Published by Crossway on March 5, 2024
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life
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6 Powerful, God-Honoring Principles to Increase Productivity
Many people today idolize achievement, driven by validation, status, or financial gain. Others lack self-discipline and motivation altogether. How can Christians pursue healthy, biblical goal-setting that avoids extremes?
In this user-friendly guide, Ana Ávila teaches 6 principles to help you honor God with all you have and reflect his character through your creativity. Along with a gospel-centered perspective on life, you’ll learn skills to increase efficiency, such as forming healthy habits, using productivity tools, creating tasks and projects, and more. Whether you are achievement-oriented or struggle with discipline, Ávila will show you how to reorient your time, boundaries, decisions, focus, habits, and tools around God’s main design for productivity: serving him and helping others.
A Great Introduction to Productivity: Explains how to effectively steward time, resources, and wisdom from a biblical perspective
Interactive: Each chapter ends with questions for reflection and action steps
Practical Life Skills: Includes sample schedules, tips for forming healthy habits, and more
Previously Published in Spanish
Books about productivity are a dime a dozen in the publishing world, and they typically cover a lot of the same advice. This book stands out as a particularly good option for Christians, since the author shares spiritual perspective shifts and practical advice in a short, highly readable package. A lot of productivity books are longer than they need to be, packing in lots of case studies and going into detailed overviews of psychological studies. This one is short and gets to the point, without any unnecessary padding. Ana Ávila shares biblical wisdom about stewarding our gifts for the glory of God and the good of others, and she writes about how true productivity involves cultivating a virtuous character, without any shortcuts or tricks to success.
Ávila encourages her readers to think of their productivity as an act of love to others, and she summarizes truths from the Bible and from the life of Christ to illustrate her points. She explores principles related to building good habits and focusing well, and she also shares a helpful perspective on accepting your limits. For example, she writes about how it is important for mothers to accept the limitations that certain seasons of life bring, when their children require more of their attention and they aren’t able to accomplish as much on their to-do lists. She also talks about the ways that disability and health issues can hold people back from accomplishing everything they want to do, and I appreciated this acknowledgement, which is relatively rare in productivity books.
Ávila encourages people to do their best with what they have, pursuing faithfulness in their own lives instead of feeling guilty because they can’t do as much as someone else. This mindset comes through clearly in the practical sections as well, because even as she gives her readers advice for better organizing their lives, she acknowledges that people will need to personalize this advice to their situation and the stage of life they are currently in. Her advice is general enough to apply to most people, while also being specific enough for readers to take action on it, and I particularly liked her ideas about how to plan your week.
Make the Most of Your Productivity: A Guide to Honoring God with Your Time is a simple, encouraging guide for Christians who want to think more deeply about productivity and make good use of their time. Even though there is nothing really new to say on the subject, this is a solid resource that offers spiritual wisdom and practical advice for people in any stage of life. The authors’ varied examples and acknowledgement of different life situations make this book stand out, and I found it helpful and encouraging.