Emily P. Freeman (Author of The Next Right Thing)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Foreign. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week I host a conversation with somebody who's following Jesus Christ and is also pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. Today's guest is the wonderful Emily P. Freeman. Of course. She is the host of the wildly popular podcast the Next Right Thing, which just surpassed 7 million downloads. Trust me, that is a lot of downloads for a podcast. She's also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book by the same title, the Next Right Thing, which I was honored to endorse. Emily is a masterful communicator. Whether she's blogging or writing books or producing podcast content, she's exceptional at communicating gospel truths in really practical ways. So Emily and I sat down. We talked about her response to the song titled the Next Right Thing showing up in the movie Frozen 2. We talked about the genius of theming your days on your calendar and how to avoid the temptation to fake Mastery in your career. You guys are going to love this episode. Please enjoy this conversation with Emily P. Freeman. Emily P. Freeman, thanks for being on the Call to Mastery.

I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

So I promised my kids that I would start here in this conversation. So since Thanksgiving, There have been three songs played on repeat in my house by my 5 year old and 3 year old talking to Alexa. I think you can guess where I'm going with this. Number one is who Let the Dogs out by Baha Men, of course. Number two is waving through a window from the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack. And number three is the next right thing from Frozen 2.

That's right. I have to.

And by the way, I intentionally did not read up on what happened here. I've got to know if there's a story here. Please tell me. The Disney writers were like huge fans of your podcast and that inspired the.

Song, I can tell you that. But then I would have to confess that it was not the truth. Let me tell you, ever since Like, I started getting wind that there was a song called the Next Right Thing back in, you know, I don't know, months before the movie came out. And I was like, well, that's cool. And I. Since then, I have gotten questions from, do you know Kristen Bell? Did you write the song? Did Disney pay you? Like, people were both thrilled and angry thinking that Disney stole it from me, which, first of all, I'll be the first to say I did not come up with the phrase. Yeah, you talk about this in the book.

Yeah, yeah, right?

I mean, but, I mean, I'll take it. But I constantly tell people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Anne Lamott, Mother Teresa, alcoholics Anonymous, in the Big Book of. You know, there's so many people who have said this before me. But, yes. So the story is that I did not see the movie until I got 1 million trillion DMs on Instagram from people giving me a screenshot of either, like, them at the movie or the song by Kristen Bell. And the funny thing is, which is kind of cute, that everybody thought they were the first person to tell me, right? Like, oh, Emily, I don't know if you've seen this, but there is this movie. It is a cartoon, you know, and they kind of go through the whole thing, and I'm like, that is so cool.

Thank you.

So I finally saw it. Loved it. Loved the movie, the whole thing. But you know what? After I saw it, what happened was that I became fascinated with the writers who wrote the song. The Lopez. There's a husband and wife who wrote the song. And so I had to, of course, listen to a podcast they were on talking about it, and it's really beautiful. It's just sort of like their inspiration for the song, for the character in the movie. But then it was really based on how, you know, people who they worked on the movie with. I think it was maybe one of the directors or producers who had a great loss in his life, and they watched him go through that loss, and he did it by simply doing the Next Right Thing. And so that was like, a real spiritual and personal transformation that happened for them. And then they kind of put it into this song, which I thought was really beautiful.

And it's a dynamite song.

I mean, come on.

By Disney standards, this thing's. You're a musician, I'm a musician. It's complex. The chord structures are interesting. I'm all in. I'm all in on Christine Bell and the Next Right Thing and Emily P. Freeman and the Next Right Thing. That's Right. So everybody listening right now knows you as the host of this phenomenally successful podcast. But I don't think a lot of our listeners probably know your story. What's your story vocationally? Emily?

It's funny. So I went to college as a piano major. Some people don't know that, but I went to a Bible college, Jordan, and they're not really known for their, you know, this particular schools. You don't go there to major in piano, but I did. But it was a couple years into it and I realized, like, I really love playing the piano, but I really wasn't looking to, you know, have that be my lifelong vocation. And so I ended up transferring schools. I went to University of North Carolina in Greensboro and I studied sign language interpreting. And that's what I got my degree in, Educational Interpreting for the deaf. And I thought, okay, this is it. I'm going to do this forever and I'm going to. And I was really fascinated with the language piece of it of like listening to, you know, someone who was teaching or speaking and then being able to understand what that person was saying in such a way that I could translate it into American Sign Language so that it would provide, you know, accessibility to these deaf students and the whole thing. So I did that for years. And then after I got married and had, we had twins, actually. So it was like, you know, we went from zero to, to real fast. And that kind of changed my working full time situation. And that was when I started to write on a blog, was when I kind of stopped, you know, the full time sign language interpreting life that I was living. And two years into having twins, I was like, I can't remember my name, I don't know what day it is, and I have to do something to help me feel like a grownup. And I just started this blog and shared it with some, just my girlfriends in town. I mean, it was like for a couple of years I just wrote. And I didn't know about the Internet. I mean, I did, but I just didn't think about an audience or a reader beyond my own town. And then slowly I began to be aware, like, oh, wait, what if I wrote things on here to actually connect with people beyond myself? What if I wrote things I was learning and things that I thought were important? It was just one of those. I kind of stumbled into it back in. This was back in 2007. And that's kind of how I. I'd always been a writer, but it was one of those things where I thought that was like A hobby for when you're a kid. I never thought I could take it seriously because I think a lot of us have this idea that to be a writer, someone has to come and crown you with permission to do that work and to call yourself that. And I had not received my crowning. And so I just figured, well, I guess I, you know, that's not really a thing that I can pursue. But that's kind of where it started.

So 2007, you start blogging. When did you sign your first book deal?

I signed my first book deal and I think it was 2009.

So one of the things I like about your story is this pattern of placing little bets. Right. You didn't. Your first foray into writing wasn't trying to go get a traditional publishing deal. You sat down and you started blogging. Right. Can you talk about the value of placing little bets in your career?

Absolutely. And you know, I'm glad you asked that question because I think just speaking specifically about writing, I work with and meet so many writers through the course of my work. And what I find to be true across the board is that writers think that you're not a real writer unless you have a book published. And so I talk with writers who talk about, you know, it's like they have book shaped eyeballs. Like everything that they see is kind of they see through the lens of a book. And not only do I think that that's a dangerous way to at the work, but I think that it's the wrong focus. And I will say when I started writing, I might have been the opposite. I think I did think that, you know, you, in order to be a real writer, probably real writers wrote books that felt right. But I never ever thought I would do that. That really wasn't the goal. But I did write on a blog pretty consistently when my kids were little. And I did it week after week for several years in a row. And it was my first, probably my first step forward, like, you know, making progress toward that book. It was the destination, wasn't like, let's write a book, but it was like, well, I'd like to learn more about writing. I would like to become a better writer. How might one do that? And I ended up looking for a writing conference. And so I found I had a friend who was going to one, and it was in Charlotte, which is a few hours from where I live. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to go there. I don't feel qualified. I probably won't belong. I don't know a single person, but I'm just going to go. And I did. And I learned a couple of things there. I didn't meet an editor who discovered me. You know, like, you're a model at a gas station and they're like, yeah.

We want you over here.

Yeah, that didn't happen. But what did happen? A couple of things. Number one, I met several other writers. I met a lot of writers, but I met a few who I stayed in touch with. So I met some like minded peers, friends, people who kind of saw the world in a similar way and had to write about it. And the second thing I learned was that I wasn't the only one who didn't know things. And I actually knew more than I thought. I was sitting in the back of a workshop about like how to pitch magazine articles or something or how to write magazine articles. But I remember during the whole lecture I was like, oh, that's so smart. And oh, you know, I'm probably the only one in here who's never written for a magazine. But then during the Q and A, I remember people started asking questions. Not only questions that I had, but also questions that I knew the answer to. And so I thought, okay, maybe I'm further along than I thought. And that was such a human experience for me leaving that conference. Like I said, I didn't meet an editor, I didn't meet an agent, but I did meet people. And I also got a little glimpse at myself. And in that I feel like that was like one little step, one next right thing, kind of in the right direction of, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but it was kind of moving towards that book. But again, the book was kind of. I always think about, you know, the work that we do. I think often we confuse the work as the art. Like, oh, I'm going to write a book or I'm going to write a song or I'm going to do this creative thing. And then look, now I have my art, here it is. But in fact, as I'm doing this and as I learn and as I pay close attention to the way God makes and the way that he makes us, is that it's really that we are the art. And that the fact that we have a book or a piece of artwork is evidence that the art has happened, that we are becoming someone. And here's my book. It's evidence that that's happening. But that's kind of secondary to the true art, which is the beauty of the change and the redemption. And the transformation that's happening on the inside of me, that's beautiful.

One of the things I like most about your kind of path to mastering your vocation, I could be misremembering this, but I seem to recall you having a conversation, I think it was on Andy Downs podcast, about taking the time to fall in love with ideas, especially like work project ideas, before choosing to commit to them and pursue mastery of them. And I think this was in the context of launching the Next Right Thing as a podcast instead of a book. Am I remembering that correctly? And if so, can you talk about that?

Absolutely. It's one of the. Here's what happens, I think, with a lot of us, and then I'll tell you that specific story is I think that we have an idea and then we immediately begin to talk ourselves out of it because it's going to be too hard to implement. And then we don't ever do our good ideas. And then the world is missing out on that thing we had to offer. And so for me, a lot of that is inspired first of all from BJ Novak and Greg Daniels, who wrote, well, Greg Daniels created the American version of the Office. And in their writing room, BJ Novak talked about this on a podcast. I think it was with Tim Ferriss or somebody. They had this thing where they called it blue skying. You know, we're like, we are going to share ideas. We're going to camp on an idea for hours, and no one can say it's any of these ideas are bad ideas. You just like, you just go crazy. You know, Dwight flies to the moon, okay, it's a blue sky idea. We're going to allow it. And then later, they're going to slash all their darlings, right? But at first, when it first comes, you gotta give those ideas a chance to breathe. It's like they're so brave coming out, and they'll stop coming out if you keep killing them as soon as they pop their heads up. So that was sort of a way that they described it. But I also have found this to be true in my own work, that if we allow ourselves the freedom to sit with an idea and let it kind of flit and flitter around for a while, for weeks, for sometimes months before we. Because what will happen is as we allow those ideas to kind of live, give them a chance at life, they will begin to categorize themselves. And it's like our brains, I call it our brains will work for free. It's kind of like the subconscious part of our brain of like figuring out some of the parts that are difficult. And the good idea is sometimes there's a big gap between where we are and where we're going to get there. And depending on your situation, the gap could be money, support, just knowledge. You know, there's like a lot of things that can be in that gap. And if you don't, if you haven't allowed yourself the time to fall absolutely in love with that idea, it's going to fall through the gap. But if you have given yourself to this idea fully. And for me, for example, it was this idea of this concept of decision making. This way I was paying attention to how we make decisions and then what happens when we have an unmade decision? And I was Jordan fascinated. I was obsessed with how I felt like God, it's almost like he was in on some kind of joke. Because I looked around and I thought, this is everywhere. It's like the blue car syndrome. They talk about where, like you're gonna buy a car and you see it everywhere. And I started seeing this whole decision making thing everywhere where I thought, look how attentive I am when I have to decide between two good things or two hard things. When I'm living in the state of indecisiveness, I become attentive to, you know, how God might be speaking through my husband, through my pastor, through my best friend, through the way the leaves are turning on the trees. I mean, we become hyper aware and I'm like, oh, okay, maybe God is less interested, like he's getting my attention through this unmade decision. But actually there's something on deeper within me. And what might it look like if I follow that thread? And so I thought, because I'm a writer, I thought, oh, this is my next book. I'm going to write a book about this. And I sat down and I tried to write it and it was the worst. Nothing was connect. I mean, it was not coming like my other books had. But the idea felt the same. You know, you can kind of, you've written a few books, you can kind of start to know, okay, this is book length worthy. You know, some things are like tweets worthy. And then this felt a lot longer. And you know, but it wasn't happening. And I was so frustrated. But what I realized was at the same time, simultaneously, I started really falling in love with just the audio medium. Like with I was listening to more audiobooks. I was on the scripture reading team at my church, so I was reading scripture on Sundays out loud. And I was listening to more podcasts. And it became. It was so funny the way it kind of converged, because I started was working on this quote unquote book, and then I was consuming audio content, and I thought, you know, if only there was a way to, you know, talk about this book instead of, like, having to, you know, like, talk so that people could. Then I realized they came up with that a long time ago. It's called podcasting. I didn't have to reinvent the wheel.

Oh, yeah, this is a thing.

Yeah, it's a whole thing. And so that's when I thought, oh, what if this idea that I've been trying to force into this medium, that the art just did not want to fit in, what if it became 10 to 15 minute episodes instead? And immediately when I gave the work permission to run in the direction of a podcast, it sort of fell into place as far as the format of it. It made more sense to me. And the good news was I had already really fallen in love with the idea of it being a podcast. The bad news was I didn't know how to host a podcast. I didn't know the first thing. And so that's where the gap was for me in that it's like, okay, here I am. I got this idea. I think it should be podcasts. And. But I was so deeply in love with it and committed to it that I'm like, this love will carry me through the dark night of the soul of technology, of trying to figure out how to actually get it.

And it is the darkest of nights.

Wires. I mean, everything is. You know, it's the worst. But it didn't matter because I gave it the space because I loved it. And I'm like, we're doing this. It was just like your face set like a flint. But if that had not been allowed to happen, I don't know, I might never have done the podcast because I would not have given it the space and I would have talked myself out of it too quickly. The ironic thing is that a year and a half later, the podcast became a book anyway, so now we have the next Right Thing book. But that would never, ever, ever would have happened if I hadn't allowed it to be what it wanted to be when it wanted to be it.

I want to put a fine point on something you're saying for our listeners. I think it's so important that we all understand this, right? Like, you fell in love with a message, a topic, this topic of decisions. The medium was secondary. And I think a lot of people start with the medium. They say, I want to write a book or I want to start a podcast. Well, here's the deal. You need to have something compelling to say, a vision for what you believe the Lord is giving you to communicate to the world through a fresh perspective and in a fresh, new way. And especially in this day and age where the medium can be pretty much whatever you want it to be. It could be three minute podcast episodes, it could be three hour podcast episodes, or it could be a blog post or a tweet. I think a lot of times we get hung up on the medium before we, like, really dig in with the Lord in prayer to make sure we have a message we're sharing with the world. So when you chose the podcast medium, though, you didn't know what you were doing. Neither did I, by the way. I didn't even listen to podcasts before we started this. I'm not an audio listener. Who did you look to to try to emulate? Because I had my list of a few people I went and listened to. Who did you listen to? Say, yeah, I want to copy bits and pieces of these shows.

It's funny because I actually did the opposite. At first. I heard what I didn't want to do, and it wasn't so much people were doing it poorly. It was just I knew I didn't want to have. I knew I didn't have the capacity at that time to schedule with interviews and to figure out the technology it takes to host interviews at that time. Like, that wasn't the part I was falling in love with. It was. So I knew that, number one, it wasn't going to be an interview interview style podcast. I also knew I wanted it to be short. Like 15 minutes or less short. Because people who are struggling with decision fatigue and chronic hesitation do not have time to listen to an hour long. Like, they want a quick win. You know, some quick encouragement for what does my next right thing look like today? What if I'm stuck in decision fatigue today? What's that going to mean for me? And so I live in a town where for us commutes are 15 minutes long everywhere we go. Like, that's just my life. And I know that's not true for everyone. But of course, you know, I created the podcast. So in my mind I'm like, oh, a commute is 15 minutes everywhere you go.

Right, right.

And so that was kind of another piece of it. I wanted, like, you know, a mom or a dad to be able to, like, drive to the grocery store and, you know, by the time they get there, they've heard an entire episode. So that was. So there were a few things I knew for sure. And the third thing was I wanted it to be something where I heard Oprah Winfrey talk about how she was. She had the Oprah Winfrey show for over two decades. And she then started the own network after the show went off cycle. We had a show every day at 4:00'. Clock. And we did that for years and years and years. So we can have, you know, a network. Because what's better, you know, it's better to have a show on every channel all day than to have one show at 4 o'.

Clock.

And it's funny because later I listened to an interview she did, and she was saying that, you know, the network did not go as they thought it would go. It was. Did not, like, take off the way they thought it would. And. And upon reflection, they realized that what they had done, that 4 o' clock time slot, it was so successful. But part of it was because they had created a habit for America that four o', clock, I mean, and I still think this way. Cause I watched Oprah all going. Like, I would come home from high school and I would turn on Oprah with my mom and we would watch it. And it wasn't really about Oprah necessarily. I mean, it was, but it was about. It was our 4 o' clock habit.

It's just what you did at 4 o'. Clock.

It's just what you do at 4 o'. Clock. I still, to this day, when it's 4 o', clock weekday, I'm like, it's time for Oprah. I mean, you know, Pavlov dog thing. It's time. And I loved it. I miss it still. But I thought that was a fascinating observation because I thought, oh, that's a. That's a habit that we collectively had as a community. And then when she spread it out over a whole network, you know, the habit was diffused. And so I thought the same thing about a podcast episode. Like, you know, let's drop it. Like, you know, most people drop their episodes the same time every week, but it's the same kind of thing. Like, I want Tuesdays to become for people the day they look forward to, because if they lack clarity, they're going to get a little bit for 10 minutes every Tuesday.

Yeah, I love that. Hey, so in the book, you talked about how when you were starting out as a sign language interpreter, you hated being called a beginner, even though that's exactly what you were, right? And you go on to make this point that, you know, we want to rush to mastery, right? And you use that word, but we can't. This is called the call to mastery. And I talked about this in Master of One. You know, one of the keys to mastering any vocational discipline. It's just discipline over time, over a long period of time. How did you learn the value of good old discipline over time? And how can we do the same?

I mean, I'm still learning it, number one, but I think that that whole idea of being a beginner, it's like, we love new beginnings, spring and starting over, and, you know, but then when it becomes personal, we don't like it anymore. We don't like being a beginner. When I was a sign language interpreter, I had a supervisor who wrote on my supervisory sheet that I was, you know, good for a novice interpreter. Well, I didn't know what novice meant, so I was like, that word must mean brilliant. That word must be, like, the most awesome word of all. So I, like, went home and, like, asked Jeeves. I think it was back when asked Jeeves, was it, like, I mean, who came up with, like, let's have a butler who is a search engine. We'll call him Jeeves, and she will answer all your questions. But so I asked Jeeves what novice meant, and it meant beginner. And I was like, oh, no, she didn't. She did not call me a beginner. I was still in college, Jordan. Like, I was a senior. In college was my internship. And here I was offended by her saying what I actually was. But I think that's so true in so many areas of life. Life, we get frustrated. And it doesn't just have to be vocationally. I think we are beginners in sometimes, like, you know, as a new parent, or even if it is, you go into a new job and you immediately feel ashamed for the fact that you don't know where the bathroom is, or you don't know you can't remember your password, or you don't know how this new technology works. And it's like we feel this weird sense of shame. I think it probably comes out, maybe it's a Western thing that we think that we're all supposed to know everything right away. And so what happens is we fake mastery and we give off this aura that we've mastered the thing when, in fact, we don't know what we're doing. And I remember an episode of Parks and Recreation where Andy Dwyer gets hired by this, like, fancy man in Britain and he comes back to Pawnee and tells his wife. He was like, I don't want to go back there because I don't know what I'm doing. And April, his wife, was like, andy, I'm going to let you in on a secret that everybody knows. Nobody knows what they're doing. You just have to do it until you learn what you're doing. And I think, you know, you asked kind of what is kind of my path of the discipline of mastery. And I think it's really less about figuring something out and more about doing it terribly for a really long time until it starts to get better. And really kind of finding that place within me of confidence to do that. It takes a great amount of confidence to do something poorly and to keep on doing it. And I think that's part of the practice.

It also takes a lot of confidence to ask good, curious questions. Right? In all the interviews I did for Master of One, humility was the common denominator for these Christ following masters. They admitted and were transparent about what they didn't know. That's the only way that you can grow. So, Emily, we talk about routines and habits here a lot. I'm really curious what your typical day looks like. I mean, we're in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, so probably a little different right now, but typical day for Emily P. Freeman from sun up to sundown, what does it look like?

Like, it does look a little different. But I would say that, you know, now that, listen, when you're talking to parents too, if anybody's a parent, it changes with the ages of your kids, I would say too. But right now, you know, it is coronavirus time. But I've worked from home forever and so that's still pretty much the same. But I wake up and I before coronavirus, I had about an hour long morning routine that I would walk through. And it was this kind of a pattern of pray, read, write, read, pray. And that was P, R, W, R, P. And I, I like little acronyms to help myself remember things and talk about things. But now it looks more like rp it's like pray, write, read. You know, it's a little shorter. And I found that I've had to extend a lot of grace to myself with my routines that I was used to and loved because everything has to maybe be a little bit shorter than it was before. I'm just having to extend a little bit more compassion towards myself for some of those routines because I came from like, listen, when I was in College, I was like, you know, spiritual disciplines were very. I was very rigid with thinking, you know, things were. Everything was black and white. This is how, you know, there's good, there's bad. This is how it has to be. And then I kind of went through a long process, like many of us probably have, of understanding God's grace toward me and of understanding that spiritual disciplines are not really about the discipline themselves. They're about putting ourselves in the path of God so that we can hear his voice and play and listen to him and be fully ourselves. But it's. It's a less rigid thing than what I used to think.

Discipline is a means to an end. It's not the end.

Absolutely. Yes. And if something I think John Ortberg talks about, if. If you're practicing a discipline that does not cause you to draw closer to God, then that's probably not a discipline that you should be doing. And so that was helpful for me. So as far as, you know, in the morning, I do definitely sit and read and pray and journal usually. It's very terrible writing. That's what I call journaling. Terrible writing.

At least that's a good definition of journaling.

It is, yeah. One page. I just try to fill one page. And then when I do try to have some type of like, okay, now I'm going to work, because I can very easily, kind of like just slowly morph into opening my computer and checking something. And then three hours goes by, and I haven't actually started yet. So I really try to have a start time. Like now I am working because, you know, when you're working from home, and so that kind of is a beginning. I have a little office in my house, which, by the way, I wrote three books before I ever had a desk. I just did it on the corner of my sofa or at the kitchen table or at the coffee shop. So, you know, definitely. I never would think that, you know, in order to write books, you have to have this fancy office or this retreat center, and, you know, it's just like, you just gotta have words and a way to put them down and.

Grab grit and grit.

A lot of grit.

Yeah.

A little bit of blinders on your. You know, on your eyes. But I do. I. And it's funny, for many years, in fact, I finished grad school a couple years ago, and it was during that time, the busiest time of my life, I started following what I called theme days. So each day of the week has kind of a theme attached to it. I was doing the podcast at the time. But I knew, like, I can't give this podcast, you know, all the time in the world. I have to give it one day. So Mondays are my podcast days. So it's like Monday.

I love this. Talk more about. All right.

Yeah, I have to, because otherwise I'll just, like, work a little bit on it every day. So for two years, I would wake up on Monday morning. I did not know what Tuesday's episode was going to be, but I would sit down and I would type, script out pretty much an episode. I would write it, record it, edit it, and then upload it, and then it would be scheduled for the next day. And that was all on Mondays before 5 o'.

Clock.

And it worked that way for two full years. Every Monday, I did the podcast episode from start to finish.

So what's changed? What are you doing now?

What's changed was I realized that I didn't want to do my own plumbing anymore because, you know, I'm the only one who could host that podcast. But there are a lot of people who can edit the podcast. There's lots of people who can put the music in. There's lots of people who can do the show notes. And so I finally got smart after the book released, and I hired some people to do the work that they're good at. They're better at it than I am. And so. But when you hire people, here's a fun fact, when you hire people to edit your podcast, they need more than 12 hours to do that. And so now I still do it on Mondays, but I work a week ahead. And so at any given time, I'm a week out. That's right.

Wow. Good for you. I'm impressed. So, all right, so Monday's podcast day. What are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday?

So Tuesdays are Hope Writer days. Run a membership co. Run a membership site for writers called Hope Writers, where we help writers in all stages of the writing life kind of find and follow their own path to sharing their words with a reader. And we do that by helping them really balance the art of writing with the business of publishing. And so I am one of the co founders. We've been doing this about five years now, and I'm the director of content, and so I'm usually I'm. Tuesdays are our days where we host a conversation with someone in the writing, publishing, writing industry. We call it Tuesday Teaching. It's live every Tuesday at 2pm and so I host that every Tuesday, and that's live, so I have to be ready for that Interview every Tuesday. But I also, since I'm already doing Hope Writerly work on Tuesdays, I just kind of, kind of give that whole day to hope writers. We have a team now of 20 on our hope writer team. And so there's also a lot of people management and meetings and conversations. So I found though, that when I came up with my theme days, Tuesdays and like Thursdays I think were Hope Writer days. But now I have to do a little bit of Hope Writers every day because it's grown to be this like, you know, large moving machine of people and processes. And so that's kind of taken up more time. But when I was in grad school, Wednesdays were my day to read, write papers, do the homework, that kind of stuff. And that I really needed that because, you know, you have to go into this deep work place of focus. And if I was task switching. Cause that's the thing, every time you switch from one task to the next, you lose like 20% of concentration and you can't get it back till the next day.

You're preaching one of my favorite sermons here on the Call to Mastery. So, by the way, this is why I love Theme day. So we haven't talked much about my prior role, but prior to focusing on writing full time, I ran this pretty well funded tech startup called Threshold360 and Team of. Of grew to a hundred people. And I would have theme days for, you know, Mondays or product days. Just focus with my product team. Right. Tuesdays and Wednesdays and usually Thursdays were sales days and Friday was kind of everything else. But now that I have more control of my calendar because my team is smaller, I've actually moved to theme weeks. Right. So I'll say like. Like for example, this week is just the podcast all I'm doing this week. Yeah, it is. I'm very fortunate. And I also recognize I'm not gonna be able to do that forever. But right now it is glorious. Glorious. So, hey, you mentioned Ortberg. You seem to be a huge Ortberg. Dallas Willard fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, so let's go here. So I want to talk about the habits of Jesus, right? And I love this Dallas Willard quote that you quote in the Next Right thing. He says, quote, the most important thing about you is not the things you achieve, but the person you become. I couldn't agree more. But I've been thinking lately, what if the way to achieving more, and I don't like the word achieve, so let's just say what if the way to doing better, more masterful work is in becoming more like who we were designed to become. Like, right in Christ. Right. Do you see habits in the life of Jesus that can make us. Us more fruitful in our work, make us more exceptional professionals, but also husbands, mothers, fathers, etc.

I see the main one is one that Dallas Willard talked about when Ortberg asked him. You know, when he first started out, John Ortberg called up Dallas. He was like, give me. You know, I want to be healthy spiritually. I want you to give me your advice. He called him up, and Dallas had a long pause on the phone, and he said, you must relentlessly eliminate hurry from your life. And then Ortberg wrote that down, and we've heard the story, because now John Mark Comer had an entire book about it. When I saw that title, I was like, john Mark Comer, that's Dallas Wheeler. Come on.

But.

And the fact that. And then John tells the story, or John Ortberg tells the story, that he was like, that's so good. He wrote it down. He's like, okay, what else? And Dallas said, there isn't anything else.

Yeah.

And I thought. Thought, okay, now that's something. And just the unhurried presence of Jesus is probably the habit that if we could learn to cultivate his unrushed, unfettered presence, I think that would inform every other habit that we practice as we're with people. And my husband John is one who embodies that for me.

And there are way too many Johns in this conversation.

There are too many Johns in this conversation. So we'll call him John F. Yeah. But it definitely just. This present person in the room is. Becomes like a fixed point for the people around him or around her. And I think that people ask me, you know, I went to school with. I learned from, you know, people who worked with Dallas Willard for years and years and years. I went to a friend's university in Kansas, and James Brian Smith is the head of that program and started it because really, it came out from, you know, years and years ago. Jim told Dallas. He was like, dallas, you should write a curriculum for Christ likeness. You talk about in Divine Conspiracy about a curriculum for Christlikeness. You should write that book. And Dallas said, I'm not writing that book. You should write that book, Jim. And so Jim wrote what ended up becoming the Good and Beautiful God series that ended up becoming an entire program at Friends University. That's where I went to school and studied. And so that's really near and dear. But I Think that that is so pivotal. So that idea of, you know, we're all. All getting a spiritual formation, but the question is, and that's something that Dallas says is what kind. What kind of format we're all being formed, but how we walk into a room. And that's something that people ask me like, well, what did you learn in school? What's the biggest thing you learned in school? And I'm like, well, I'm learning how to walk into a room. That's kind of what that's. I mean, when it comes. Yeah, I'm learning theology things and formational things and practices and habits. But if we can walk into a room remembering that our friend Jesus walks with us, is within us, beside us, behind us, before us, it changes everything. And that, for me, that's when my most excellent work comes out, like I said, almost as an afterthought rather than, you know, as the main thing, because it's really about the person we're becoming.

Agree. And it's walking in not just with Jesus, but in the way of Jesus. I told John Mark, I think that book. I think we'll look back 10 years from now and say that that was one of the most influential books, books in the church of this decade. Like, I just think the topic is so relevant, so timely, so important. The ruthless elimination of hurry. But, you know, one of the things. I love this point that John Mark makes subtly in the book. But Jesus was unhurried, but he was busy. Yes.

Right.

He was productive. And I believe that elimination of hurry is the means to being productive. Right. We can't be creative. We can't master craft if we're hurried from thing to thing. Hey, so real briefly, we talk a lot about. About this intersection of faith and work on the podcast. Your husband served as a youth pastor for first 10, 12 years of your marriage, right?

That's right.

And I got to imagine you two have encountered your fair share of bad theology about work. I'm curious. I'm curious about the types of conversations you guys are having with your teenage kids. You know, they're about to go off to college in a few years, they're going to enter the job market. What are you telling them? Them about how their faith connects to their future vocations.

Wow, you just kind of threw me a really easy question there, didn't you?

You're welcome.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. No, it's a great question. And I think that, you know, you mentioned the theology of work or the false theology of work, and I. I'm glad you mentioned that, because we see it in the church a lot. Like just yesterday actually, at dinner, we were talking as a family kind of about, like, you know, how some things in the church are of God and then some things are just of the culture. And sometimes church leaders confuse those two things and call something biblical when really it's cultural. And I think one of those things is, like, you know, we have. There's this call to excellence, right? And I'm all about it, like, yes, whatever is excellent, whatever is, you know, worthy of praise, and also doing our work with excellence. And as Christ followers, man, don't we want to be the best business people in the world? Don't we want to be the best writers, the best everything? Because it's a reflection. But I think there can be a twistedness. That's. To what end? It's like the question becomes, yes, the best, but why? And who's getting the glory for that? And where's the motivation for that? When you look at the life of Christ, many would have probably said he was a failure if you looked at the actual outcome now. Big picture outcome. Yeah. But at the time, you know, he didn't really look like this massive success that they expected. They expected a king on a throne, they got a baby in the hay. And so it just didn't ever quite look the way. And I think that's talking to teenagers. I think that's, you know, they more than anyone, they have this idea that's being formed every day, whether we like it or not, of what success is and also what failure is. And I think they've got it backwards a lot of times. And so we're trying to teach them to be bold, bored. We're trying to teach them to take themselves, you know, with a light heart. I think that we learn to laugh at ourselves. I think that if we become so focused in on, you know, success the way that maybe the world has it, that's a dangerous, scary, dark, cold road to walk down. And I think constantly bringing in this comparison of, like, is it from the Bible or is it from our culture? That's an important conversation. Conversation.

I couldn't agree more. And we talk a lot about this on the call to mastery. And I'm always sensitive to this because we do talk a lot about the pursuit of mastery and the pursuit of excellence. And I do think that's biblical. First Corinthians 10:31 tells us to do all things for the glory of God. What is his glory? What is his character? His character is excellence. But I don't think we are called to be successful. I don't think we are called to be the best in our fields. I see no evidence of the. That in Scripture. I think we are called to make the most and steward well, the gifts and the talents the Father has given us as an act of worship. And the results kind of don't matter.

Right.

Like, I think it is in the striving to do our work well as a worshipful response that brings honor and glory to Him. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. And I would just add the striving with the energy of Christ that I think that's where we can get crazy is when we are bootstrapping. And you're right, having our eye on the outcome and letting the outcome determine something, when in fact, it's. We're just called to come out. We come out, we walk with Jesus, we do our best, we do our good work, and then we can walk away. Kind of like, you know, like the outcome is not really our business, because it's not. And so that's really. There's a lot of freedom there, actually.

And in the way of Jesus, we have to let striving cease. In the words of. Of Keith and Kristen Getty. Right. There's gotta be a time where we step away from the work and be okay with the results, whatever those results are, because our worth, our identity is not tied up in the outcomes. Right. So, Emily, three quick questions I love to end every conversation with. Number one, which books do you gift most frequently to others?

Ooh, I love this question. So there's a book of blessings by John o' Donoghue called To Bless the Space Between Us. And it's this beautiful little hardback book. He's like an Irish priest and poet. I think he was a priest. I might get that wrong. But I know he was a poet, and he wrote these beautiful blessings. And I mean, it's like, you know, blessing for beginning a new job or blessing for, you know, kind of obscure type of things. And it's a really lovely book that I love to gift. I quote from it all the time, too. So that's one of my favorites.

That's a good one. You guys can find that@jordanraynor.com bookshelf of course, you can find Emily's book there as well. Hey, who would you most like to hear talk about? About how their faith and how the gospel more specifically influences the work they do each day in the world?

Like a person's name? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah. Or it doesn't have to be a person's name. It could be a type of vocational job. Like, I'd really love to hear a craftsman or something like that.

Yeah. I tell you what, I'm fascinated by the weight and impact of that fame has on a person's faith. And so I would say that whenever someone who is in the spotlight, like the global spotlight or the, you know, even just like, America spotlight, who's not like a pastor or a Christian singer, you know, like, I think Lauren Daigle, somebody like that, but she's like, kind of sings, like. But I'm thinking like someone in Hollywood, you know, someone who. Who has had to withstand the burning lights of the world's focus and then has continued faithful in that. I think that's. I talked with Candace Cameron Barret once about some of this a little bit, and she, you know, maybe she's not exactly the person I had in mind, but I do think it's fascinating to kind of listen to someone like her talk about, you know, navigating those, you know, the Hollywood way with also your faith. I think that's a really fascinating conversation.

Is there a specific name you do have in mind?

I don't. I don't have any names in mind, but I wish that I did. And then you could find that person and interview them for your pilot.

Yes. Well, we bring a lot of these people on, so I think Joe Mark Comer had the same answer. Somebody from Hollywood. Really? Yeah, it was somebody from Hollywood and somebody from politics. Yeah. Which we've got some good political guests on the roster. All right, one piece of advice to leave this audience with again, this audience of people who love Jesus and as a response to that, want to do good work for his glory and the good of others. What do you want to say to them before we sign off?

Well, I'll just share my favorite quote of all that I share all the time with everyone because I think it's relevant no matter if you. Your, you know, no matter where you are in your vocational walk. And that is from James Brian Smith. He repeats this mantra often. And so now I've taken it as my own. He says, I am one in whom Christ dwells and delights. I live in the strong and unshakable kingdom of God. The kingdom is not in trouble, and.

Neither have I. I love that. And I love that regardless of what decisions we make, regardless of what we do in our work. Work, the king's plans won't be thwarted. He doesn't need you and me right. He is going to work everything for his glory, for our ultimate good on the other side of eternity and for his kingdom. Emily, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do in helping us do the next right thing in our careers, in our lives. Thank you for serving your audience through the ministry of excellence. And thank you for continuing to hone your craft and just communicating gospel to truths in such beautiful and really practical ways. Hey, you guys can get the book the Next Right Thing and of course subscribe to the podcast@emilypfreeman.com Emily thanks again for hanging out with me today.

Thanks for having me.

I'm an even bigger Emily P. Freeman fan after that conversation. I love that she goes by Emily P. Freeman and Annie F. Downs. These women crack me up. But no, genuinely, I love it. I love, love Emily. I'm so grateful for her heart, for the Lord, for the Gospel, and for helping us all make great decisions as we seek to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Hey, thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of the Call to Master. If you're new here, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode in the future. And I'll see you next time. Sam.