creating
00:05:54.600 | in just a minute.
00:05:56.380 | We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
00:06:00.240 | for good works, good doing, good making.
00:06:06.200 | And I'm not talking just about artists and writers.
00:06:09.520 | I'm talking about every single human being.
00:06:13.480 | The Greek word poieo means do or make.
00:06:18.480 | Now why would that be?
00:06:20.500 | Why would one word,
00:06:22.160 | and Greek isn't the only language that's true in,
00:06:24.840 | it's numerous languages that do and make
00:06:27.960 | are the same word.
00:06:29.920 | Why would that be?
00:06:31.040 | And I suspect it's because all doing
00:06:35.640 | is to make something different than it was, all of it.
00:06:39.560 | So we are all creators, makers in some sense.
00:06:43.200 | Every time we act, every time we do anything,
00:06:48.200 | we make something into something else,
00:06:50.920 | some situation into something different than it was.
00:06:55.520 | A rocky field into a garden, a stick into a spear,
00:07:00.520 | a room into a home, a cow into a steak,
00:07:05.120 | flour and sugar and fruit into an apple pie,
00:07:08.320 | snow into a snowman, sounds into melody,
00:07:11.920 | fire into lamps and heaters and locomotion,
00:07:16.920 | 11 men into a football team, and on and on and on.
00:07:20.960 | We're all makers.
00:07:23.680 | And that truth has settled into me in such a way
00:07:28.940 | as to make me find tremendous pleasure in creating things.
00:07:33.940 | In my case, mainly with words, sermons, articles,
00:07:39.420 | books, poems, "Ask Pastor John" episodes.
00:07:43.140 | And if you were to ask my wife, she'd say,
00:07:44.820 | "Yeah, not just words, but messes in rooms."
00:07:48.980 | Piper has a low tolerance level for chaos.
00:07:52.520 | I really do.
00:07:53.500 | I don't like it anywhere I find it.
00:07:55.300 | I'm on it.
00:07:56.320 | As soon as I see chaos in thought or chaos in a room
00:08:00.100 | or chaos in the way the grass is growing
00:08:02.420 | or the weeds are spreading, I am on it.
00:08:04.280 | I don't like to leave the world the way it is.
00:08:08.220 | It ought to be a better place, more beautiful,
00:08:11.180 | more orderly, more wonderfully fruitful.
00:08:15.260 | So I love to compose things,
00:08:16.940 | things that have a beginning and a middle and an end
00:08:19.300 | and coherence and beauty.
00:08:20.740 | I have a love affair with being a maker.
00:08:24.660 | That started a long time ago,
00:08:28.060 | and I think it has to do with being human.
00:08:30.800 | Third, we need to discover and embrace with zeal
00:08:35.800 | the difference between sloth and rest,
00:08:41.220 | laziness and leisure.
00:08:44.020 | I wrote a poem about seven years ago
00:08:46.100 | called "Pilgrim's Conflict with Sloth."
00:08:49.140 | People can listen to the whole thing at Desiring God,
00:08:52.060 | where sloth personified tries to lure me,
00:08:56.220 | John Piper, as I stop being a pastor
00:08:58.580 | and move into full-time with Desiring God,
00:09:01.060 | tries to lure me with the half-truth that Jesus said,
00:09:06.060 | "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,
00:09:08.940 | "that I will give you rest."
00:09:10.300 | And let me read you a little excerpt from that poem,
00:09:13.620 | how I answered sloth, because this is so crucial
00:09:18.300 | that people make the difference between sloth and rest.
00:09:22.060 | So here's what I said.
00:09:23.260 | "As my God lives, I tell you, sloth,
00:09:26.540 | "He gives His rest under a yoke.
00:09:30.160 | "His sweet bequest, blood-bought and suited
00:09:33.260 | "to the back of every weary saint,
00:09:35.580 | "the knack of all our plowing,
00:09:37.760 | "Jesus makes the weighty burden light
00:09:41.180 | "and takes the yoke beams in His hand
00:09:43.620 | "and lifts and carries us,
00:09:45.640 | "our works, our gifts, and Jesus is the giver.
00:09:50.020 | "Grace bought and powers every pace
00:09:54.060 | "and every enterprise.
00:09:55.580 | "Sloth, we were made and made again
00:09:59.060 | "to be coworkers with the maker of the world,
00:10:02.960 | "to see the world above and then to make the world below
00:10:06.240 | "more beautiful, to learn, to know,
00:10:08.900 | "and then to make, to shape, adorn, compose, produce,
00:10:12.580 | "and turn a thorn into an etching tool,
00:10:14.920 | "to write, to say what never has been said that way,
00:10:18.840 | "to sing, to draw, to paint, to build,
00:10:21.500 | "to stitch and weave until we fill the world with truth.
00:10:25.600 | "For this God spoke and Jesus died.
00:10:28.720 | "This is our yoke, our happy yoke.
00:10:33.240 | "You will not take my work, sloth.
00:10:36.640 | "We were made to make."
00:10:39.060 | So I know, Tony, and everybody who's listening knows,
00:10:43.140 | there is a place, an absolutely crucial place
00:10:46.000 | for rest and leisure.
00:10:47.840 | The Sabbath principle holds.
00:10:50.140 | We must know the difference between sloth and rest,
00:10:55.140 | laziness and leisure.
00:10:56.560 | That's number three.
00:10:57.480 | Here's number four.
00:10:59.220 | If we're going to do our work faithfully and abundantly,
00:11:02.960 | when I say abundantly, I have in mind 1 Corinthians 15, 58,
00:11:07.240 | be steadfast, immovable, always abounding
00:11:10.440 | in the work of the Lord.
00:11:11.800 | Do lots of it.
00:11:13.680 | We must not be paralyzed by perfection and infinity.
00:11:18.680 | Arnold Toynbee, I pulled this article out of my files
00:11:22.480 | that I put away in 1970.
00:11:25.220 | I pulled it out and I reread it.
00:11:27.600 | The historian Arnold Toynbee said,
00:11:31.660 | "All human work is imperfect because human nature is.
00:11:36.660 | "And this intrinsic imperfection of human affairs
00:11:41.500 | "cannot be overcome by procrastination."
00:11:45.680 | (laughing)
00:11:47.320 | That is awesome.
00:11:49.240 | That insight is just so incredibly fruitful.
00:11:53.480 | So many people fail to be productive
00:11:56.820 | because they stare imperfection,
00:11:59.240 | which is inevitable, in the face and they say,
00:12:01.000 | "Well, I'll just wait another day."
00:12:02.720 | As if waiting another day is gonna make the likelihood
00:12:06.000 | of their imperfection gonna go away.
00:12:08.320 | That's an amazing and wonderful and fruitful insight.
00:12:12.260 | And then he said something very practical.
00:12:15.580 | He said, "Without realizing it,
00:12:18.300 | "I had pitted myself against infinity.
00:12:21.520 | "To extricate myself, I developed a way
00:12:24.660 | "for my own banning infinity.
00:12:27.400 | "Instead of going on and on acquiring knowledge,
00:12:30.240 | "ad infinitum."
00:12:31.420 | And oh my goodness, what a temptation that is
00:12:33.620 | in getting ready for Ask Pastor John episodes, right?
00:12:36.620 | Every question should have a book written on it.
00:12:39.180 | Every question could be spent days and days researching.
00:12:43.340 | Well, what am I gonna do?
00:12:44.500 | So he said, "I started to do something
00:12:47.120 | "with the knowledge that I already possessed.
00:12:50.080 | "And this active use of knowledge gave direction
00:12:54.100 | "for the future to my acquisition of knowledge."
00:12:57.580 | And I think one of the main reasons
00:12:59.700 | that I have been as productive as I have
00:13:03.780 | is that I made peace decades ago.
00:13:07.220 | I made peace with imperfection and finitude.
00:13:12.220 | I have no illusions, Tony,
00:13:16.460 | that I will say the last word about anything.
00:13:20.620 | My job while I live is to speak the truth
00:13:25.140 | as I see it in God's word, as well as I can say it
00:13:29.780 | and let God do what he wants to with that imperfection.
00:13:34.700 | Number five, and this I have heard from Arnold Toynbee,
00:13:38.820 | Martin Lloyd Jones, Jonathan Edwards, and others,
00:13:41.900 | namely, "Act promptly as soon as you feel
00:13:45.860 | "that your mind is right for taking action."
00:13:50.780 | In other words, seminal ideas,
00:13:52.700 | far-reaching, fruitful thoughts come to us at night
00:13:58.880 | while we're reading, meditating, praying, walking, playing.
00:14:03.540 | And if you don't capture those in some way in writing,
00:14:08.540 | you'll almost certainly lose them.
00:14:11.380 | So find a way to, quote, this is Toynbee, quote,
00:14:15.980 | "Act promptly when your mind is ripe with insight."
00:14:20.980 | Two more briefly, and these two relate especially
00:14:25.340 | to ask Pastor John and the fact that we're at 1,500
00:14:29.400 | when we thought, oh, 400 would be crazy.
00:14:31.780 | We need to be deeply persuaded that steady, small chops
00:14:38.520 | with a good sharp ax will most certainly,
00:14:44.840 | after a few hundred blows, bring down a very big tree.
00:14:49.320 | Yeah, I told Noel last night,
00:14:51.300 | did you know that we're at 1,500?
00:14:55.260 | Asked Pastor John, and she laughed,
00:14:57.260 | and she said, just like reading 15 minutes a day,
00:15:00.660 | because she remembered the fact that for many seasons
00:15:04.340 | of my life, being a slow reader, I've said,
00:15:06.880 | okay, I'm gonna read a huge novel,
00:15:08.860 | I'm gonna do it at 15 minutes a day.
00:15:11.140 | And I still do things like that.
00:15:13.060 | Take a little chop every day at something,
00:15:16.260 | and the tree is going to fall.
00:15:18.180 | You pick up a good ax and you take regular chops,
00:15:22.720 | you will make good progress.
00:15:26.520 | If you have to see a tree fall,
00:15:29.280 | every time you pick up an ax,
00:15:31.920 | you will spend your life on little projects.
00:15:35.720 | There are great trees worth turning into beautiful houses,
00:15:40.480 | which can only be brought down
00:15:42.320 | by a thousand small, faithful chops.
00:15:47.200 | When I was in seminary, I gotta bring this home
00:15:49.580 | because this really wallowed to me
00:15:51.900 | when I was 23 years old, 1970,
00:15:55.000 | Jeffrey Bromley was my church history professor.
00:15:58.820 | He translated all 10 huge complex volumes
00:16:03.820 | of Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament
00:16:08.540 | into the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
00:16:11.500 | 10 big blue volumes full of Greek and Hebrew
00:16:15.700 | and French and German, and oh my goodness.
00:16:19.140 | And he's a church history professor.
00:16:20.940 | And I asked him, "Would you write an essay
00:16:23.420 | for our student magazine on how you work?"
00:16:27.260 | And he wrote this sentence,
00:16:29.960 | "It might be of interest to note
00:16:32.680 | that two and a half hours per day
00:16:35.860 | mean two and a half pages of TWNT per day,
00:16:40.740 | 12 and a half pages per week, and 560 per year,
00:16:45.740 | a steady average, which makes possible
00:16:48.780 | a fairly rapid publication."
00:16:51.580 | A fairly rapid means probably one volume every two years,
00:16:55.280 | like 20 years.
00:16:56.980 | So what a lesson for a 23-year-old like me.
00:17:00.980 | Just keep chopping, keep chopping
00:17:04.580 | at whatever worthy task you have.
00:17:07.500 | And finally, Tony, I think we should say to everybody,
00:17:11.940 | let your motto be the principle of the Apostle Paul,
00:17:16.940 | forgetting what lies behind, pressing forward to the goal.
00:17:21.620 | In other words, never get to the point in your life
00:17:26.620 | where you are more contented with what you have already done
00:17:31.800 | than you are excited with what is yet to be done.
00:17:35.980 | At every stage, 24, 44, 64, 74, 84,
00:17:40.980 | pray with all your heart, "Oh God,
00:17:43.740 | make the next season of my life
00:17:47.420 | the most fruitful season ever
00:17:51.140 | for the supremacy of God in all things,
00:17:53.040 | for the joy of all people."
00:17:54.860 | So it's been a good run, Tony.
00:17:56.940 | 1500 is a good run, but now we start
00:18:01.620 | the beginning of the second 1500.
00:18:04.900 | If God wills, we will live and do this or that.
00:18:08.580 | - Yeah, amen.
00:18:09.420 | I know I speak for a lot of people when I say thank you,
00:18:11.820 | Pastor John, for investing so much of your life
00:18:14.820 | and thought into the hundreds of hours of your time
00:18:18.380 | that are represented in these 1500 episodes.
00:18:20.960 | And if the incoming questions are any indication,
00:18:24.620 | we will have plenty to talk about until episode 3000.
00:18:28.740 | - I don't doubt that we will run out of questions,
00:18:32.100 | but I do doubt that we will run out of life sooner or later.
00:18:35.980 | But the Lord governs that.
00:18:37.820 | - Yeah, he sure does.
00:18:39.420 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:18:40.460 | And thank you for joining us today on the podcast
00:18:43.420 | for our feed, our archive of 1500 episodes,
00:18:46.900 | or to send us a question of your own,
00:18:48.560 | go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:18:52.500 | Next time we look at self-pity,
00:18:56.460 | how do we wage war on self-pity?
00:18:58.500 | That's on Monday as we now aim towards episode
00:19:01.960 | number 3000.
00:19:03.600 | I am Tony Reinke.
00:19:04.540 | Thanks for listening and for supporting us
00:19:06.740 | over these 90 months together.
00:19:09.340 | I'm really grateful to God for all of you out there.
00:19:12.300 | Pastor John and I will see you on Monday.
00:19:15.220 | Have a great weekend.
00:19:16.260 | (upbeat music)
00:19:18.840 | (upbeat music)
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