As you can guess, the majority of what we talk about in this episode is how Catholics can use social media to reach and evangelize a much larger community than they ever could before.  Not only that, parishes and ministries can communicate with their members in a much more effective and meaningful way.

Although there is a lot of fear and mistrust of social media among Catholics, Brandon shows us that it is just a tool that can be either used for good or for evil depending on how you choose to use it!

In this video you are going to learn what affiliate marketing is, where to find products to promote, why promote them is a good thing if done the right way, and how to do it effectively.

Check out the video below:

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The comment was from a visitor by the name of Kevin and he didn’t pull any punches when it came to what he though about my premium content:

Can’t afford your premium access until I cam [sic] generate more income from my Catholic content business. Not joking.

As you can see, it was very simple and to the point.  However, despite how short the comment was, it really says a great deal.

Is the price of the premium content too high?

Absolutely not! The material that is in the premium section cost me over 5K in self-investment to gather and learn.

Does that mean that Kevin is a liar or cheap!? No!  It just means that I am a poor salesman.

In selling there are two main things that you need to do: Give the buyer a reason to buy based on value, and destroy all possible obstacles that could be perceived as risk.

Here’s a great explanation by Jefferey Gitomer:

It is never the prospect’s fault if they don’t buy, it’s yours

Since content has been the primary goal for the premium section, the sales pages and copywriting has been lacking (for now).  For example, here is the current text that visitors see when they click into the premium section’s sale’s page:

Thank you for your interest in subscribing to the premium section of Productive Catholic.  We are constantly adding new content and it will only get better and better.

Premium membership is a monthly fee of $9.95. There is a 30-day risk-free trial. If you are not satisfied, simply cancel before the 30-days and you won’t pay anything.

10% of all proceeds go to a ministry to help out of work mothers and fathers to start their own business to support their family.

Now, does that show value or mitigate risk?  The fact is that there is nothing in that text at all that is selling anything.  It doesn’t explain what the premium section is or why it’s valuable.  Yes, it talks about the 30-day free trial, which is a risk mitigator, but overall it’s horrible sales copy.  It is any wonder why Kevin didn’t want to buy premium access?  Heck, he didn’t even want to chance the free trial because it the selling was so bad.

What real sales copy should look like

A real sales or squeeze page should be engaging and have a clear message showing the value of what you are offering and why the reward of your offer is worth far more than the risk.  Below is the new page for the productive Catholic Free Member Community

Become a Member of the Productive Catholic Community

Do you think that this page is more convincing?  What do you think the value statement?  What do you think is the risk mitigator(s)?  Let me know in the comments!

We talk about some of the productivity apps that we each use. JR introduces me to Diigo, a web-based application that lets you keep track of things that you find all over the Internet. He also shares his prized productivity tool called Task Coach, which let’s him stay organized while doing his doctorate studies. Both apps are free and pretty awesome!

In my neck of the woods, I share the tool that has been keeping me productive and sane for the past few week called Action Enforcer (affiliate link). I love this tool because of it’s ability to keep you on one task and racing against the clock! Unfortuantely it is not free, but is well worth the money. I’ll be doing some tutorial vids using it soon.

Using the techniques that I use with E-Junkie, you could hypothetically create a product every day of the week and have them up on your site to sell at the end of each day.  I’ll also show how you can batch products together to make bonuses while still keeping your costs low.

Lastly we’ll also explore where you can host a lot of your files that you create in order to produce a large amount of content and not break the bank.

Overall, by the end of this video you should have a good idea of how to get a digital product set up to sell.  In the next module we’ll talk about what kinds of digital products you can make!

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One thing that a lot of people forget is that businesses – especially with the economy today – need to find ways to generate revenue.  They don’t have the funds to hire a full-time sales staff, yet those are the types of people who are going to help them to grow (or save) their business – and this is where you come in.

Don’t wait for someone to call on you

What were job searches like before job boards?  Since when do we need Career Builder or Monster.com to tell us how to seek employment?  If you are already unemployed, why do you need a salary?

There are a lot of companies out there that are willing to contract folks out and give commissions based on how many leads or sales they get.  It’s a win-win for both parties since you as the sales-person has the opportunity to get a good amount of income based on how many people you bring to the business, and the business gets revenue and possibly loyal clients.  Now, this is often 100% commission-based, which means that you need to work your butt off.

I’ve been wanting to change gears for a while now.  My full-time position isn’t exciting me anymore and although my side business is doing well, I still need a little more income in order to support the family.  That being said, I recently started developing restaurant franchises for a friend of mine.  There’s no base pay, and what I earn is solely based on my performance – and it’s been absolutely exciting.

Startups need sales too

A friend of mine owns a startup that creates mobile web sites for businesses was struggling for a long time to get clients.  Being only one guy, it’s hard to go to networking event after networking event while still having the time to work on projects for already existing clients.  He recently “hired” a couple of sales people off of Craigslist and not only have they started generating income, they’ve “forced” him to raise his prices to a fair amount in order for them to get a fair commission.  How cool is that?

You could be one of those sales guys that helps a new business get off the ground.

But I’m Not a Salesperson…

One thing that I’ve realized is that some of the best salesmen out there are not “salesmen.”  If you can get yourself behind a product or service that you believe in, the only thing that you need to do is be yourself.  Of course, you should get some sales training in order to be effective with your sales pipeline, but ultimately it’s not that difficult.

I come from an information security/techie background, and if I can make sales, so can you!  Starting the sales process can be as easy as talking to someone at a business conference.

The point…

I know too many people who have been laid off and are submitting their resume to hundreds of positions, only to get rejected or hear nothing back at all.  Why wait?  What’s stopping you from talking to business owners in your area and asking if they would like to have a 100% commission contractor supporting their revenue generating efforts?  Is it the fear of being rejected? Let me know in the comments…

This audio will give you a basic overview of SEO and show you why it’s not as hard as some people make t out to be. One of the things that I highly suggest is that you use a self-hosted wWordpress installation and use a plugin such as WordPress SEO or All-in- One SEO in order to make your life a whole lot easier.

Click the link below to listen to the audio!
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Back when the Internet was still young, people needed a way to be able to take credit card information and have forms that would automatically deliver a product once it was paid for. However, thanks to services like E-Junkie, you no longer need to have to understand how to code a website in order to sell something.

In the video below I will show you an easy way to create a product and to make it ready to be sold. You could do this with apologetics audio, study guides, or just about anything. In the upcoming modules on creating a digital product we will go step-by-step and create a product of our own to sell.

After you watch the video, let me know what type of product we should make (Audio, Video, Ebook), in the comments!

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While I usually don’t get this touchy feely in podcasts, I definitely feel as though this is one of the most important posts that I’ve done – most of all because I need to hear it over and over again.  God is in control, and he is the main provider for you and your family.  Honor Him, worship Him, and all other things will be given to you.

Easier said than done….  I know.

For those that are new to Productive Catholic, part of my story is that my wife and I really wanted to be able to have a traditional Catholic family (i.e. one income so that my wife could bond with the children). Of course, living in California this was extremely difficult with my salary. I ended up trying to start my own side business. After a couple of months of failures and another year of barely making ends meet we were able to make it happen.

As of writing this, I still have a full-time job, but I also have a side business that is doing great – and I want to help you to do the same. If things really got bad with my full-time position, I know that I could fall back on my business if I really needed to. My hope is that with this post you’ll have enough ideas to choose from and will take the leap and get started so that you can have a bit of added security for your family or be able to generate income if you’ve been laid off.

Web/Print Design

Web design is not the same as web development.  In fact, one facet of my side business is web development and I can barely draw stick figures.  Design is all about the look and feel of a website or other product and is arguably the most important aspect of what you create.  Website or not, the thing that you need to be able to do is make it all look great.

If you are great at design, why not build a business around it?  There are a ton of businesses out there that need print material; there are also web developers out there that need someone to make their websites look good.  Currently, I have a joint venture with a designer that designs my client’s websites and my staff makes them move and function.  It’s a fantastic partnership and very profitable.

Web Development

This is the other side of the aforementioned coin.  If you can code, or if you can hire someone else to code, why not become a web developer.  It can be for a local parish, business, or the entire archdiocese.  Partner up with a great designer and you could have a pretty rockin’ side business.

Create mobile apps

As mobile technology starts to grow, more and more people are going to demand applications for mobile platforms that meet their needs.  Creating a mobile app isn’t that difficult (unless you are doing the actual development).  There are a number if individuals around the world that you can hire to create an app for you, and very inexpensively.

About 3 years ago, a friend of mine and I were doing a workout program called Crossfit.  We needed some timers made and also wanted an effective way to keep track of our progress.  We joined the Apple development program for about $100 at the time and had an app made for about $500.  So $600 later we had an application that we could use to help us with our workouts, and that also made us about $1000 in revenue.  In essence, we got paid $400 to make a mobile app that we needed anyway.

If you have an idea, you could easily hire someone in Eastern Europe to develop something for you for under $1000.  If you do it right, you may even have a best seller on your hands and make a living off of your idea.

Create online apps

Just like with mobile applications, you can easily have an online service created for you.  The beauty of an online application is that you can make create a membership model.

Matthew Warner, a Catholic Entrepreneur, created an online service called flockNote.  The service lets parish groups and organizations communicate better than they ever have before.  If  a youth group member prefers to be texted whenever the group is doing something, they can set that up; if a member prefers a Facebook message, they can make that happen.

In the end, groups and parishes pay a fee to be on the service and Matt is able to make a profit while providing an awesome service that moves the Church forward.  You can do the same.

Teach at a training/learning center

There are a number of privately owned training centers around the world.  Their basic business model is that they provide training to organizations that will either help the organization’s personnel become better at a certain skill, or they train specifically for technical certifications.  Often, these training centers only facilitate the learning environment, and that means that they rely heavily on outside help to do the actual training.  That’s where you come in.

The best thing about providing workshops at training centers like this is that you can charge for the training and also offer strategic consulting and other services afterward.  There are a lot of businesses that would rather hire someone who is an expert rather than try to learn everything themselves.

Create Catholic education material

If you don’t like the books/audio/video that are being used in your local Catholic school, why not make your own?  It can be an entire curriculum or just one-off texts on specific topics.  With services like MyPublisher.com, you could easily create your own hardcopy prototype to send to Churches and get them on board.

Jared Dees, The Religion Teacher, created an E-book that teaches Catholic catechists how to create an amazing lesson plan.  His E-book is free, but your’s doesn’t have to be.

Be a Ghost Writer

There are a lot of Catholic writers out there, and I’ve always wondered why there aren’t to many of them that take up ghost writing.  If you don’t know what a ghost writer is, they essentially write articles and books in another person’s voice.  In fact, I am pretty certain that there are a lot of Catholic apologists that have their books written by someone else.

The beauty of a ghost writer is that they save a ton of time for the author.  Unless they can type at 200 words per minute, many authors would rather dictate their thoughts than type them out.  If you are a wordsmith then this would be right up your alley.

Offer translation services

This one is a bit of a no brainer.  If you know another language, why not meet business owners at networking events and offer to be their official voice to the Middle East, Europe, or Asia?  You could brand yourself as not only a translator, but someone who knows and understands the professional language of a certain niche (i.e. “The Voice of Restaurant Franchises In The Middle East”)!

Be a consultant

You know a lot more than you think, and if you were laid off there was a reason why your company hired you in the first place.  Why not take those same talents that you used at the company and consult?  With a little sales and marketing training, you could brand yourself as the premiere consultant in your nice.

Become a virtual assistant (and then outsource some of it)

If you are computer savvy and aren’t afraid to reach out to companies, then you might want to consider becoming a virtual assistant.  A virtual assistant typically works from home supporting one or more companies with various tasks.  For example, say that you are a fantastic construction project scheduler, there are construction companies out there that cannot afford in-house project schedules.  It would be more cost-effective for them to outsource that task to an outside agency.  That outside agency could be you.

Help people learn something

Why not get in touch with the recreation department of your city? Often, cities offer a ton of classes that range from computer learning, to swing dancing, to gymnastics.  Are they short on teachers?  Do you have a class that you’d like to pitch to them?

Just like with teaching at a training center, instructing a class for the city (or any other recreation organization) isn’t the only way to make money.  Offer your students 1-on-1 coaching or even make a product that you can sell.

Be an SEO expert (if you understand SEO)

I am very cautious with this one because there are so many “SEO Experts” out there, but I’ll touch on it anyway…

Are you a good Internet marketer that understands SEO, conversion tracking, and other online related topics?  If so, maybe you should offer your services to local businesses.  I’ve known a couple of people who have done this simply by asking the shop owners of stores that they visit on a regular basis.  You could charge them on a monthly basis, a one-time fee, or a percentage based on leads that you generate.

Contract out with your previous employer

If you were laid off by your previous employer, keep in touch with them and check in to see if they need contracted work.  Most people don’t realize that  big part of the expense of employees are benefits, workman’s compensation, and other expenses that you don’t see directly.  A lot of organizations would jump at the chance of hiring someone on contract, especially if they know that they do great work.  The best part about it is that you can use them as a testimonial for your business – can you say good PR?

Be a 100% commission sales rep

Because of my networking, I was able to land a pretty awesome job developing restaurant franchises around the world (I’m even in the process of creating a podcast for it).  I get a commission from all of the sales that I make, but I don’t get paid a base salary.  Although that doesn’t sound that appealing, it’s a win-win situation for the company I sell for and for me.  Basically, they don’t have to pay me a dime unless I actually make a sale.  If I make a sale then that means that they get more money.

Why not do the same for other companies?  There are a ton of businesses out there that would kill to have a sales rep like that!  Even if you’ve never sold anything in your life, give it a try to see how it goes.

Use a special talent that can be done quickly and offer it on Fiverr.com

Fiverr.com is an amazing site.  Essentially everyone on Fiverr will do something for $5.  Why not think of something that takes around a minute to do and that only you know how to do?  For example, there are folks on there that will do video or audio impersonating a well-known celebrity.  If you can do a 30 minute audio and bust out 1 audio a minute then you have the potential to make almost $300 an hour.  Not too bad, huh?

Start a blog (Self Hosted WordPress please)

This is a no brainer.  Everyone who is going to do any business at all needs to have a blog.  My suggestion if you don’t already have one is to buy hosting (I recommend Bluehost – this is an affiliate link that helps support the site), install WordPress on your domain, and start creating amazing content around a particular niche.

If you do it right, you could start selling just about anything on the site, you could advertise, or you can teach people how to do certain things and use affiliate links to generate income.  I’ll be talking more about this in the future.  The point right now is that you need to get started on this today!

Create tutorials about something you know and make digital products

This follows on after creating a blog.  Once you get the hang of WordPress, there are very inexpensive screencasting tools out there that allow you to make tutorials.  You could easily create comprehensive tutorials that teach people how to create or do something and sell those tutorials.

For example, Cliff Ravenscraft offer at the Podcast Answer Man has created a ton of audio and video products that he sells on his site using E-Junkie.  There’s no shipping, no inventory, and he doesn’t need to be awake when he sells them – it all happens automatically.

I do the same with my E-book at You Can Work Less and with the premium membership tutorials on this site.  It’s not too difficult and well worth the effort.

Make a niche product

Going even deeper into what we were just talking about, you can easily create a digital product for a very tight niche.  For example, I know a guy that has created training and mechanical videos for flat track motorcycle racing.  It’s an extremely tight niche but he makes a good living off of those videos because of avid fans.

Maybe you are a professional M-16 tournament shooter – create videos showing the top 10 mistakes novices make when learning how to shoot M-16s.  Maybe you are a Yorkshire Terrier lover – create an e-book showing 30 sweaters and scarfs you can knit for a Terrier.  Perhaps you love the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead – create a 10 part audio series that explains the Old Testament relation to that story.  There are thousands of small niches, find yours and create something!

Provide social media monitoring/brand monitoring services

Catholics are starting to jump on the social media train (finally), and one thing that a lot of small companies need is to be aware of what’s being said about them.  For a monthly fee, you could offer companies a social media monitoring service, and depending on the tier that they buy, that monitoring could include things like finding opportunities to sell or create new products or services, security monitoring, or brand monitoring.  You could also be a spy and gather intelligence on their competition.

Write your own books and sell them

Almost every devout Catholic that I know wants to be an apologist (I know that I do).  Well, you no longer need to wait to be anointed by God to write a book on apologetics – or anything for that matter.  Thanks to Amazon and other services, you can professionally publish your book and also have it distributed electronically and physically.

Devin Rose wrote the book If Protestantism Is True and wanted to get it published by a few traditional Catholic publishing companies.  All but 1 turned him down, and that company wanted to change the concept of the entire book.  Well, rather than give up, Devin figured out how to publish his own book and  thanks to his blog and community he developed, the book became a hit.

In fact, he just signed a contract with Catholic Answers to re-publish the book under their name.  All this came about by just doing what he felt called to do and using the resources he had at hand to do it.  How amazing is that?  You can do it too!

Conclusion

There are hundreds of more ideas for Catholic Businesses and ways to generate side income, but I wanted give you only a few in hopes that it sparks action.  If you’ve been laid off, are at risk of being laid off, or are perfectly content with your job, you need to take action and build something that’s going to bring in income.  With the recent events that have occurred, we’ve seen that there is really no such thing as job security.  The only way to make your family’s livelihood more secure is to create multiple sources of income.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not just about making money for yourself, think about what you could do for your local parish or ministry.  The potential is there to create new revenue streams that you can funnel straight to the ministry.  In fact, one of the reasons why I cam creating a premium section is to fund a new ministry in which I help folks at my local parish that have been laid off to learn how to run a business and give the funds necessary to get started.

Whatever your situation is, you need to be good stewards of your money and talents.  Learning how to run your own business is ALWAYS a smart investment and will help you, your family, and others to grow spiritually and emotionally.  You need to start now, and thanks to modern technology you have no more excuses not to start.

In this video module you’ll be introduced to a variety of methods that you can use right now to reach out to your target audience.  You’ll understand the difference between push and pull marketing and which of the two is more effective and why.  Lastly – and most importantly – you’ll have the building blocks of marketing that will allow you to start building a strategy that will build your brand and help you make more sales with your business.

Watch the module below to learn more about marketing and why it’s important to your Catholic business.

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Why?

Well, aside from being free it’s also:

• Super easy to install
• There is a slight learning curve, but once learned you will find that it is extremely easy to use.
• You can basically do anything that you want with it through it’s use of plugins.
• It’s super easy to be SEO compliant (meaning that search engines will love you).
• You can bring in other people to wirte blog posts, etc.
• You can build an amazing community (like ours).
• It’s easy to change the theme of your site.
• You can integrate social media easily.
• The list goes on…

Because of that, I wanted to give the member community a video of an hour-long consulting session that I did with a client that gives a great overview of WordPress.

Watch the video below:

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Single-tasking, aside from making you more productive, helps you to see things in a greater perspective and to provide better quality in what you do.  One method that we discuss in this episode is the Pomodoro Method.  This technique helps you to maintain focus on a single task while still seeing the big picture of what you need to get done during the day.

Being Productive Vs. Being Busy

Following on the topic of single-tasking, we talk about the difference between being productive and being busy.  Often we mistake being busy for being productive.  We are drowning in things that we need to do on a daily basis, but in actuality those things don’t add value, they just keep us afloat.

Being productive means that you are creating something of value.  You are “producing” something that will benefit you or someone else.  In order to do that you need to take the time to create something.  As a Catholic, it is not enough to be busy.  Remember what Jesus said to busy Martha?

If you have been struggling to jump on board the social media marketing wagon, and feel like you are wasting hours of your life on these platforms without any results, then you definitely need to watch this module.  There is a huge tidal wave that is forming with social networking, and unless you know how to surf that wave, you will be crushed.

View the video below to learn my strategies for using social media effectively.

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As an entrepreneur, Brian builds websites for clients and also owns and operates a boxing gym that helps troubled youth to get back on track and white collar Americans to get fit.  Brian Pedone has really synthesized his Catholic faith with his extremely productive entrepreneurial ventures.  If you want to find out more, visit any of his sites to see some of the amazing things that he’s doing!

In this module we are going to start talking about positioning. Positioning differs from marketing in that it is less push and more pull. Think about you favorite Catholic Apologists – if you wanted some really heady stuff about the Mass and the history behind the Mass you’d probably want to go and buy a Scott Hahn book, right? What if you wanted to learn more about Catholic philosophy – Peter Kreeft is your guy. For any given topic these and many other apologists have carved out a niche in which they are seen as the go to guy and expert. This is what is called positioning.

In the video below you’ll get a snapshot of the rest of the course, as well as some tips on how to position your Catholic business effectively so you’ll have an army of people selling on your behalf.

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Check out the video below:

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In this episode I have the great honor of interviewing Devin Rose, an apologist and author of the book If Protestantism Is True. He talks about his journey, how he wrote and published his own book, and how he used the power of social media and blogging to make the book a success.

The most amazing thing about his story is that he shares how anyone can do what he did because of the opportunities that the Internet revolution has brought. Rather than depending on publishing companies, most of which turned down his book, with a little creativity and focus, he was able to fulfill his dream and impact hundreds of people.

If you want to learn more about Devin and his mission, or to buy his book, Check out his blog St. Joesph’s Vanguard!

In this video module you’ll learn how to frame questions in a way that helps the other person to think about your offering, why they need to buy it, and how it will help them to obtain value.  As in the previous modules, we always want to show the benefits of our service or product, this is just one more way to do that.

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In this podcast, I talk about how the whole reason that I was invited to speak in front of 150+ people who included representatives from Microsoft, HP, Mozilla, and others is because of social networking.  I believe that this resource is amazingly untapped by Catholics and that needs to change right away.  However, it’s not just about getting on these social networks but about engaging and meeting people in real-life that you meet through these channels.

Authentic Catholicism is very hard to turn down – and only authenticity thrives on these social networking platforms.  That being said, when we start talking to people in the manner that they prefer and add value to their lives, we will see that utilizing these tools and meeting new people could potentially change the face of the entire world.

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Hey Everyone!  In this episode we talk about how it’s not just enough to find a productivity method that you can just check off tasks with.  When we check off tasks it’s reactive, and the last thing that we want is to be reactive.  True productivity is about being proactive and about shipping a product (as Seth Godin says).  The more that you create, the more that you produce, the more productive that you are.

You’ll also learn why it’s important to get into the habits of the sales cycle so that you know the psychology of selling by heart and rather than just by theory.

Watch the module below and let me know what motivates your customers in the comments!

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I wanted to apologize that I am sure that you’ve gotten some emails from my latest blog posts that were either for the free members section of the site, and also from the premium section of the site.  I’ve been trying to figure out a way to exclude those posts from the RSS feed but I’m not sure how. That being said, if you don’t want to receive those posts in your RSS feed (along with normal Productive Catholic posts) here are a couple of options.

1. You can unsubscribe using the link provided by Feedburner.
2. You can bear with it until I figure out how to separate the content.
3. Or you can sign up for the free membership section or the premium section. You can register for the free section here.

Here’s the way Productive Catholic is going to be structured from now on.

• The podcast and some general content will be available to everyone who visits.
• The free members section will have extra added valuable content (checklists, some webinars every so often, audio content).
• The premium section will have detailed, step-by-step, courses on business and productivity from a Catholic point-of-view.  (i.e. how to start and monetize a blog, how to build a business, how to outsource, etc.

I am passionate about helping the Church be more involved with business and economics (a la The Acton Institute, in harmony with the Magesterium).  I am even more passionate about helping those that are willing to take action. The free membership section and the premium section are for people who want to do something and not just read or listen.

Often, we confuse watching with doing.  I want to encourage Catholics to get into the business world, and the only way to do that effectively is to build a community of people who are will to invest in themselves in order to grow and benefit others.  Business is a very noble profession that has been all but lost from the Catholic worldview.

If you are serious about being productive and about starting a Catholic-cultured business, take the first step and join the free section of Productive Catholic!

[button link="http://www.productivecatholic.com/wp-login.php?action=register" size="large" color="green"]Join The Community![/button]

You will also get access to the Productive Catholic Newsletter!  We will NEVER spam you (Hope that’s obvious with this post)!

A thirty-second pitch doesn’t just fit into the service industry. Products and blogs use them all of the time to engage, qualify, and explain the benefits you have to prospects.  Heck, it can even be used to evangelize those that are not Catholic.

Can you find the thirty-second pitch at these sites?

• Pro Blogger
• Square
• The Curt Jester

In the module below you’ll learn what a thirty-second pitch is not, as well as how to create a pitch that helps you to explain your service or product in a way that effectively persuades your prospect to listen and buy from you.  It is extremely important that you do the homework at the end of the module. You cannot have a good pitch if you do not practice it!

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In this episode we talk about how to create a schedule that fall’s in line with what God has willed for your life. Dr. John Yzaguirre, an amazing Catholic psychologist, is all about putting things in their right place.  His trademark schedule for segmenting the 7 areas in your daily life is a  life-changer and has helped me and thousands of others to live thriving lives and have thriving marriages.

We talk about setting up the Seven Rooms In Your House of Self and how to set up your day and week to serve God and others.  While it may sound a bit daunting, it is actually very simple to do.

Your House of Self falls into these 7 areas:

1. Family
2. Friends
3. Work
4. God
5. Community
6. Health
7. Education

When you focus on each of these, one-at-a-time, you will not only be more productive, you will also grow in love for God and for others.  It’s a great way to learn the holy art of single-tasking (as opposed to the impossible farce of multi-tasking), and will teach you to trust God more with those things that are out of your control

Premium Content

Thank you all so much for the support of some of the premium content that I am making.  I really appreciate it!  As the premium section grows, there will be a lot more content that focuses on business, productivity, and other things that will help to live a more abundant life.  I’ll also be adding templates, checklists, and webinars in the near future!  Let me know what you’d like to see and I’ll make it happen.

In this audio I will show you why selling is a good thing and how to become a persuasive and successful Catholic.

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Of course, money and power are nnot what win sould, but the grace of God. However, if we have righteous entrepreneurs in the world we’d have a lot more opportunities to make an impact.

Hear the audio below!

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Hey everybody!  For a long time now I have been longing to build a course that was focused on helping Catholics to become entrepreneurs.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, you don’t have to open up a Catholic bookstore to own a Catholic business – and that’s what I want to teach in this course.

Now, the course is not finished yet, and because of that I am going to deeply discount it until it is complete.  If you purchase the course now you will get an update every week with new content.  Once I’ve finished the course content, there will no longer be a discount.

Here’s what you’ll learn in the course:

• The Catholic philosophy of work
• How to Sell Without Guilt
• Leveraging Time
• Leadership
• The Essentials of Business Networking
• Providing Value
• A client vs. an ideal client
• How to become a marketing machine
• Easy and Inexpensive Business Ideas
• And much, much more…

Now, as mentioned before, since the course is not finished, I am offering you a deep discount.  The course will be $99.95 when it is finished, but until then it will be discounted to $9.95.  That is huge, but my hope for the discount is so you can help me to make it amazing through your feedback!

Purchase now for $99.95 $9.95 [button link="http://www.productivecatholic.com/subscribe/" style="tick" color="green"]Join Now![/button]

Any product that I have comes with a 100% money-back guarantee.  If you are not happy with it after 30 days, let me know and I will give you back a full refund.

Also, I will be having an affiliate program where you can get 50% of the sale of products that you refer once the product is complete. If you like the product, please let others know buy liking this page to give them a chance at the discounted price.

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God bless,

Dean Soto

In this episode I talk about productivity templates that I use from a guy by the name of David Seah.  The great thing about the templates and the things that make them different is that they are focused mainly on taking care of only the most important things that you should be working on.

As a business owner, one of the most important things that you can do is to not let yourself get bogged down in the day-to-day operations of the business.  Of course, you need to know what’s going on, but you shouldn’t be the one doing the work.  The productivity templates that David has helps you to live this out. The templates are point-based, and fun little tools that itemize the most important tasks that you should be doing on a daily basis and helps to quantify how well you are doing them.

Personally, I have used his Concrete Goals Tracker for a while now and it has helped me tremendously to get my business off of the ground.  So I hope that you enjoy the templates and that they help you to meet the goals that you have set out.

Habits

I also talk about habits (not priestly habits), and how in order to have a working productivity system you need to develop the habits of actually using it.  It helps to have a system that you can access anywhere, but as long as you start writing things down and getting into the habit of keeping track of tasks, you’ll start to see yourself becoming more productive as time goes by!

Business Consulting: I’m available for one-on-one business consulting.  If you have a business and want to find ways to lower your expenses and maximize revenue with a virtual assistant or other technology, or if you are looking to start a business from scratch, I’d love to work with you.  You can email me at dean@prosulum.com, or give me a call at 714-868-6745.

In this episode, Jared Dees from The Religion Teacher and also from Prayer Habits asks a question about what project management he should use when building websites for local Catholic schools?  I mention that although I have bounced around from tool to tool, I always seem to come right back to Basecamp.  Basecamp is just easier than any other project management tool that I’ve used, yet it’s still powerful for a number of reasons.

The first reason is that it’s easy to use as a project manager.  The faster I can add tasks in an orderly fashion, the easier it is for me to manage multiple people.  Basecamp is makes that happen.

The second reason is that all of my virtual assistants love it and use it.  I was using other systems for a while but they were just a pain and my VAs rarely ever used them because of how un-friendly the software was.

Lastly, my customers love is and use it. It let’s my clients see what’s going on and interact.  This is super important with Catholic parishes and schools since they are generally afraid of technology as a whole.  The easier that you can make it for them, the more they will love you!

Awesome feedback from Sam

One of the coolest things was that we got some great feedback from Sam in England.  Although it came about 5 months ago, it was definitely inspiring and brought about the restoration of the podcast.

From here on out, the main part of the blog is going to be the podcast.  I truly feel that the most exciting and entertaining part of Productive Catholic is the podcast, so it’s going to be on the forefront.  There’s a lot of great things coming down the pipe, so stay tuned!

All that being said, here’s what I need from you. Would you give my feedback line a call at 714-643-5301 and ask a question that’s been burning in the pit of your stomach? It can be about Catholics in business, productivity, how to promote your blog, questions about Catholicism in general, it doesn’t matter. If you do, make sure to plug your site or your business.

Your questions really add a lot to the podcast and would help me to get it back up and running again!

Thanks in advance!

Dean

Forming a Productive Habit

One thing that I really like about Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done method is that he focuses on humanity first.  We love to jump head long and full-force into a new idea, only to eventually crash and burn because your venture is not really a part of your every day life.

The most effective way to start anything is to take baby steps.  Zen to Done suggests that you first get into the habit of writing things down in a ubiquitous manner (that’s a fancy way of saying have a notebook that you can take with you anywhere!).  Don’t worry about classifying or prioritizing tasks, just worry about writing down everything that comes to mind.  When you’ve done that for a while, you’ll start to notice that you forget things less and that you are even less stressed because you unconsciously know that you’ve covered all of your bases.

Creating a mindset of slow productivity

Being productive doesn’t mean doing things quickly, it means doing things effectively and in a timely manner.  We tend to think that if we are not doing big things, then we are doing nothing at all.  As The Little Flower teaches us, God often wants us to take “the little way” rather than trying to be heroic conquerors of the world.

Slowly building habits allows you to not just do things, but to become better.  It builds your capacity to do more and to move into other areas of life that you never thought possible.

While we talk about productivity a lot on this blog, keep in mind that the most important thing in life is to become who you were created to be.  The habits you form now will mold you into who you will be tomorrow.

For some reason, 90% of the parishes out there are afraid of the web.  They view it as a necessary expense that’s mainly used to give mass time information and to upload their latest bulletin.  However, as mentioned in previous posts there is a HUGE opportunity for evangelization that’s being ignored because of these fears.  Fortunately, there’s a platform out there that is not only easy to learn, but runs some of the most powerful websites in the world – WordPress.

Self-hosted WordPress is free

Yes, I know that your parish has a  but don’t worry.  WordPress itself is entirely free.  Aside from buying a domain name and a hosting service (I recommend Bluehost), there are no other costs involved.  In essence, you could have a brand new Church website up and running or under $100.  Of course, you aren’t going to have any customization when it comes to design, but that’s okay.  I’m pretty sure that anything will be an improvement over your current parish’s site .

There are thousands of free and premium themes

The great thing about WordPress is that there are literally thousands of free and premium themes available.  These themes allow you to change the design of your website almost instantly.

The difference between the free and premium themes like you’d find at Woothemes is that typically the free themes are as well-developed.  Not saying that they aren’t good, but often they are made in order to show off and draw attention to the developer’s design and coding skills.

In addition, there’s typically not that much in the way of support for free themes.  But what do you expect for something that’s free?

Still you could have a brand new looking site almost instantly.

WordPress is open source

Rather than getting stuck into long-term contract with a company that delivers “parish websites” and keeps all of the work they’ve done proprietary, you have full control over your website.  While that may seem daunting, think about it….  That means that if you don’t like your current webmaster, no problem!  Move on to the next guy that knows WordPress.

Easy peasy!

WordPress is easy to use

No more needing to know HTML.  The back-end of WordPress lets you add whatever you want, whenever you want.  For example, say you have a Knights of Columbus food drive next week and want to get the word out.  No problem – just take 15 minutes and do it!

You can add pictures, text, audio, video, whatever in minutes!  All this without knowing a lick of programming code.

WordPress integrates with everything!

Your parish needs to get on the web 2.0 bandwagon.  Social media, email newsletters, podcasting, video blogging.  All of these things are a necessity and are FREE TO DO!!!!!!!! The cool thing is that WordPress makes all of this very easy to do with plugins.

Plugins extend WordPress’ capabilities in virtually infinite ways.  No only will you have a killer website, you’ll have the ability to reach out to every single member of your parish and build a community (imagine that).  Want to get people involved?  Well now you can by reaching out to them and inviting them to join the community online!

Why is that?  Why do we not dominate the business landscape?  After all, there are 1.2 billion of us, right?  Well, this is purely from experience but I think that there a couple of ways for Catholics to create a successful business blogging.

1. Sell something

Seems like common sense, right?  Wrong.  Check out most Catholic blogs and they do one of two things – talk about theology or talk about the Church in general.  That’s totally awesome, of course.  We need those blogs – but did you notice the little Adsense advertisements in the sidebar?  Here’s the reason why those are there…

1. The blog owner wanted to create a Catholic blog that would provide an outlet to teach, evangelize, etc.
2. They figured that it’d be great to do what they loved and get paid for it, so the “best” way to do that is to get some advertisers, or hopefully get asked to be a Catholic speaker after a while.
3. They realized that there aren’t many Catholic businesses so that made it hard to find direct advertisers, and nobody is calling for speaking gigs.
4. Well,  they then figured that they’ll just use Google Adsense to make some income to support their endeavor.
5. They make $1.20 a month and quit blogging because even though they are passionate about the subject, there are more important things to worry about – you know like feeding their family.

It happens over and over again.

What’s the solution?  Sell something! Record audio into an iPhone, write an e-book, interview a well-known Catholic speaker.  Nobody will buy anything from you if there is nothing to buy!  Use something like E-Junkie to create digital downloads or you can even sell physical products with it.

By far, selling a product is the easiest and most lucrative way to monetize you blog.  There really aren’t any barriers other than getting enough traffic to your site and figuring out ways to get those visitors to buy what you are selling.

Want to be an apologist?  Create a podcast that draws people to your personality and makes them interested in your 4-hour Q and A session that you sell on your site.  Are you a musician?  Sell digital downloads of your MP3s.  Poets, candle-makers, painters, crafters, anyone can plug in a small piece of code and get started selling something on their site!

Don’t wait for EWTN to call you and give you your own show.  Create your own on the web and sell each seasons as HD video.  Yes, it’s possible!

2. Think Outside of the Catholic Box

Please, please, please… if you one only get one thing out of this post – please let this be it!  Repeat after me, “A Catholic business doesn’t have to be Catholic.”  Now that you probably think that I am a heterodox apostate, please let me explain.  Just as the Church Fathers and the saints Christianized secular ideas like philosophy, you can Christianize business.

Rather than create a Catholic bookstore, create a membership site with the best Catholic speakers being asked questions by the members. Build a iPhone app like Angry Birds and use the money to support your local youth group, then promote it on the blog.  Create a web development tutorial membership blog that teaches young people how to code for large companies.  What better way to reach out to non-Catholic or Catholics alike than to create an atmosphere that has Christianity running throughout it?  Think this isn’t effective, that’s exactly what J.R.R. Tolkien did with the Lord of the Rings.  Create a business that lives and breathes Catholicism and doesn’t just preach it.

3. Sell a service

Just like with a product, why not create a site that promotes a service that you provide?  The service can be anything, but by having clear call-to-actions you can drive visitors to something that will benefit them.

For example, say that you are great at design.  Rather than just have a design blog (or “Catholic” design blog if you absolutely must), have a banner or something in the sidebar that shows your latest project with a clear call-to-action to contact your for design services.  Just as with a product, if you don’t have something to sell nobody can buy.

Bonus: Selling Something for Money Is Not Bad

For some reason, we Catholics feel dirty when we try to sell something that’s we’ve produced or that we’re marketing for others unless it is explicitly Catholic.  I challenge you to find an encyclical that says that a legitimate business that provides value is something that should be avoided.  Yes, avarice is bad, but a good business is not greedy.  In fact, a good business ALWAYS gives more value to a customer than the money that is given.  Think about it, why do you buy Catholic books?  Is a great book worth more than $14.95?  Of course it is…. a good book is life-changing.

God will sanctify your business.  You don’t need to pre-fix your service or product with the word “Catholic” for it to be good and holy.  If you want your business to be holy, make it holy though virtue.

I’m sure that I’m not alone, so what is this phenomena and how does it relate to efficiency and productivity?

What are we trying to do?

C.S. Lewis’ powerful principle of First and Second things gives us a clear litmus test as to why some of our endeavors fail.  In essence, the principle goes like this:

• When you focus on the first things, you obtain the first things and the second.
• However, if you focus solely on the second things, you lose both the second things and the first things.

For example, a wine connoisseur enjoys both the wine itself as well as the pleasurable experience it delivers.  On the other hand, the alcoholic that seeks only the drunken experience eventually loses both the appreciation of wine as well as the pleasure of it.

We are drunks.  We are addicted to the methods of productivity and ways to work better rather than the reason we seek to work better.

Union with God and our humble obedience to be a part of his great story is the reason we work better, faster, cheaper.  It’s our love for Him and his Church that we do what we do. Otherwise, we focus on methods and techniques that last a little while but eventually cause burnout.

The Crash

Each of us has experienced “The Crash”.  The blog that you haven’t updated in a few months, the podcast that stopped, the business idea that suddenly faded out of existence – these are all part of the crash that we get when we focus on the wrong thing.

So how do we avoid this precipice?  Well, by strategically focusing on the first, second, third, and fourth things.  Say you want to create a Catholic blog – what are the reasons for it and what would keep it going?  Is it to teach others?  Is it to generate side income? Below is my new plan for Productive Catholic.  Notice that each level build on the other and helps to keep motivation.

• First: Productive Catholic will help me to become closer to God by fellowship with a community of Catholics that want to transform their work.
• Second: I seek to monetize audio/video and other products on Productive Catholic because it’ll allow me to work less on other things and focus more on providing value to the community.
• Third: Productive Catholic will lead to smaller community formations that permeate the Church that will bring a renewed mission of holy transformation of work and business.
• Fourth: I will keep updated on all of the current best-practices and tools available for productivity and entrepreneurship.

Focus on the ends, not the means

The crash comes from focusing on the tools; Tools are not inspiring – love is.

Now, this does not mean that tools aren’t helpful, or that they aren’t that aren’t necessary.  But we shouldn’t confuse the means with the end.  We work to bring holiness to ourself and others.  When we do that we’ll have more motivation to stick with long-term projects, take risks on entrepreneurial endeavors, and steadily run the race that we were meant to.

GTD, Autofocus, the Pomodoro Method, and others are merely the stepping-stones that you can use to get you toward the destination.

Hello,

I was listening to your podcast #008 and you mentioned switching from blogger to wordpress. I just started a blog using blogger and wish I would have listened to your podcast earlier.

Anyway, can you explain to me how to do this? I also want to start a Catholic podcast and would love any advice or direction on how to do this. I have little to no money.

Oops, I forgot to mention I am a Mac user.

Thanks,

Terry

These are two great questions.  In the podcast Igive a quick Internet 101 course and explain what hosting, what domain names are, and how you can can basically set up WordPress with one click using a web host like Bluehost (who I use and would recommend a hundred times over).

Once set up, you can install a Blogger to WordPress redirection plugin (there are a few of them) and import your posts using the built-in blogger importer found in the tools section under import.

One thing I noticed when migrating blogger over to WordPress is that blogger “labels”, which should be treated the same as WordPress tags, are treated as categories.  Please, please, please do not leave them the way they are.  Your categories should be broad topics and you should have no more than 3 categories per post.  Tags, on the other hand, can be plentiful.

For some great tutorials on WordPress, check out WordPress.tv

In regards to the podcasting equipment on the cheap, I suggest just grabbing an inexpensive USB microphone, install Audacity for Mac and go to town.  Unless you are looking for something more than a hobby, it is okay to start small.

There is a plugin that you can use called Blubrry PowerPress.  Search for that plugin in the plugin area of your WordPress installation and install it.  It has pretty good documentation, and is a great way to get started with podcasting.

Since you are looking to do a Catholic podcast, costent and passion is all that you need right now.  If you want to see how to take podcasting to the next level, I highly suggest listening to my interview with Cliff Ravenscraft on my other podcast, So Totally Business Savvy.

All that being said, here are some action items.

• Say goodbye to blogger.
• Sign up with Bluehost (affiliate link.  you won’t be disappointed)
• Install WordPress
• Install a blogger to WordPress Redirect Plugin
• Migrate your data over using the WordPress importer tool
• Have loads of fun

If you, or anyone, needs more help.  I am available for one-on-one consulting on WordPress and productivity strategies.  Thank you so much for the feedback, it’s an honor to be able to help answer your questions. =)

I’ve been outsourcing a great deal of my work for the last 2 years.  To be completely honest, many of my current projects are done by someone else. Of course, I need to understand what my hired help is doing in order to be successful,  But whether it’s giving a cousin of mine a site to design, having a team in India complete a business application, or having my Filipino virtual assistant help to manage my calendar, being able to let goof a task is a vital part of my being productive.

In this podcast episode, I talk about the why and how of outsourcing.  I also toch a little bit on the morality of outsourcing and why, even though it may be a bad word in America, a Catholic should have no problem with hiring someone from another country to help.

I also give some shout outs to Dorian Speed, Devin Rose, and Jared Dees for their support of productive Catholic.  Oh, and I also give a HUGE thanks to Mike St. Pierre from the Daily Saint for having me on his podcast.  If you get a chance to head over to his site, be sure to check out that episode.

Remember, I’d love to hear your feedback, so don’t hesitate to give me a call on my voicemail feedback line at 714-643-6501.  I am ready to answer any questions that you may have about having a virtual assistant, or about absolutely anything related to productivity.

By the way, JR Duboc, one of this blog’s writers, is opening up a new business to teach you French the easy way.  It’s called reFrench!  Go check it out!

How to Make Easy Video Intros

I’m going to share the secret of making professional looking videos in only a few minutes: Animoto (<– affiliate link).  I;ve been using the business version of Animoto for the last year.  It is an extremely easy way to make a whole bunch of great video slideshows and intros.  That’s what I’ve been using for my videos.  Here are some examples below:

In order to do what I do legally, you need to buy the business version.  It’s a bit expensive, but I think it’s worth it.  But, I want to list the pros and cons:

• Pros of the business version.
  • Very fast and easy to make videos.
  • You get 100+ royalty free music choices.
  • Hi-def videos when you need them.
• Cons
  • It’s a bit expensive.
  • The videos tend to look the same after a while.
  • People who use Animoto know that you are using an Animoto video.

Overall, I definitely recommend the service.  But listen to my podcast for a more opinionated view of the web application.

Royalty-Free Music

When it comes to music that you can use for your podcast, you get what you pay for.  If you are looking for free music, they tend to not be very good.  I bought my podcast intro music from Music Bakery.  Each track runs about $50.  There are other sites like Jamendo and Smartsound that run about the same.  But the music is great quality and help you to build your brand.  The downside is that other people may use the same songs (listen to the podcast to find out who else uses my intro).

Hope these answers help! If anyone has a question, give me a call on my 24/7 voicemail line at 714-643-5301.  Your questions and feedback make this blog and podcast to keep going!

Thankfully, Mike agreed to an interview on the Productive Catholic Podcast. Let me tell you, I am seriously in awe of how much this guy gets done. Not only does he find the time to spark a Catholic reformation and leadership revolution within a school of hundreds of kids, he manages to care for his family, and maintain his blog on a regular basis. It’s no doubt that he knows how to be effective.

In the podcast we talk about how he utilizes a hybrid form of GTD. While he uses an electronic means to keep track of tasks, he spends some time every morning planning his day in order to build a productivity anchor.

We also talk about how working smarter, not harder, is something that everyone should be striving for.  Just working for the sake of working is not what leads to holiness, but working effectively, setting boundaries, and finding the best way of doing things is something God wants.

Lastly, one very interesting discussion was on leadership, and how it is a skill that is extremely important to every Catholic.  Being a true leader involves inspiring others to be better in every way possible – that includes work.  The church needs more leaders that can teach others the value of being effective.  Currently, work is dominated by the secular and by secular leaders.  Of course, not everything secular is bad, but if we want to spark a Catholic reformation of work, leaders need to teach younger generations how to become successful and make a difference in the working world for Christ!

For more of The Daily Saint, visit his blog!  Also check out his podcast on iTunes!  You won’t regret it!

We discuss how a father, husband, and Catholic managed to become an entrepreneur and create a valuable service to parishes and catholic organizations around the world. FlockNote allows parishes to reach their parishioners is ways that they never could before. Each member of the parish can choose how they want to be communicated to, and leaders can easily organize events and disseminate news. There is a whole host of other capabilities, too.

We also talk about time management and how Matt chooses what is important. Although there are countless opportunities to support the Church and also new creative ventures, he finds a way to weed out those things that may not be valuable to his overall goals. If you would like to find out more about Matt and the work that he is doing, check him out at Fallible Blogma. It was a blast to have him on the show, and I hope he finds to to come on again.

I highly recommend taking a look at using flockNote for your parish or organization.  With the money that you spend on one snail mail shot to your parishioners, you could send unlimited messages to people in the way that they’d like to receive it.  It is a fantastic way to keep everyone connected, informed, and in your community.

Are you looking to help the Church by putting your talents to good use?  Or maybe you have a question on how to find the time to get important things done in your life?  If so, leave me voicemail on the feedback line.  I’d love to here about what you have going on and what you are doing to make a difference.

Carlos, a seminarian from Edmonton, Canada, asked if I could give him some resources that he could use to organize his time and tasks more efficiently.  Rather than bog him down with long winded articles from my site (ha!) I shot him three resources that I believe are key to finding a way to better organize your time.

• Inbox Zero - an effective way to handle email (mentioned in the podcast).
• Getting Things Done
• Autofocus

In  the interview with J.R., we discuss why GTD is the productivity method of choice for this French Catholic.  The surprising thing is that, although he is an advocate for GTD, he is very honest in relaying that it took him about 2 years to fully implement it into a habit.  Forming productive habits is necessary in order to perform extraordinary work.  It’s just like prayer, unless you form the habit it’s unlikely that you will excel spiritually.

We also talk about how being productive and efficient with your work is actually very much inline with Church Teaching.  In fact, J.R. notes that David Allen‘s (creator of GTD) ideas about work come very close to the philosophy of JPII in regards to sanctity and purpose through labor (see his encyclical on human work.  very cool stuff).  Work makes you holy, but working as efficiently and effectively as possible (using that noggin of yours) makes you even holier.

Overall, this is an exciting interview that you won’t want to miss.  I’d love to hear your questions and feedback for either me or J.R.!  Leave me a voicemail 24/7 at 714-643-5301.

Now, I know what you are going to say, “what is Autofocus?”  Well, you are just going to have to listen to the podcast to find out.  So rather than tell you what it is and how to use it, I figured that I’d give you a little taste of how Autofocus has benefited me over the time I’ve used it.

Stress

The first and foremost benefit of using Autofocus is the drastic reduction in stress.  Personally, purging everything from my mind and putting onto paper in an actionable format is a life-saver.  Unlike GTD, I know where all of my tasks are at all times, and I know that I’ll never miss a task because I am constantly scanning over my list.

Creativity

Unlike other productivity methods, Autofocus really lends itself to creativity.  In fact, my new podcast would not exist had it not been for Autofocus.  Putting together a Podcast is a big ordeal, and Autofocus makes it a lot easier to handle in addition to all of the other things that you are doing.

Simplicity

I have a feeling that I am ADHD.  That being the case, the simpler things are, the more likely I am going to stick with them and find them useful.  Autofocus doesn’t require a planner or any fancy tools.  In fact, you can use it with just about anything.  That’s why I love it so much.  Not to mention, I don’t need to spend an hour setting it everyday.  It’s good-to-go right from the start.

Summary

Autofocus rocks!  I’ve seen a huge increase in productivity and creativity as a result of using the system.

As always, I would love to hear from you.  Leave me your questions and feedback on the feedback line at 714-643-5301.  Make sure you plug your podcast or blog in the message!

I give a quick summary of what GTD is, and how it is different from the tradition priority driven productivity methods out there.  I talk about how the GTD workflow (you can see a great chart of it here) is extremely powerful and how it allows you to move all of the stuff that’s in your mind into an external and actionable format.  The workflow lets you know what tasks require your attention, when you need to take action on them, or if you even need to do them at all.

I also discuss how there are so many electronic tools that allow you to implement GTD, and there are web-based tools that are made specifically for individual and group use of the method.  Some of these applications include Microsoft Outlook 2007, Things, and Producteev.

Of course, I can’t sing the praises of the method the whole show.  There are a number of cons that are associated with GTD to include its complexity, the fact that it is extremely difficult to stay with it for long periods of time, and that some people just don’t need it.

Overall GTD is a great tool to help you to manage the day-to-day tasks and projects that come at you.  It gives you a means to remove the stressful stuff that is floating in your mind and turn them into actionable tasks.  While it may not be the method that I use anymore, I highly recommend it!

If you have a question, or just a comment, please don’t hesitate to leave a voice-mail on the feedback line at 714-643-5301.

I also mention a few sites on interest in these episode.  The first is True Manhood by Dave Dinuzzo, a great blog on manly purity.  Next is Matthew Warner’s site Fallible Blogma, a great social commentray blog from a Catholic perspective.  Lastly, I talk about The Daily Saint, a fantastic Catholic productivity blog done by Mike St. Pierre.  I highly recommend his site, and I even play a little snippet from his podcast. (Maybe I can get him for an interview soon?)

For those that are new to Productive Catholic, I give an overview of the purpose of the site.  Namely not just work as a means to holiness, but efficient valuable work as a means to holiness.  I also touch briefly on tithing your talents and just how valuable your time is.

Since productivity is at the heart of this blog, I give you my top 3 productivity methods: Getting Things Done, Autofocus, and Franklin-Covey.  Which of these are what I use now?  Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out, and why!

Lastly, what makes this blog and everything about it so exciting is your comments, questions, and feedback.  If you have any of those, please leave me a voicemail at 714-643-5301 and you’ll get to hear your voice on the podcast!

I was thinking back the other day about all the crazy changes my wife and I went through since we got married: moving house and country four times, changing jobs, adapting to new cultures and languages, getting involved in various parishes and churches, starting a teacher training and a PhD…gosh, they say change is good, and it is, but they forgot to mention how stressful it is! Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy about the final outcomes of all these changes, but man was it was tough sometimes. It was challenging, because it meant thinking about so many things at the same time. That’s where my need for a better productivity system came. That’s why I’m writing on this blog today.

We all had to live through stressful moments like that, where there seems to be no time for anything. However, I learned over time to embrace these times of change, and take them as opportunities. As it turns out, those moments are actually ideal to stop for a moment and re-think about our lives, not just about that new house and how the commuting thing is going to work with the new job, but to actually think about what our living space is, what work really represent for us.
These are the time when we think about “getting a system” to “be more efficient”, but they also can be the very moment when we can ask “why”?
These are the moments of chaos we can embrace to challenge assumptions and build a better life for ourselves and the people around us. These are the moment to buy a new filofax or try a spanking new iPhone to see if that’s going to finally work for us as a productivity tool, and these are also the moments to pray and ask the Lord to guide us in uncertain and sometimes outright scary moments.

Why we Should Keep our Productivity and Organization Skills Sharp: Staying In Touch with What Really Matters

These changes, these decisions we made to change our lives, what are they for? More importantly, who are they for? If you took the time to think about that, you’ll find the right productivity system, the best tools for you (that unique you, the real you, not the one that your boss or others might want you to be), simply because you know exactly what you want out of it. And if you know what you want, you’ll know what you need.
If the change was imposed on you through bad circumstances such as health or the economy (we live in very difficult times, especially for young people), this might be the perfect moment to make the best you’ve ever made of a bad moment. That’s what true success is all about: not avoiding failure and problems, but rising from them and being grateful for what we actually have. Hang in there, and learn to appreciate what is beautiful about you and your life before doing anything else: your family, your friends, your passion. Then, pray and think back to what your really want, what you really need, maybe that thing you never had the time to do before “it” happened. And then, do it. It will be hard, but you will find your way through it, if you know who you are, if you know what success, real success, means to you.

And here is the big secret, my friends: once you know where to go, a productivity system is only a compass to guide you there, so that you never, ever stop looking at what really, truly matters to you. And as Catholics, we believe that what truly matters to you, your profound desire, is actually God calling you to be great, for His glory. We think it’s so important, we even have a name for it: vocation. It comes from the latin “voce”, the voice.
Lets’s start listening.

Being productive starts with focus, and achieving focus means beating procrastination. To stay out of distraction I need to do everything I can to eliminate thoughts that might steer me away from the task at hand. This is trickier than it sounds, but it mostly starts by writing down everything I have to do and think about to achieve my goals in some sort of system. Personally, I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done (GTD), but I understand why this system might seem overwhelming to some, and it doesn’t really matter anyway: just get some sort of system. Whatever works for you.

Whatever your system, though, storing things to remember for future reference is simple enough, but in my experience, many people get it wrong when the time comes to write a to-do list. This is why simple to-do lists don’t work (at least for men). Not only do they give us an insufficient idea of the priorities and deadlines, they also very often lack the necessary precision to tell us where to start, what to do here and now. For priorities, you can use contexts (a different list for things to do at home, on the computer, in the week-end, etc.) For deadlines, you’ve got a calendar. For the bit on precision, read on.

So what’s a task anyway?

In the context of a GTD system, to-do lists are essentially made of “next actions”, ie. the smallest next physical, measurable step you can take to make a given project move forward. It might be a phone call or an email to send, a page to write, and excel sheet to complete,etc. It’s best if it’s measurable in time, and achievable in one sitting.

I like to use this approach, because it really breaks down my projects in small, less scary steps, and when I open my to-do list I immediately have a list of things I can do right now, without too much thinking about the greater picture. The strategic thinking part has been done by my former self, therefore I know these things will get me forward in one project or another, because I planned it all while reviewing my system. Yes, I ‘review a system’. I am kind of a control freak, especially when it comes to managing my time. I defend my time and attention like a lion: they are precious gifts from God. But I digress.

The GTD way might not work for everyone, and that level of precision probably seems like unnecessary hassle. But making tasks precise and actionable is extremely useful, because it allows you to get on with your work as soon as you fire up your task list, confident that what you do now is getting your current projects forward without re-organising all your life in the back of your head at the same time (cognitive overload is bad for productivity, my friend. It’s the source of all stress). It’s a healthy separation of high-level organisation activities from the actual work, so you can actually do things well, just on time. So, whatever system you have, try to break it down to basics.

Breaking it down, and defining the outcomes of your tasks: make something now

So how do we go about breaking down a project (however big or small: a project might range from subscribing to a gym to completing a PhD)? Well, this brings us back to our idea of actionable next actions, doable in one sitting, and measurable in time.

In addition, one question you might ask yourself is: “what’s the outcome?”. What do I get from completing this actions, and when can I tick that to-do list item? Is it when I’ve written a paper, produced a mind-map about that thing I’m trying to learn, obtained an agreement with a colleague? It can be whatever suits you, but try to make sure some concrete thing, some artefact, will come out of it. I use that so I feel guilty for not producing that artefact. And I’ll know what to do about it if I couldn’t produce it: either just get on with the task and make it, or refine the task, generally by splitting it in several parts.

The zen of to-do lists

Hopefully, these ideas will help build a better to-do list, and to separate the moment when you figure out what to do on each project and the moment when you actually do something. The ‘strategic thinking moment’ might be every morning, twice a day, or just once a week depending on the information load you have to sustain (I try to eliminate from that workload everything that isn’t absolutely essential, so I only do it once a week, usually on sunday afternoons or monday mornings). The “doing something” part, well… that’s you life. Experience it to the full.

Make the smart decisions now , so you don’t have to panic about it later. Build a better to-do list.

Good Old Catholic Guilt

Most people in the west hate guilt.  It’s a word that is often associated with knuckle slapping nuns and Sunday sermons about hell.  But guilt is often a great motivator.  Think about the times when you are most productive; isn’t it when something really important is almost due and if you don’t get it done other people will suffer?  Well, that isn’t just a coincidence, God made us that way for a reason.  However, rather than delve into a philosophic discourse on why we do things better when we are riddled with guilt, I’d rather explain how your can use guilt to your advantage.

Three steps to guilt-full productivity

Using guilt to power the way that you get things done can be a very uncomfortable, but powerful process.  It’s uncomfortable because you will no longer have the opportunity to flake out, and it’s powerful because you will do anything within your power not to fail in the sight of others. The good part though is that it’s easy to get things started in 3 easy steps.

1. The next time you need to get something done, rather than just writing it down in a task list, think of a feasible date that the task can be accomplished.
2. Once you’ve decided on an end date, find someone with some authority or stake in the goal that you plan to accomplish.
3. Send them an email (or call them) letting them know that you will complete the task on that specific date.

Easy peasy, lemon squeazy.

An example please?

Just to give you an idea of how you can use this system, imagine that you have a hard time waking up for Mass.  Rather than fail over and over again, volunteer to be a lector.  The guilt of knowing that there will be an entire congregation that is suffering because you can’t get your lazy butt out of bed is better than any alarm clock.

Has anyone ever used this tactic successfully?  Let me know in the comments!

Smashing Magazine

Probably the most popular design and web development blog out there, Smashing Magazine has some amazing tutorials and content.  If you don’t really care to learn HTML or CSS, but want to learn how to make things look pretty, this is the place to go.

InstantShift

Very similar to Smashing Magazine, InstantShift has everything from inspiring design, to WordPress hacks, to typography.  If you are looking for resources or inspiration, this is the place to go.  It doesn’t have much in the way of tutorials, but what it lacks in step-by-step teaching it makes up in beauty.

CSS-Tricks

Screencasts, screencasts, screencasts! CSS-Tricks has the best web development screencasts EVER! Seriously, they are probably the easiest way to learn the structure of web design and development.

TutsPlus

If you want to learn a whole mess of stuff (Photoshop, PHP, etc.), then check out TutsPlus.  TutsPlus is a mashup of various web and design tutorials.  It’s a great resource, but can be a bit overwhelming if you are a newbie.

W3Schools

Want to learn the basics?  W3Schools is where you can study everything that you ever wanted about web development (not design).  They have the most widely used coding tutorials ever, with a multitude of different languages and techniques. They even have certification courses.

Do you have any web development tutorial sites that you recommended?

Other articles that you may enjoy:

• Episode #16: Saving a Dying Church Website, Part 3 (productivecatholic.com)
• Episode #15: Get the Liturgy of the Hours in Your Inbox (productivecatholic.com)
• PetrosTV: A Mashup of the Best Catholic Videos Online (productivecatholic.com)
• The 10 Most Fascinating Catholics of 2009 (fallibleblogma.com)