Sermon Illustrations on Productivity

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Background

Accelerated Growth

The inordinate desire in the west for productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Mencius we find a helpful reminder that our attempts to speed things up doesn’t always work:

You don’t want to be like the man from Sung. There was a man from Sung who was worried about the slow growth of his crops and so he went and yanked on them to accelerate their growth. Empty-headed, he returned home and announced to his people: “I am so tired today. I have been out stretching the crops.” His son ran out to look, but the crops had already withered.

Quoted in Michael Steinberg in The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005), 129.

Be More Productive by Taking Breaks

A New York Times story reports on the positive impact school recess has on academic performance. Here’s how it begins: “The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.”

The paradoxical lesson of this story is relevant not just for schoolchildren but for us grown-ups, too: Taking time out to restore and rejuvenate ourselves results not in reduced performance caused by less time dedicated to work, but to increased performance caused by the stronger, more focused effort you bring to work after fruitful rest. But how can anyone think seriously, and without guilt, about undertaking activity that isn’t directly reducing costs or increasing revenues? The short answer is that you can’t afford not to.

Harvard Business Review, HBR Guide to Managing Stress, Harvard Business Review Press.

It’s My Life!

In Redeeming Productivity, Reagan Rose tells his own story to illustrate the two ways in which the idea that “it’s my life” leads to two very different and disordered outlooks on productivity. When he started college he was “overweight, addicted to video games, and without purpose or ambition in the world.” [1] He had concluded that, because it was his life, he could live it how he liked. And he liked Halo 3 and Flaming Hot Cheetos. Productivity didn’t matter.

However, he later transferred schools and decided to reinvent himself: “I decided I was going to get As, start eating healthy, get in shape, and really be someone.” [1] He began to become obsessed with productivity—and it worked. But in spite of external progress, he was “drinking theological poison.” [1] Everything he was doing assumed that “it’s my life.” It was about him getting happier, more successful, and wealthier.

This isn’t the right way for Christians to think about productivity. Our lives belong to God. [1]

1. Regan Rose and Tim Challies, Redeeming Productivity: Getting More Done for the Glory of God, Moody Publishers, 2022. Please see this book as an excellent resource on reclaiming productivity for God.

Summary by William Rowley

Make Your Bed Every Day

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

Admiral William H. McRaven, speech delivered to the graduating class at UT Austin in 2014

The Parable of the Two Servants

In this modern day parable, Alan Fadling describes a king and his two servants. Each of the servants desires to do the will of the king, but they approach their work very differently:

One of the servants, for fear of not pleasing his master, rose early each day to hurry along to do all the things that he believed the king wanted done. He didn’t want to bother the king with questions about what that work was. Instead, he hurried from project to project from early morning until late at night. The other servant, also eager to please his master, would rise early as well, but he took a few moments to go to the king, ask him about his wishes for the day and find out just what it was he desired to be done. Only after such a consultation did this servant step into the work of his day.

…The busy servant may have gotten a lot done by the time the inquiring servant even started his work, but which of them was doing the will of the master and pleasing him? Genuine productivity is not about getting as much done for God as we can manage. It is doing the good work God actually has for us in a given day. Genuine productivity is learning that we are more than servants, that we are beloved sons and daughters invited into the good kingdom work of our heavenly Father. That being the case, how might God be inviting you to wait for his specific direction?

Playing Busy like a Fiddle While the World Burns

As early as April 2020, a debate raged about the responsibilities of those of us turned safely inside during this global storm. For those time privileged enough to find their calendars suddenly cleared, what should we do with all this newfound time? Should we perfect our baking skills? Learn another language? Launch a business? Organize the pantry and the photo albums? The New York Times regularly featured exactly these sorts of ideas, and I did feel better when, on a spring Saturday, we hung garage shelving to organize bikes, sports equipment, and snow shovels. But in her article for Wired, writer Laurie Penny took issue with those “lucky enough to be able to shelter in place,” who were “using that time to launch podcasts and personal projects and life-hack [their] way to some cargo-cult pastiche of normality.” In her essay, Penny defiantly opposed the idea that we were most optimized when we were most productive. “Productivity,” she argued, “is not a synonym for health, or for safety, or for sanity.” “How shall we stay productive,” Penny asked, “when the world is going to hell?” It was a question to which I felt particularly attuned. Busy has long been the most recognizable version of me.

Jen Pollock Michel, Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace, Baker Books, 2022.

That Fast?

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, once visited the Great Pyramid of Giza as part of an official state visit. When visiting the Great Pyramid of Giza, he was told it had taken twenty years to build. “I’m surprised that a government organization could do it that quickly,” Carter answered.

Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from Clifton Fadiman, Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes.

Why We Resist a Less Hurried Life

A primary resistance to a less hurried way of life—a resistance I find in myself and in others—is the belief that “I won’t be as productive” or that “I will fail to seize the opportunities God sets before me.” I have come to believe, though, that this sort of obsession with work results, ironically, in a reduction of true fruitfulness. We sometimes hear it said, “Less is more.” Sometimes, though, more is also less.

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