I find myself looking back at a day, wondering where the heck did the time go? If I am honest with myself, I find that this time creep comes in when I am highly unfocused during my day. So how do we become more focused? How do we build habits that keep us focused on our jobs, our families, and our activities?

Focus = Productivity

Building focus into our work day provides us with the ability to get more things done. I have started to break my days into chunks of time where the focus is 100% on the tasks I need to get done. I setup time blocks in about 1 hour chunks, which have a very specific goal. It could be getting a website uploaded to the server, or having the homepage design completed.

Focus also means blocking out all those distracting things I do throughout the day. Checking Facebook, checking Twitter, opening email, re-checking Twitter. Nothing kills focus more than social media.

I also un-installed Growl notifications because I realized that application on my Mac wanted to distract me for some abstract reason. And like I really need to know that Dropbox downloaded another file.

So what tools do you use to stay focused?

8 Tools to Stay Focused

- Anti-Social – (For Mac) Blocks social websites for a period of time.
- Think – (For Mac) Brings focus to only one app at a time.
- Focus Booster – (For Mac) Focuses you on a single task for 25 minutes at a time.
- Self Control – (For Mac) Blocks distracting websites and email.
- Freedom – (Mac and Windows) – Blocks access to the internet so you can get things done.
- Cold Turkey – (Windows) – Blocks out distracting websites, social media, and games.
- Concentrate – (For Mac) – Runs a set of actions to keep you focused on tasks.

Does Urban Theme deliver what your church will need? Keep reading to find out.

Cost

Urban City has three pricing options, first is a free version, which includes lifetime updates and unlimited usage. Second is their standard pricing which is $29, which adds: Automatic Updates, Rock-Solid,Expert Support, Online Giving Widgets, Sermon Media Manager, Podcast Publishing Settings, People Manager, Locations Manager, and aTwitter Feed Widget. Third is the developers edition, which adds: both HTML and PSD files. I couldn’t be more pleased with ChurchThemes pricing of $29 for the standard edition and $49 for the developers edition.

For this review I used the developers edition.

Design

The Urban City theme from ChurchThemes has a modern, dark, and well urban feel to the design. The design for Urban City was based on a 12-column 960 grid, which if you are a fan of the 960.gs then you will be very happy. The 12-column base gives the design an open feeling, the content isn’t too cramped, and the 3-column look of the homepage feels very nice and balanced.

“Urban City is unique design approach for any church seeking to appeal to a younger audience.

The interface features deep tones and textures organized in a clean and readable layout.

Ambient shadows and rich typography make Urban City the perfect way to engage church members and future guests with your content.” -ChurchThemes

Urban City’s navigation is a nice two-tier drop down, users will have no issues finding their way around the site. The primary color palette used is dark grey, orange, and an off-white color. The colors are well executed and feel nice on the site.

The homepage includes a large jQuery slider to promote the main events at your church. The slider is a nice focus point on the homepage which will help drive your user to the areas you want to focus on.

I think the line-heights for the template were a tad too big for the font size, and would have liked them to be a little shorter.

Included Files

The included PSD files are a nice touch, it will enable church designers to incorporate their own church assets into the design.

Files are well organized and very straight forward to work with.

I did run into an issue with the PSD fonts since I didn’t have the correct fonts installed. Not a huge issue and ChurchThemes can’t supply fonts, but offering a link to purchase the font would be a nice touch.

Installation & Setup

Urban Theme comes with a nice getting started guide, which will walk the user through the setup process. While installing a WordPress theme isn’t too difficult, if you are not technically inclined, you would want to have someone who is technically inclined do this for you.

For the setup, I simply went to the themes manager in WordPress and uploaded the included zip file. After activating the theme, I was able to easily use the included theme options to upload a logo and make a few changes.

I also had to make a change to the permalinks settings, which every WordPress theme needs as well.

The theme comes with a few basic options, including the ability to upload a favicon and iOS logos. You can also add your Google Analytics code and some custom CSS styles.

Plugins

For this theme I had to install a couple of plugins that came with the developers package in order to take full advantage of the sermon player and the scripture tagging.

The one thing I noticed is that the theme didn’t come with any type of event manager, which I found odd since the demo uses one. After looking back at the getting started guide, I noticed there was a link to the WordPress Plugins directory that showed where I could download the plugin. No problem, just download and upload the zip file just like the other plugins. Although I do wish this was included in the original developer’s package.

For years I was ordering my CSS properties by type, but every time I had to go back (months later) to make a change, or edit someone else’s code, I found that it really made it hard for others to edit.

Here is a sample of what my code looked like:

.class {
   border: 1px solid #FFF;
   width: 100px;
   padding: 20px;
   height: 100px;
   position: relative;
   z-index: 1;
   border-radius: 20px;
}

So, I switched to ordering my properties alphabetically, which makes sense in my head, but I think as coders we could all save each other a lot of time if we did the same thing!

Here is what the code looks like now:

.class {
   border: 1px solid #FFF;
   border-radius: 20px;
   height: 100px;
   padding: 20px;
   position: relative;
   width: 100px;
   z-index: 1;
}

If you have OCD about your code, this is a great way to organize your code! At Bearded all of my developers are now coding their CSS in this fashion so it is quicker for another coder to step in and edit.

So, how do you organize your CSS?

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established – Proverbs 24:3

Wisdom is important, but as this verse says: “by understanding it is established.” It doesn’t say by our hard work it is established. It doesn’t say that by my own effort a house is established.

God is telling us we need to not only have wisdom, but we need to understand Him. We need to understand who He is, what He has called us to do, and to understand why we see the world in the way that we do.

Do you have an understanding of why you view the world in the way that you do?

I use the SMART goal setting technique with clients and for the websites I develop. I am not usually a fan of acronyms, but for goal setting, I have yet to find something better.

What does SMART stand for?

Specific – Your goal need to be extremely specific and concrete. Being able to clearly identify when the goal is achieved is key. It also cannot be a moving target, but a goal that is fixed. For instance, “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people.” is a fixed goal, while, “Write blog posts about our church.” is not.

Measurable – Your goal needs to not only be specific but it needs to be able to be measured with empirical evidence. An easy test is to see if your goal is measurable or not is to explain to a friend how you know, with data, that you achieved it. If we look at our previous example: “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people.” Is a simple, but very measurable goal. Using analytics we can see how much traffic our blog received this month and compare to next month.

Achievable – Your goal needs to be something you can reasonably reach. It does not mean you shouldn’t aim for a high reaching goal. It just needs to be something that is achievable based on the amount of work and effort you apply to the goal. In this case: “Increase blog readership to 1,000 people in 90 days.” Works for a goal if your church website has 500 users a month. But “Increase website visits to one million.” Would not be something that we can reasonably get to.

Realistic – Very similar to being achievable, your goal needs to be realistic. It needs to match up to what your vision is for your church, and your church website. For more on vision you can see my post about defining your website vision.

Time-bound – Your goal needs to be time based. In working with goals for websites, we need to develop a set of milestones that we can measure. For goals for my sites, I set one smaller monthly goal and then three larger ones for the quarter.

So? What are your goals? How are planning on reaching these?

Very soon my office will be decked out in illustrations from Old & New, the designs are fantastic!

Check it out: http://oldandnewproject.com

A Quick Look at the Numbers
I thought that if I am having trouble finding things, then I bet others are too. I took a quick look at my Google Analytic data and noticed in one week, 21% of people searching this site we bouncing off as soon as they hit the results page. This can mean a few things, but I read it as: 21% of our users are not finding content and leaving the site. Not something I want to be known for.

Why Search Can Fail Users
From a user experience viewpoint, search can be a fantastic tool when it works. It finds the content the user was looking for. But when it fails, it frustrates the user and they feel bad. Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. Did you find what you were looking for? Google focuses a ton of resources to make sure that all their search results are relevant to the user. Because they know what would happen if their search engine started to fail, people would look elsewhere.

What’s the solution?
I’m not sure yet. This is just an experiment. I am reworking our tagging system, to make it much easier to find relevant content by tag, also I have plans to test out a drop-down navigation that lists all the categories a post might fall into. This should be a fun experiment and I hope to find some interesting results to share with you all.

Have a theme you love? Share in the comments! Enjoy!

Born – $40

Ray of Light – $35

Rebirth – $35

Ezekiel – $79

Micah – $79

Charity – $50

Organic NonProfit – $69

WordPress AID – $35

Here is my story, why I love running, and how it helps me as a creative.

Growing up I was always the big kid. I was always active, I played a lot of sports, but I was still always big. I liked to call myself Husky, but if I am honest, I was a fat kid.

In college I did the Atkins thing, and dropped about 80 pounds, eating nothing but salads, and a ton of meat. Also with no exercise. The end result was that I skinny, but it was probably the most unhealthy my heart has ever been in. The weight stayed off about a year, then I realized I liked bread, it came back almost immediately.

About two years ago, I launched my design studio, I was working two jobs and trying to bootstrap my business. I was working 20 hour days, spending very little time with my wife, and eating like crap. At one point, I started having a panic attack, I called my doctor and was told that if I don’t quit working two jobs, I could have a heart attack.

Something had to change, I was lazy, not taking care of my body, and it was effecting most of areas of my life. So, after seeing my brother-in-law loose a bunch of weight and run his first marathon, I was inspired to get healthy.

In the last 18 months, I have gone from not being able to run quarter of a mile to running in two half marathons. I have also lost 60 pounds in the process. I say this not to brag, but to encourage. If I can do it, anyone can. Seriously. I hated running with everything in me.

1. Running will give you more energy and help you be more productive.
This might sound crazy. I thought I would have no energy left after running, but running has provided me with more energy than I have ever have. Now that I have more energy, I find myself being more productive.

2. It will challenge your goal setting ability.
I’ve wanted to quit every time I’ve started training for a race. Running has taught me to push through the tough times and hit my goals.

3. It will build confidence.
For me, the hardest part of getting started was that I was embarrassed about how far I could run. My wife was a much better running that I was, and I honestly felt dumb having to walk after a half mile.

But, I can look back and see how far I have come.

4. It provides time to think.
When I just need a break for work, or life, I go for a run. It gives me at least 30 minutes, for short runs, to a couple of hours, for the longer ones to think.

So what about you? Do you have any activities you’ve started and noticed an improvement in your professional life?

I have put together a list of some great tools I have used to help make my new responsive websites work.

Bootstrap Framework

The Bootstrap framework was created by the designers and developers over at Twitter. It has become a fantastic tool for my application development. This framework includes the ability to make your websites responsive.

Gridless

If you don’t like working with grid systems, then Gridless comes in handy. It is a simple and barebones HTML5 and CSS3 backbone that is designed to be responsive.

Fluid 960 Grid System

I have been using the 960 grid system for a couple of years now, and this project aims at making it easy for us to move to responsive design. If you are comfortable working with 960.gs, then this system will be an easy transition.

Respond.js

I stopped supporting IE6 last year, and I no longer support IE7, but I know there are people out there that want IE6+ support. Respond is a lightweight script that gives us more options for running media queries.

Modernizr

Similar to Respond.js but Modernizr has a few more features built in. It offers a little more control of how your media queries are handled. It also has some great features for handling resources. It also is well documented and has a great community of developers.

Lettering.js

One of my favorite new scripts! It is a jQuery script that will give you complete control over your web typography! It will allow your fonts to scale correctly and look wonderful on all devices.