• A Liturgy for Saturdays. On a much-overlooked area in productivity: how to use your Saturdays well! Great thoughts here, and I agree.
• Staying on Mission. Loved this article on the value of a personal mission statement.
• Connection in an Age of Digital Distraction. Very helpful recommendations on project management software that don’t add to your load but help manage it.

Here’s a key quote: “Power is for flourishing. Who is flourishing because you have power?”

That’s worth asking.

The focus of this presentation is on the importance of user testing. Most of the time, user testing never happens; or, when it does, it is done in way more detail that it needs to be, with scientific analysis of the results and a long report, costing about $10,000.

However, you can be just as effective with user testing by just testing three users, watching how they use your site while they think out loud (that’s the key). With just three users you will identify far more problems than you have the resources to fix anyway. Identify the top three, address those, and you will have made a significant impact.

Last: don’t do user testing as an add-on at the end. You need to do it throughout the process. If you do three rounds throughout the development of your product (website or anything else–I think all products should be user tested, even building layouts), fixing the top three problems identified after each time, that would be huge.

If you want to save time, the best way to watch his lecture is actually to click through the slides at the bottom. And, for more detail on what makes for good usability on websites, see his excellent book:

(HT: Matt Heerema)

The shortcut that’s sure to work, every time:

Take the long way.

Do the hard work, consistently and with generosity and transparency.

And then you won’t waste time doing it over.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s the intro:

One of the world’s top physicians, Dr. Eric Topol, has a prescription that could improve your family’s health and make medical care cheaper. The cardiologist claims that the key is the smartphone. Topol has become the foremost expert in the exploding field of wireless medicine.

Here’s a link to the video in case it doesn’t show up for you.

And here’s his book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care:

(HT: Matt Heerema)

1. Role mismatch
2. External end goal restriction
3. Strict ration of resources
4. Lack of social diversity
5. Discouragement/no positive feedback

Here’s one of the most important highlights of the article. There is truth to the fact that constraints often add to our creativity by creating the “entrepreneurial gap” that requires novel solutions (and thus creativity) to cross when resources are scarce.

Sometimes, however, that reality is used to justify strict rationing of resources in an organization and a caviler imposition of restraints on creatives. That is a complete misunderstanding and misapplication of the entrepreneurial gap. As the article points out:

Although self-restriction can often boost creativity, the Harvard study shows that external restrictions are almost always a bad thing for creative thinking. This includes subtle language use that deters creativity, such as bosses claiming “We do things by the book around here,” or group members implicitly communicating that new ideas are not welcome.

Here’s one other important point: a shortage of time is not good for creativity!

While money and physical resources are important to creativity, the Harvard study revealed that mental resources were most important, including having enough time.

Creative people re-conceptualize problems more often than a non-creative. This means they look at a variety of solutions from a number of different angles, and this extensive observation of a project requires time. This is one of the many reasons you should do your best to avoid unnecessary near-deadline work that requires novel thinking. Also, when we are faced with too many external restrictions we spend more time acquiring more resources than actually, you know, creating.

When we think of justice, the environment isn’t normally the first thing that comes to mind. Perhaps we think of human rights, or all those crime shows. But when Paul said in Colossians 1:20 that Jesus came “to reconcile all things to Himself,” you’ll notice that he doesn’t say some, and he doesn’t say people. He says all things. This means all of God’s creation.

Earth Month (with Earth Day earlier this week and Arbor Day today) is a reminder for us as Christians to take care of the creation God has made us stewards over. One of our solutions to extreme poverty is Environmental Stewardship, as most of the world’s poor are completely dependent on their environment for survival. Unfortunately, up to half the trees being cut down in developing countries are used for fuel wood, creating rampant deforestation and adding to the devastating effects of rural poverty. This fuel wood is then used for traditional cook stoves, which are causing indoor smoke pollution and killing almost 2 million people, mostly women and children, each year.

Our Environmental Stewardship partner, Plant With Purpose, works with communities to build improved cookstoves. These stoves require 50 to 60 percent less wood and also burn cleaner, which decreases the need for cutting wood and the risk of smoke-related illness or death.

While we shouldn’t make the environment an idol or fall into the notion that nature is equal in importance to people (it’s not: Matthew 10:31), we shouldn’t look down on good environment stewardship, either. In fact, as Live58 shows, there is often a relationship between better stewardship of the environment and not just improved human lives in general, but helping the poor specifically.

You can read more about the work Plant With Purpose is doing to improve wood burning stoves in the developing world. Also, for a good example of thinking wisely and Christianly about environmental issues, especially through the lens of climate change, see Glenn Brooke’s helpful post Thinking Wisely About Climate Change.

Justin shows that the single question of whether there is a “Christian” way to do seemingly “secular” things actually breaks down into several questions. These are the questions he answers, using a bus driver as the example:

• Does the Bible teach how to be a bus driver?
• Does the Bible teach how to be a Christian bus driver?
• Can a non-Christian be a good bus driver?
• Can a non-Christian be a better bus driver than a Christian?
• Is there a distinctively Christian way to think about the particulars of each vocation?

Here’s what it comes down to: the gospel changes three chief things concerning the way we go about work that is chiefly in the arena of common grace:

1. Our motive
2. Our standards
3. Our foundation (source of strength)

That is a slightly different way of stating it than Justin, but it is based on the same principles and comes down to the same thing.

As Justin points out, the gospel does not chiefly change our methods. For example, the Christian bus driver doesn’t have to put on special glasses before hopping into the drivers seat, still stops at red lights rather than green lights (let’s hope), and turns left by steering the wheel to the left and not right.

Read the whole thing.

1. Better before cheaper—in other words, compete on differentiators other than price.
2. Revenue before cost—that is, prioritize increasing revenue over reducing costs.
3. There are no other rules—so change anything you must to follow Rules 1 and 2.

I disagree with their critique of Jim Collins’ Good to Great and Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence, but it’s noteworthy that their conclusions are essentially the same. That is, the findings of Collins and Tom Peters can be boiled down to these three things. Or, perhaps better, these three rules are derivatives of the even deeper and more foundational realities that Collins and Peters show.

The extent to which these three rules are violated is truly breathtaking!

1. Regularly, genuinely, and specifically acknowledge and appreciate people’s successes
2. Create and protect periods of uninterrupted focus
3. Tie the pursuit of excellence to a larger mission

The typical approach for setting direction is geared for relatively known territory. It goes like this:

1. Observe
2. Orient
3. Decide
4. Act

This is basically a “ready, aim, fire” approach.

But in unfamiliar and ambiguous territory, a “fire, ready, aim” approach is usually more effective. Here are the steps:

1. Act
2. Learn
3. Adapt

The essence of this approach is that, since the environment is ambiguous, you don’t have a map and can’t even see very far ahead. Hence, you have to move forward by trial and experimentation — similar to the scientific method. As the article says, “speed leaders experiment in order to advance knowledge.”

Many of our problems in leadership come from trying to use an approach for known territory in the midst of unknown territory.

In a couple of weeks, there is a very exciting conference occurring in Chicago- Pastorum 2013. If you are able, I would encourage you to make the trip to Chicago to attend this time of learning and connecting with other teachers, pastors, students, and scholars. Speakers include Mark Futato, Ed Stetzer, Lynn Cohick, and many more. The conference begins the morning of  Thursday April 11, and runs through the afternoon on Friday April 12.

Sessions at Pastorum begin with Bible Backgrounds, then move to Old Testament and the Intertestamental Period. On Friday, session 3 walks through the New Testament and then the conference wraps up with session 4- Connecting the Dots. There are also panel discussions “where speakers and attendees collaborate and share ideas for applying academic subjects to the local church.”

The folks at Pastorum have been kind enough to offer free registrations to ten readers of What’s Best Next. To win one of these registrations (a $100 value!), be one of the first ten readers to email contact@whatsbestnext.com and I will send you further instructions. Note: you will be responsible for providing your own transportation to and from Chicago, as well as your lodging and meals while attending the conference.

Pastorum 2013 is sponsored by Logos Bible Software and hosted by Park Community Church.

1. Leaders are not an elite class with special privileges (that’s Matthew 23:8-11).
2. Leaders should not see themselves as privileged or entitled.
3. Leaders should not use their power for personal enrichment or to unfairly maintain their power.
4. Leaders are not to approach people from above, as a virtuoso. Instead, they are to take a position alongside, as a fellow traveler, a partner sharing the same burdens. They look across at others, not down. (Note Peter’s approach in 1 Peter 5:1-4.)