Five summer resolutions – work version

Over at my personal blog, I posted a list of summer resolutions. Five to be exact. I found it a worthwhile exercise so I’m doing one for work as well:

• Create a paperless office. Call me what you will, I find it extremely difficult to focus in an office that is cluttered with papers. Michael Hyatt got me thinking about the beauty and simplicity of a paperless office. Prior to that, my boss Don Paul Gross told me that he has a largely paperless office. Since I work from home and am now responsible for a broader range of management functions (read, more papers than ever!) I have decided to take the plunge over the summer months. I’ll write more about this as it progresses.
• Create harder boundaries. I spend a lot of the day on my computer. There are emails to send and respond to. There are people to catch up with on facebook. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time in the evenings taking care of “odds and ends.” There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. However, I think I’d be more effective and efficient during the day if I reserve the evening hours for non-work stuff. “Weisure,” in the end, is neither work nor leisure.
• Get out of the office. Much of my work can be done anywhere there is a wireless network or, of course, graduate students and/or faculty! When I’m in the office there is always a lot that commands my attention. Often it is administrative “to dos,” things that need to get done, but which aren’t (strictly speaking) central to it. Each of us needs to get away periodically to get above the runway view to the 10,000+ft view of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
• Get an intellectual hobby. Jason Ingalls once wrote (I cannot find the link, sorry, and my paraphrase won’t do him justice) about how important it is to pursue subjects you find interesting even if it’s only for a limited duration.  Currently I’ve been doing some reading on missional theology, focusing on the works of writers like Alan Hirsch, Christopher J H Wright, and Leslie Newbigin. I’m also planning on reading some Barth and Torrance(s). In years past, I’ve gotten into reading about: the Armenian Genocide, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the Emergent/ing church, Jacques Ellul, etc. Intellection is one of my signature strengths on the strengths finder personality inventory so it’s important for me to be continually learning in order to flourish. My own theological identity is pretty classically Reformed and evangelical, but I enjoy learning from and interacting with writers and thinkers who are quite different from me.
• Use the phone more and email less. There are somethings that are best communicated by email, but many things are more effectively communicated by phone. It’s easier and it’s more personal.