Michael-Hyatt on J. David Stark

Daily Gleanings: Avoiding Distraction (25 July 2019)

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 16:00:43 +0000

Daily Gleanings from Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller about how to avoid drifting through life and from Cal Newport about avoiding digital distraction.

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 6: Takeaways)

Mon, 13 May 2019 12:00:00 +0000

I had two main takeaways from “Free to Focus” that I’ve already started implementing: megabatching and using technology to avoid distracting technology.

Daily Gleanings: Email (10 May 2019)

Fri, 10 May 2019 16:00:00 +0000

Michael Hyatt offers practical advice for staying on top of email.

In contrast with the commonly touted practice of “Inbox Zero,” Taylor Lorenz describes “Inbox Infinity” in the Atlantic. HT: Doist

Part of what can help prevent the extremely large inboxes that give rise to Lorenz’s counsel of despair is to unsubscribe from messages you shouldn’t get in the first place. If you can’t unsubscribe, email clients and services often have good filtering abilities. A few minutes spent learning and setting up some key filters can drastically reduce the amount of email that appears in your inbox in the first place.

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 5: Assessment)

Mon, 06 May 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Now that we’ve surveyed Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus,” we can to offer an assessment of its proposal. In a phrase, it’s “GTD for Essentialists.”

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 4: Acting)

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Continued review of Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus.” We discuss the three elements of “acting” on what you’ve identified as most important to pursue.

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 3: Cutting)

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0000

After you stop to discern what’s important, you need to cut out what sidetracks you from focusing on that. Here are three strategies for doing just that.

Daily Gleanings (18 April 2019)

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 17:00:57 +0000

Gleanings about persistence and the intermediate state.

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 2: Stopping)

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 12:00:48 +0000

This post continues reviewing Michael Hyatt’s book “Free to Focus.” Here we concentrate on Hyatt’s advice about “stopping” to to discern what’s important.

Daily Gleanings (12 April 2019)

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 17:00:21 +0000

Gleanings about the Nathan-Melech bulla and goal setting.

Daily Gleanings (11 April 2019)

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:00:00 +0000

Gleanings about the theology of Benedict XVI and taking next steps.

Daily Gleanings (10 April 2019)

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 17:00:16 +0000

Gleanings about moving forward when the next steps look difficult.

Daily Gleanings (9 April 2019)

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:00:29 +0000

Gleanings about persistence, regularity, and a new Greek grammar.

Are You Free to Focus? (Part 1)

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 13:00:47 +0000

Do you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of tasks? Do you keep your nose to the grindstone and complete to-dos like a machine only to look up and find you’re failing to make the progress you want in the areas or projects that matter most?

If so, then you need to read Michael Hyatt’s latest book, Free to Focus ( affiliate disclosure). The volume doesn’t release until tomorrow, 9 April. But the author and Baker Publishing kindly included me in the group that received advance copies.

A Conversation about Essentials

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 12:00:40 +0000

Michele Cushatt, Michael Hyatt, and Greg McKeown discuss “essentialism,” which is about saying “yes” to what matters most.

Focus—there’s an app for that

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Digital devices and media can make focus difficult. Freedom provides helpful of “training wheels” to foster better focus amid such distractions.

Staying focused

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Valerie Bisharat shares some helpful reflections on “how to avoid focus-stealing traps.”

Hyatt on Lewis on reading old books

Sat, 03 Jun 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a good, short discussion of the value of reading old books. Much of Michael’s post is framed around C. S. Lewis’s discussion of the same topic in his introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, an online version of which Michael has spotted on this page.

Hyatt's Interview with Newport

Mon, 01 May 2017 13:00:26 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a helpful interview with Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016). According to Newport,

Focus is now the lifeblood of this economy.

Why? Because focus is rare and distraction abundant. As Hyatt comments,

Remedying overcommitment

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 13:00:51 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a new post where he provides seven strategies for remedying or avoiding overcommitment. All seven suggestions are good and worth considering. But, the capstone suggestion, number seven seems particularly key:

Free to focus—on sleep?

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:00:09 +0000

Free to Focus logo

As part of Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus resource set, he’s made available three treat the significance for productivity of adequate, quality sleep:

Interview with Shawn Stevenson (video)
Unleash Nature’s Secret Weapon eBook (PDF)
13 Essential Keys to a Good Night’s Sleep (PDF)

Shawn Stevenson’s core business certainly falls in an area where probably few biblical scholars will care to follow. But some of the implications of the expertise that he has for broader productivity applications may indeed prove informative and helpful.

Tips for better focus

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 13:00:24 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a helpful discussion of 10 tips for enabling better focus. For me, suggestions 5 (“Take email … software offline.”) and 6 (“Put on music that helps facilitates concentration.”) have tended to prove particularly helpful.

For Michael’s discussion of these tips and the other 8 he provides, see his original post.

Eliminating distractions

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 13:00:54 +0000

Going along with his Free to Focus material, Michael Hyatt has a helpful, free resource about eliminating distractions. The material in this resource is designed to work with and complement the content Michael delivers in his webinar, The 7 Deadly Sins of Productivity: The Hidden Habits Undermining Your Performance (And How to Change Them).

Productivity assessment

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 13:00:48 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a free productivity assessment tool that provides “a free analysis of your overall [personal productivity] score and a breakdown of the productivity areas you evaluated.”

A followup email provides a short set of tips for improving, and the analysis page that displays after the survey is completed provides access to sign up for a free webinar on the “7 deadly sins of productivity.” I attended the webinar recently, and it does provide a good number of suggestions revolving around focus as a primary key to productivity.

Digital notekeeping

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Michael Hyatt has a good discussion of digital notekeeping tools, a.k.a. “Evernote alternatives.” As even the nomenclature might suggest, Michael opts for Evernote.

I used Evernote for quite some time too but transitioned several months back to OneNote. I haven’t ever gotten particularly sold on Apple devices, so Apple-only alternatives were out by default.

Skills to cultivate for better work

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 08:00:46 +0000

Via the blog of Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson, John Dumas highlights three skills to develop in order to be more satisfied with what’s gotten done amid everything that has come along in a given day: productivity, discipline, and focus.