Issue #159

Your weekly roundup of insights and resources to help you get more done for the glory of God.

​Read on the Web​

In Today’s Issue:

• NEW: Notion Template for Believers
• Benefits of Working with Your Hands
• When & How Pastors Should Say No
• New App for Sending Large Files
• Book: The Anxious Generation

Dear steward,

Pray you had a wonderful Resurrection Sunday!

Before we dive into this week’s link roundup, I wanted to let you know about a new tool we’ve developed to help you get more done for the glory of God.

I am very pleased to let you know that I’ve officially released a Redeeming Productivity Notion template!

The Christian Productivity Planner is an all-in-one productivity system built around the principles I teach in this newsletter, my books, and in the Academy.

This template is packed full of features to help you organize your life for personal productivity, spiritual growth, and knowledge management.

Personal Productivity

✓ Tasks

✓ Projects

✓ Goals

✓ Domains

Spiritual Growth

✓ Prayer Tracker

✓ Bible-Reading Plans

✓ Daily Planner

✓ Habit Tracker

Knowledge Management

✓ Notes

✓ Resources

✓ Journal

✓ Tags & Notebooks

This Notion template ships with a full course on how to set it up and use it, as well as a bonus course on the basics of using Notion for those who are new to the app.

​The Christian Productivity Planner is available now to all members of Redeeming Productivity Academy or as a one-time-purchase.

​Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain (4 mins)

Markham Heid / The New York Times

This article outlines some fascinating research on the brain benefits of performing manual tasks.

The results shouldn’t surprise us. God made us as embodied creatures. We are meant to work with our hands.

One thing that isn’t touched on in this article, however, is the satisfaction that comes from creating something in the physical world. I was thinking about this last week as I put together a playground kit for our kids. Even though it was just a kit you screw together, I kept going back outside to admire my work. I felt proud of what I’d made.

When you pause to reflect, it just makes sense. We are made in the image of the God who stood back and declared His work good at the end of each day of creation. There’s something of the image of God in the urge to stand with our hands on my hips, smiling at the playground we just assembled. And that’s something that’s hard to replicate in the digital world.

What’s the takeaway? Perhaps for those of us who spend most of our days working in the digital world, we might consider picking up a more physical hobby to fill some of our leisure hours.

​When and How Pastors Should Say No (4 mins)

Reagan Rose / Focus on the Family

It’s probably tacky to link to my own articles in the link roundup, but I’m doing it anyway.

​Blip: Send Huge Files Super Fast​

Here’s a service to bookmark for later. Especially if you ever run into the need to send files larger than 25–50 MBs (the attachment file size limit of most email hosts).

I occasionally have to send huge video files. And I’m always baffled that sending large files and folders is still so difficult in 2024. I typically end up zipping a folder and uploading it to WeTransfer—which works just fine. But after seeing what Blip can do, I think I have a new favorite large-file-transfer service.

• Unlimited file size (they use the example of sending a 99TB file!)
• Transfer unzipped folders
• Works on any device
• Direct transfer (which makes it faster and more secure, than uploading to the cloud and sharing a link)
• Free for personal use

Blip isn’t a sponsor, I just think this is a really cool service.

I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

Haidt presents the latest and best research on the effect an internet-shaped childhood has had on Gen-Z. By replacing a play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood, we’ve inadvertently hijacked the most important period of human development. The results have been devastating.

But Haidt isn’t all doom and gloom. After laying out the sobering facts, he then presents a positive vision for how we can get back on track. Haidt recommends collectively establishing four new norms in our homes, schools, and communities:

1. No smartphones before high school
2. No social media before 16
3. Phone-free schools
4. More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.

Believers will take issue with some of the evolutionary psychology talk Haidt uses to support some of his points. But thankfully his conclusions don’t rest on that. And it really is hard to argue with the data and the central thesis of the book.

If you’re interested in the effects of technology on young people, The Anxious Generation is a must-read.

Got any resources you think might be interesting to feature in a future edition of this newsletter? You can just reply to this email to send them to me.

See you next Thursday!

Reagan Rose

I talk about personal productivity from a Christian perspective. Creator of ​Redeeming Productivity​.

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