I suspect, however, that one could advance ecumenical theology even further by choosing two theologians from different theological traditions. Indeed St. Thomas is well representative of Catholicism and J. Wesley a founding representative of Methodism. But, if we are honest to a theological genealogy, St. Thomas is already within the Methodist tradition as well, being part of the Wesley’s spiritual heritage within Western European Christendom. (This is not meant as a critique of Colón-Emeric’s work, but rather an affirmation and attempt at advancing it.)

Would it not be more boldly ecumenical, then, to hold the Wesleys alongside the Jesuits, for instance?

A quick digression:

An elder Catholic priest was counseling a young man considering a religious vocation. The young man said, “I think I’ve narrowed my call down to two orders, but I can’t decide which is better: the Dominicans or the Jesuits. Can you help me, Father?”

“Ah, yes, the Dominicans are a holy and blessed order, founded by St. Dominic in the early thirteenth century to combat the heresy of the Albigensians. And the Jesuits, also a holy and blessed order, gathered by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century to combat the heresy of Protestantism.”

The young man waited for a final verdict and, receiving none, he inquired further, “But, Father, which of these is the better order?”

“Well, my son, the answer is simple. How many Albigensians do you know?”*

Realizing that the value of these orders is, of course, in how God has put them to use rather than the more divisive aims of humanity, we may ask today how the spirituality of St Ignatius and the ErgoMethodism of the Wesley brothers may be mutually beneficial. To be sure, as Colón-Emeric has succesfully demonstrated, they should not be collapsed one into the other. But there are indeed confluences that deserve further examination. How, indeed, may ErgoMethodism be understood as a spiritual exercise?

* Thanks to Father Halloran for sharing this joke in a homily years ago at St. James Roman Catholic Church in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Perhaps it will be evident that what this clown demonstrates is how ultimately ridiculous arguments against human endeavors turn out to be. But, following a rule of “charitable reading,” there is also something of value that Bozo here (that’s my name for him) is trying to get at. And that is: GRACE.

Indeed, no workflow method will amount to a hill of beans without divine grace indwelling and redeeming it.

At some point I’d like to review the published version of Miroslav Volf’s original dissertation at Tübingen (they require two of them in Germany!), Work in the Spirit: toward a theology of work (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), in order to tease out some more relationships between spirituality and workflow. But perhaps this shout-out to grace will suffice for now.

*** NOTE: This video has been making its way around the blogosphere for several months, but many links have since been broken due to YouTube’s termination of The Wretched Channel’s account “due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement.” Given that this particular video is just too entertaining to surrender to the ephemerality of broken links, I finally found it reposted @ blip.tv.

Pretty soon, however, I found that I could categorize these areas of responsibility in four general areas. So I proceeded to draw this out in a kind of mind map:

The blue portion highlights 16 “areas of responsibility” divided into four directions: personal relationships, service to church & world, career, and self-care. The white external part lists specific responsibilities, of which I have around 60, but only a few of them are shared here.

In the midst of so many projects and responsibilities, such doodling may initially strike one as a waste of time. But vacations, or even a weekend out of town, can provide an opportunity to renew one’s vision (40,000 feet), purpose and principles (50,000 feet) and, with God’s grace, appropriately reorient one’s energies to the things that matter most.

The value of the ErgoMonad is manifold: it provides an intense period of work, a helpful period of rest, and a convenient way to assess past workflow and schedule future work. In addition, however, there is a gradual increase in workflow character or virtue, by which I mean ingrained habits that assist in concentration and productivity.

One way in which the ErgoMonad accomplishes this is by its audibility. By training the mind to concentrate alongside the “tick-tick-tick” of the timer, one will condition one’s brain to avoid distractions and focus on the job at hand. Likewise, the successful use of short breaks and intensive bouts of work will condition one’s mind to achieve a regular pace of solid productivity, rather than continually oscillate between procrastination and short-lived cram sessions.

But how can one consistently deploy ErgoMonads to build such workflow character? Quite simply, one must take them with you everywhere. My own work has at least three different locations: my home office, the Senior Common Room at my institution, and a private carrel in the university’s main library. Add various other libraries, coffee shops, and any other haunt frequented by contemporary nomadic  workers and it is clear that a consistent ErgoMonadic deployment faces significant challenges.

Any digital audio player will do, but the more portable, the better.

But the solution is a simple one: record a digital audio file. While I prefer to use the Clock Pro app on my iPad, I must keep that app open in order to hear it ticking. So I’ve simply recorded an mp3 that is 25 minutes of ticking, followed by the same rewarding music that I’ve set the app to play. By loading that one digital file onto my iPod, mobile phone, and a conveniently small mp3 player that my sister-in-law scored in a medical conference gift-bag, I am able to take that “tick-tick-tick-da-di-da” sound that my brain craves anywhere (except for an airplane during takeoff and landing).

An initial objection might be that this is too much work. On the contrary, however, this is precisely the kind of minor investment that pays significant dividends over time. In fact, by attending to this kind of detail (setting up audio and choosing one’s own finale music), one generates an anticipation of the practice itself, such that deployment and use will become an enjoyment in itself. Thus, in somewhat Augustinian terms, one’s desires and love may be reordered toward productivity rather than procrastination and stagnation.

While GTD does not intend to de-emphasize the actual practice of doing (nor Thomas Aquinas, it should be said), the GTD practitioner may be tempted to spend so much time in preparation that things never actually get done—or that, at the very least—it takes significantly longer to get them done. This is where (what I call) “ErgoMonads” become important.

As I use it, this term is equivalent to the “Pomodoro” in Francesco Cirillo’s “Pomodoro Technique.” Cirillo describes using a kitchen timer (and his just happens to be shaped like a tomato, which in Italian is pomodoro) to track individual 25-minute sessions of intense, concentrated work. I prefer to call such sessions “ErgoMonads,” because they are individual “units of work” and, like Cirillo makes clear, they are indivisible. There is no such thing as a half-ErgoMonad, for that would defeat its very purpose and contradict its very nature.

This technique is particularly helpful in decreasing distractions, as one can always look at the timer and tell whomever is interrupting: “Give me just X minutes and I’ll get back to you.” Or if an inner-distraction comes to mind, which is often the case in the digital era of the ubiquitous hyperlink, simply jot it down and immediately return to work. That way it’s recorded, so you can process (and do) it later.

While one can certainly attempt ErgoMonads of any length, 25 minutes is short enough that it doesn’t seem like an inconvenience. It can be quite easy to tell oneself (and colleagues): I will do nothing else for 25 minutes. No web browsing, no email communication, no solitaire or hearts, no shooting the proverbial, er, “stuff.”

My next post will address ways to easily deploy ErgoMonads in any context.

This leads me to wonder to what extent the advent of the pendulum clock (in the late seventeenth century) had an effect on the Wesley household. If the early Methodists tracked their days according to the quarter-hour, what tool did they use to monitor this? Was such time management something the Wesleys first encountered in Oxford? Or was it something that developed at home in Epworth, under Susannah’s tutelage?

Someone really needs to write a book chronicling the history of time-management, taking into account the interdependency of technology, industry, agriculture, spirituality, economics (of home, communities and society), etc.

In the meantime, however, be sure to read John Wesley’s sermon, “Redeeming the Time.”

Since becoming more intentional about this distinction in my own workflow, I’ve found that it can be used in a variety of contexts. For instance, I’ve come to incorporate it in leading seminar discussions.

Without a quality facilitator, seminar discussions can be one of the most disorganized and disappointing ways to spend an hour or two. Multiply that hour or two by how many students there are and that’s how much time is being wasted if the seminar is not productive. Of course there is plenty of work to be done in advance of the discussion to make it the best it can be. But within the seminar itself, distinguishing collecting from processing in the first few minutes can make a world of difference.

Collect
Assuming that some of the students have done the reading, begin by collecting whatever issues came up for them or questions they may have had. One way of doing this, which I have picked up from one of my own professors, is to first collect descriptive statements or questions, followed by critical comments and inquiries. Having all this data in front of you will help you mentally process throughout the seminar.

Process
Unlike the typical GTD workflow approach, where each collected item demands its own process procedure, processing in this context is more of a collation and arrangement of themes, issues, questions, methods of argumentation, and so on. But completing the collection of comments and questions before the discussion of them begins will help the instructor schedule the amount of time available.

Such an approach also provides the instructor a warning about dead-end issues about which one-or-more students may be tempted to hijack the discussion. If the collection phase is just that—collection and nothing more—then such students are given the opportunity to raise the issue without taking up valuable time. This allows the instructor to quickly address that issue and put it to rest or postpone its discussion toward the very end when there are only a couple of minutes left.

Of course, I don’t intend to imply that David Allen or his GTD Method is comparable to the gospel of Christ. But there ARE precedents for integrating such a method of workflow management into one’s spiritual journey — and especially within a specifically (and “evangelically”) Christian perspective.

From 1734 on, John Wesley kept an “exacter diary,” in which he recorded his actions according to every hour of the day. This practice of his emerged during the early student gatherings of “Methodists” at Oxford, and the term “Methodist” referred to the strict manner in which they ordered their personal lives in order to pursue holiness.

I first blogged about this relationship last year and, soon thereafter, my blog received more hits than ever before. Thanks to WordPress’s excellent statistics feature, I was able to trace these hits back to a discussion forum in the GTD Connect online community.

Shortly thereafter — and largely due to my newly revised workflow — I no longer found blogging to be as helpful as I had once hoped. The publicity of posting at Fides ex auditu simply did not hold much productive value, so I have posted very little since then. I will continue to maintain that site and may post there occasionally. But now my energies are focused more on the Rock and Theology project and this new project, The ErgoMethodist. Check often and comments are always welcome!

Information on the Methodist tradition and workflow productivity to follow.