John Brandon (Journalist)

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. 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. Every week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how the gospel influences their work. Today's guest is John Brandon. He's an absurdly productive journalist. Over the last 20 years, he's written more than 18,000 articles for publications like Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Wired and Macworld. John and I recently sat down to talk about how the Johari window can help us understand ourselves and our work. What our, quote, reticular, activating system, end quote, has to do with our addiction to social media, and a few seven minute routines that can make you more productive towards the work God has called you to do. Please enjoy this conversation with my friend John Brandon. John Brandon, welcome to the Call to Mastery.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Yeah, I was trying to remember when I was preparing for this, how do we meet? We've been friends for about a year now. How do we first connect?

Well, I think it started with a Forbes column that I was working on. Probably profiling you or something you said in one of your books. Most likely. But I think I did a column and then it maybe led to another column, like a roundup of best books on productivity, something like that.

That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah. And then we've struck up quite a friendship very quickly. I love it. So, all right, you spent the last 20 years as a journalist writing at this, like, insanely frenetic pace, which I talked about in the introduction. But this is actually a second career for you. You had a big corporate job at Best Buy. Was it Best Buy in Minneapolis?

Yeah, well, I worked at a startup for five years right out of college. That was really fun. I know you've done a lot of startups and you an entrepreneur, so I saw that firsthand and informed a lot of my writing. In the early days, you know, we used to have a lot of free snacks and pop and stuff, like long before Google and Facebook had free snacks. But yeah, Then I went to Best Buy Corporation. I had a staff of 50 people. It was really fun. We built a lot of websites and did some really cool things. But that ended quite suddenly, a week after 9 11.

Wow. So why did you make the pivot to journalism? What's the story there? Were you just tired of the big corporate thing? Like what's the story behind the story?

It was all my wife's idea, so I can blame her and give her credit at the same time. I got home that night, so it was a total shock to a lot of people who were working at the corporate office. And I was told that I was being downsized. I took a severance, I got home that night and my wife was just a real trooper. She just said, you know, you've got a journalism degree, this is an option for you. You've always wanted to be a writer. Why don't you give it a shot? And so 9 18, 2001 is when I started my journalism career.

That's so wild. So wait, what did that start look like? Did you just start blogging on your own? Like what happened?

Oh man, it was so tough in the beginning. The first six months I, I tell a story in my book about my brother in law used to subversively drop off groceries on our front step, like ring the doorbell and run away. So we didn't know who had done that. And it really was at that point we had four little kids at home, we had a mortgage, it was just a tough period of time. But there's nothing like trying to feed little kids and pay your mortgage that can motivate you to do hard work. And that's what happened with me. It took a lot of pitching. I tell people I used to pitch about 100 ideas per week. And honestly, that was the secret to my success. I just pitched people so often they got really annoyed and accepted my ideas once in a while.

So for those who aren't familiar with this world, what does this concept of pitching mean? So you're sitting there in your home in Minneapolis and who are you pitching to? What are you pitching? How does that whole process work?

I targeted magazines that were pretty small back in those at that time. So there's a magazine called Laptop, all capital letters, Laptop. It still exists. It's a great technology magazine. But back then it didn't have the same name recognition of like Wired magazine or Popular Mechanics. So I pitched them once or twice a week, tried to get to know the editor. Eventually she relented and said, okay, we'll give you this one little review and. And that was where it all started. I was a feature writer for Laptop magazine for at least a couple of years. I used to review a lot of routers. I was just in the trenches of journalism. I was cranking out literally hundreds and hundreds of articles, all pain. You know, typically an article back then would pay $500, maybe 1,000. So to have a career in journalism, doing that type of field, you just had to be very, very productive. And if you weren't, you weren't going to last very long.

That's so interesting. I think there's a lot of encouragement because how long were you at Best Buy before you were writing? How long was your career pre writing?

I GUESS it was 10 years. It was five years at best Buy. I started as a technical writer at Best Buy, something I haven't really mentioned too often. Back when I started, it was only about 4 people on this little writing team. And so I was making use of my journalism degree even back then. But honestly, that just blossomed within a few months. I started training other writers and pretty soon we had usability experts, we had web developers, designers, heuristic experts. Everybody was all working on websites, help systems. It was a really fun period of my life, actually, because I. I built up this team of just a few people and then did all the hiring and everything up until about 50 people, including contractors. And we built what was called an information design practice within Best Buy, serving all of the retail stores all throughout the United States. So it was really fun to be part of that. It's just sad that it ended so suddenly, actually.

Yeah. But I think there's great encouragement here to people who find themselves in that career pivot and recognizing that, you know, there are multiple stages of the vocational call that God has on our lives. Like, what encouragement would you offer to listeners who are in that stage, John?

It's funny you say that, Jordan, because I was just driving. I went down to Omaha, Nebraska on a business trip just last week, and I was sitting there at a stoplight and I. And I pulled up behind a car and the license plate said persevere. And it's just, you know, those God moments when it's like, yeah, it's just some cheesy license plate, but I just needed to see that and think about that. But that's my encouragement is sometimes it's just sheer perseverance and persistence. I'm sure you've done this too, as an entrepreneur. You just say, I am going to lock into this profession or this work and I'm just going to work really hard. It's very biblical because God really wants us to work hard at things. He doesn't want us to slack off and just, you know, take two hours to get to know Instagram again. So I just really worked hard during that period of time and I saw how it pays off just in my own integrity of work and just being able to say, I am really good at building something. I am good at persevering and persistence. That's really what led to the writing career as well.

I love that so much and I love how work can be a conduit for those lessons. Speaking of, I was looking up your Instagram bio in preparation for the podcast and I love this thing you have in your bio. You say that your quote, only goal is to know Christ. I love that. How does work help you know Christ better? John?

I feel like our identity is in Christ. And being a Christian, maybe one definition of that is learning more and more about our identity and who we are. I write about this in the book. Have you ever heard of the Johari Window before?

I read about it in your book for the first time when I wrote an advanced copy. But tell our listeners who are not familiar with this.

Yeah, just quickly. It just means that there's four quadrants, and Mark Batterson has written about this and a lot of other people. It's a thought experiment. It says one quadrant is what you know about yourself and everyone else does too. One quadrant is what you know about yourself and no one else knows. The third quadrant is what you don't know about yourself, but other people do. Sort of that mirror of the soul. Like other people are aware of something, like faults, shortcomings, or even giftings. And then there's that really interesting fourth quadrant that I think is the one that's the God quadrant. And it's basically things that you don't know about yourself and other people don't know about you either. And that's the mystery of discovery and identity in Christ. That there's things that God knows about you and even your spouse doesn't know. Even you don't know. Maybe something that's a latent talent within you. No one's discovered it yet except God does know about it. That's really an interesting thing for me because I didn't know I was a really good writer in journalism and a journalist. And I can say that now. I can say I'm really good. After 15,000 articles, you would think I'd be pretty good at doing this. You know, it's not bragging, it's just saying my identity is in Christ and He gave me this gifting. My wife used to always say the same prayer during those years over and over again. God, would you give him favor in his writing with his editors? And I think that discovery of our talents is something that God is just wildly anticipating. You know, up in heaven, he's saying, I wonder when he's going to figure out that he's a good writer. I wonder when he's going to find out that. Jordan, in your case, you're a really good podcaster, entrepreneur, book author, and God is. Philip Yancey said this in one of his books. God is overjoyed when we turn our attention to Him. That informs almost all of my theology, by the way.

Hausar go deeper there.

So I think what he meant in the quote and what I've pondered about this is that God wants us to worship Him. He wants us to take our giftings and our talents and use them for his glory. And, you know, it ties right into John Piper and a lot of other writers. C.S. lewis God is interested in his own glory, and when we use our skills and talents in that regard, we're glorifying him, and he's just waiting for us to do that. He's also a very attentive God. He knows exactly what we're doing every day. He knows when we're slouching off. He knows when we're working hard. Prayer is just a dialogue that we have with God, who is attentive and ready to listen to anything we have to say. And also it means that we need to stop and listen to him once in a while as well. I think our identity in Christ comes out in our work, because when we discover those talents and we have two choices at that point, one of them is to say, hey, I'm awesome. I know how to do all this stuff. I'm going to drive a Mercedes someday and own a big house. That's a mistake. And then the other option is to say, this all comes from God. I hope you find him yourself. I hope you serve him in the same way. Because it's really, really cool when we discover those talents and then praise God for them, because we know how we even got them in the frame first place.

Yeah, it's really good. I think it's like one really tangible way in which the gospel shapes how you approach the work you do as a journalist. I'm curious, in what other ways do you think a Christian journalist is set apart in the way they do his or her work.

You might not know this, but it might be a little bit of a loaded question for some journalists because. And I'm not going to diss on my profession too much, but, you know, people cut corners in every job and, you know, they record an interview and then they fudge it a little bit. Or there's been stories of people who've written entire books who are journalists, and then they say, oh, by the way, I made up most of that. You know, I just feel like, integrity in journalism, it's so powerful when someone has integrity and they're writing books and they're doing articles and they're checking their facts and they're sourcing what they say. And if someone were to come to me and say, hey, I found this article and you quoted this person, I would say, nine times out of 10, I've got it on Google Voice somewhere recorded, and I could find it. And that's what's been so fun about being a journalist for all those years, is I was able to say, I want to do this with integrity. I want to be that type of journalist who always checks his facts and his sources. Now, of course, I have to say, am I always perfect? Not at all. But I've strived. After that, I've always said I want to make sure that this is the best work that I can do. For 10 years, I wrote a column at inc.ink.com and it was such a wonderful period of productivity. I wrote 4,000 columns during that time. And I can honestly say that, I mean, 100%, I don't look back on any of those columns and have any regrets about them. I always tried to maintain my integrity as a journalist.

Yeah, I love this so much. It's such a practical expression for how we can glorify God, regardless of what the job is. Because you're writing for Inc. Magazine, you're not preaching the gospel in what you do. You're shooting it with excellence. You're doing it in accordance with God's commands. I am curious if you have seen your faith influence the things that you choose to write about. So again, you're not, you know, preaching the gospel explicit. I think it's great you're being salt and light in a very mainstream publication, but does your faith just give you a different perspective on what you choose to bring to the reader's attention?

Yeah. And just a little insider information on this. Well, first of all, I did switch from Inc. Magazine to Forbes, so I currently write for Forbes. If you look back, though, on that archive of Ink articles. And maybe you've even done this, Jordan. I'm not sure. But you can figure it out pretty quickly. I write about character. I write about integrity. I've done a lot of mentoring with college students at Christian universities, and I talk about them pretty openly. I never explicitly share the gospel. But you can figure it out pretty quickly if you read my previous columns. And then even at Forbes, I've written recently about Gabby Petito and that true crime story. And I take the perspective of a Christian because it's just who I am. I can't do it any other way. And so I approach things from, is it a good thing to do? Influencer marketing? Is it a good thing to drive around in a van and take pictures of yourself without any health insurance and without any support system? And I pretty much said in that article, no, not at all. I just take that perspective. I think as Christians, when we're consumed with the gospel and with who Jesus is and our identity is in Christ, we can't behave any other way. We have to be Christians because that forms who we are. And so in any of our work as a journalist, that comes out because it's just, I can't pretend to be anything but that.

Yeah. It also influences our approach to productivity, which I know you've written a lot about in this new book. You say, and it, quote, we don't need to achieve anything. Christ achieved it all for us on the cross, end quote. I'm curious, what practical implications does that truth have on how you approach this idea of being productive?

Yeah, I would say that I'm not enamored by success anymore, that the success happened on the cross. And there's so much peace in that. I don't need to pursue anything. Actually, I have the long view on these things. Work is, you know, they call it work for a reason. We labor and we toil. In the end, the success that we have is pretty temporary. It's not going to mean that much in heaven, per se. But for me, long ago, I gave up this idea of being, like, wildly successful and just said, you know, as long as I have my faith and family. I've been married for 33 years now. I'm happy, I'm content. I don't need to pursue these things. But I do enjoy work and I do enjoy accomplishing things.

Yeah, that's good. Hey, you published this blog post recently I really liked about the danger of Instagram Christianity, where we are, quote, always on and always like Jesus, end quote. And really just pointing to this lack of vulnerability in our lives today. I'm curious, how do you practice vulnerability in life with sin, with just doing life with those around you?

Social media is something that I write about. That's my column for Forbes is on social media. And I'm often talking about how it's such a distraction. It's very ephemeral. It comes into our life for an hour or two and then it leaves and we forget all about it. From a brain science standpoint, it's very interesting to me because it captures our attention. It uses this part of our brain called the reticular activating system, also known as the salience network. It's wonderful, it's God made. It allows us to focus on something. But then what happens is we over focus on something. And I think as Christians, what happens is distraction and over focus on the wrong things really hampers our productivity and really hampers even who we are in Christ because we get so enamored by these things and who's posting which baby photos and wedding photos, and we just go down these constant rabbit trails. But honestly, if we can just remove ourselves from that for a little bit. In my book, I talk about using social media for seven minutes at a time instead of trying to use it for an hour or two, we limit our usage. And I think that's more effective actually than completely canceling our account or deleting our accounts. But what happens, I think with any of these distractions is it just derails us from the real purpose that we have that God has given us in life. So I feel like everything on this earth can be a rabbit trail and can be noise and can just keep us. If Satan can just keep us busy doing the wrong things, then he succeeded.

I love that seven minute social media habit. I started, I don't know, maybe about a year ago, deleting and reinstalling Instagram from my phone every day, every 24 hours, because I can't handle the temptation, right? We're fooling ourselves if we think screen time limits are working or dragging Instagram to, you know, the third folder on the third screen of your phone is working. Maybe it works for some people, it doesn't for me. And so, yeah, I delet, I reinstall it. I have to log into it every day that I want to use it, and it's a pain in the butt. But that's the point. It's created a lot of friction, a lot of healthy, I think, friction for me. So, John, you've already mentioned the book a couple of Times this book called the 7 Minute Productivity Solution. What's the quick elevator pitch for this book?

Yeah, you would think I'd be pretty good at doing this elevator pitch by now, but I'm getting better and better at it. The one thing I would say is that it came out of an Inc article back from 2015 called the 7 Minute Morning Routine. It was amazingly successful. I was surprised by how many people read it and then how many people started emailing me saying, hey, I'm doing the seven minute Morning Routine. Thanks for writing about that. That's when I knew I was onto something. You know, that seven minute period is essentially our sustained attention. We can pay attention to something for about seven minutes for a sustained period of time. This is based on studies in the classroom and with lecturing and things like that. By the way, I also found out that that's the typical amount of time that a radio DJ will talk or, you know, talk to their listener and then need to take a break. So it's common in radio to do a seven minute segment. I didn't even know that when I wrote the book, but out of that article and seeing the success and getting so much feedback from readers, I just thought, you know, this applies to a lot of other areas of life, to taking breaks, to even doing meetings, to doing presentations. There's something about that seven minute period that people pay attention really well during that time and then for some reason they start tuning out like minute eight. They're ready to just take a break and do something else. So that's why I wrote the book, because I felt like it's something that can really help readers to improve their own productivity and just put limits on what they're doing. It also frees up a lot of time for other things. So if you're only doing social media for seven minutes, imagine what you can do with that other 53 minutes of an hour. Yeah.

And so the book is filled with a bunch of these seven minute routines. I'm curious for you, as just this crazy productive writer, which routine has been the most meaningful to you personally?

Oh, I still remember the time when my daughter Rachel was talking to me. She's an early reader. She's on my book launch team. She's my oldest daughter. She's a missionary in Austria. Actually, I remember when I was talking to her over a Skype call and she said, dad, do you remember how when we were kids, you used to come up from your office and you'd talk to us and like, ask us how our day is going? I think that it was always about a seven minute period and she was sort of making a joke, but sort of serious at the the same time. And then I started thinking about it and I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I took about a seven minute break back then. You know, this is like 10, 15 years ago. And I think it's just because I was trying to make the most of my time and then I knew I had to get back to work. I worked at home for 17 years. I spent a lot of time with my kids, obviously after work mostly, but it was so great to be a journalist during those times and work at home and then be able to take those seven minute breaks and get to know my kids a little bit and how their day was going.

We both talk about this in our books. You talk about this in the seven minute productivity solution. I talk about it in redeeming your time. This idea that, number one, science is really clear, we need breaks. But number two, I talk about redeeming your time. They actually make us more productive for the next block of work. So I do the same thing. Some of my breaks I'll just go downstairs and talk to the kids for a little bit. But I find because I work with my mind, the most restful breaks are the breaks where I'm breaking with my hands. Right. Where I'm washing dishes or doing laundry or making the kids lunches for the next day. Churchill talked a lot about this. Right. He would write 2,000 words and then he would go outside and lay 200 bricks with his hands. And he felt that that really re energized him. Have you found the same to be true? Kind of this back and forth between working with your mind and resting with your hands?

Yeah. And honestly, I have to say, I'm like an armchair quarterback when it comes to brain science and what's actually going on in our brains. I don't claim to be a neurosurgeon at all in my spare time, but I do know enough about it that the brain needs these periods of rumination. And honestly, a lot of this brain science that I talk about in the book, and I try to quote a lot of experts, I've just experienced it, so I'm trying to relay it to the reader and saying, hey, when I take a break and I just set down the phone and close the lid on my laptop and think about these things and ruminate about them, something pretty miraculous happens where we sort of settle in on those thoughts that are the most important in my book. I Talk about something called hope moments. I can explain what those are, but essentially it's just those times in life when you're like, I just have this hope brewing up inside of me. Well, guess what? You're not going to have those hope moments if you don't take a step back from your day and just think about, what in the world's even going on here? What did I do the last two hours? Sadly, I don't think a lot of people do that. I don't think they take breaks, I don't think they ruminate. And so they're missing out on maybe some really important thoughts that are circling around inside of their brain.

Yeah, I Love this Kevin DeYoung quote. We are always engaged with our thumbs and rarely with our thoughts.

Right?

And we've got to learn how to engage our thoughts if we want to discern those hope moments, as you put them, or the work that we believe God's leading us to do and where he's calling us to prioritize our to do lists. So, John, you're a crazy productive journalist. I'm curious what have been some of the most important habits that have led to that crazy productive output on your part?

So I have to say as a journalist, a lot of it is the habit of perseverance. So I mentioned earlier my pitching routines and the way that I dealt with editors. I think with any business, if you're trying to build up your career, you're trying to start a business, you're trying to continue a business. That's actually the hard part. By the way, starting them is easy, but keeping them going is the hard part. Persevering is a habit because you learn to say, I'm not going to give up on this, I'm going to just keep pitching. And maybe you're going to schedule your time. You know, we all know about time boxing, trying to keep things grouped together. In our day. I would always spend the morning, you know, after I'd have my devotions, I'd have my seven minute morning routine. I'd write in a journal. Pretty soon I'd get into the morning, maybe around 9, 10 o' clock in the morning, and I'd start pitching. And that was a habit that I just developed. The only reason I was able to write 15,000 articles is because editors accepted that many, you know, they kept accepting my ideas. So my encouragement to the listener for this is, if you're struggling to figure out your job or your business, take a step back and just think, where can I persevere and work a little bit harder and be persistent in an area of my job. And maybe that's the area that God is saying to you, hey, just, just stick with it, you know, stick with the plan and learn the habit of perseverance and things will start to turn around for you eventually.

Yeah. So again, you've got all these routines, these seven minute routines baked into this book. Speaking of routines, what does your routine day look like? Take us from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what does a day in the life of John Brandon look like?

It's looking a little bit different these days. I've been helping out at a Christian radio station. I've been on the air every other week. I've been doing some other side work. I do the Forbes column, of course. One of the things that I've always said, the last 20 years, it's been a lot of variety, a lot of changes. I've embraced the idea of just the randomness of life sometimes. But the one thing that I would say that's very consistent about what I do is like I said earlier, I always get up and do a morning routine and have my devotions. I've been journaling through the book of Acts. That's just been amazing. I don't know if you know this, Jordan, but there's these journals that you can get off of Amazon that it's just the book of Acts or it's just the book of Romans. And then there's one page of the text and on the other side there's an empty page for your own thoughts.

Interesting. I like that.

I love it. I've gone through about four or five books of the Bible that way. So my day always starts that way. Always doing the journaling and like I said, the pitching. The other thing that I would say that's a big part of my routine is I always spend some time in reflection. I call it a daily debrief at the end of the day. But in the morning, sometimes I take a break, break and do reflection. I honestly think that that's where the best ideas come. You know how people say, like the best ideas come to me in the shower? That's not true as much for me. Sometimes it's just during those times when I say I am just going to think and ruminate about what are the best ideas, Even for the article that I'm doing that day or even for the column that I'm writing for Forbes. The best work that I do always comes out of those times of reflection. So if anyone listening to this wants to develop a new habit that maybe they're not doing is take a break sometime in the morning. Just ruminate about things, brainstorm with yourself, you know, and sometimes the best ideas come out of those times of reflection and taking a break.

So isn't this one of the routines that you have in the book? What's it called? The daily debrief routine?

Yeah, that's the one that's the later in the day. So after you've already done your work.

Yeah, this is good. Talk us through that. What does that look like exactly?

It's really the bookend to the morning routine. So one of the things that you do in the daily debrief routine is still in a journal. It's just you and a pen and a piece of paper. No technology involved really, in any of these routines. Unless it's like, specifically social media, of course, and email. But when you're doing your reflection, the daily debrief with just you in a journal, that's very analog and that's very intentional because you don't want to have any distraction during this time period. But one of the things that you do during that time of reflection is you write down things that stressed you out. You write down your hope moments, the things that gave you hope during the day. By the way, this is not a task list. I'm not a big task list person. I think people just like to make lists and then they like to check things off those lists. I'm talking about the things that were just like, filled you with wonder during the day and made you think about, this is a hopeful idea. You know, maybe I'm going to get married someday. Maybe I'm going to have kids someday. Maybe I'm going to be like a speaker. And, you know, someone like John Acuff who goes around traveling the country and speaking to people. When you chronicle those, something happens in your brain where you remember them much more efficiently. And then the other part of this is the stressors, you cross them out because you're saying to yourself, this is not something that I'm going to live according to the stress of my life. I'm going to live according to the hope that Christ gives us. And then the hope moments, you circle those as well and you say, this is what I'm going to focus on. You know, like I said earlier, I wrote an article about this actually years ago. What you focus on becomes your greatest area of success. And if you focus on social media, you're going to get really good at social Media. If you focus on being a good husband and father, then you're going to be a good husband and father. But the daily debrief allows you to look back on your day and say, where was I really doing a good job? Where was I productive? Where was I living with integrity? And then what were the areas where I slipped up? You know, what were the areas where I was too stressed out and anxious? And you just set them aside and say, you know what? That's not going to be something that rules my life anymore.

So what time are you doing your daily debrief?

I always tell people, like, don't do it right before bed because you're going to be too sleepy. And honestly, that's the time to just sort of relax and set your phone down. By the way, you know, the phone activates brain cells at a time when what you want to do is start turning them off. So I would say about an hour before bed, your best time of reflection is when you're really getting ready to just go to sleep for the night. About an hour before.

Yeah, it's great. And hey, how many routines are in this book?

So there's nine routines total. You know, there's the morning routine. There's a take a break routine. There's one about the daily debrief that we've talked about. Actually, one of my favorite routines has to do with meetings. This is where I've done some podcasts, Jordan, by the way, and they've challenged me a little bit about, like, how can you do a meeting in only seven minutes?

Oh, I buy it. I'm in.

I'm here to tell you it can be done. I've done literally hundreds. All it is is, you know, have you heard of the term huddle before? You know, basically you get together with teammates and you make a decision and you talk about something and you're just on a really strict agenda. That's really what I'm talking about, is a seven minute meeting. There's also one on the seven minute presentation. Took some cues from Steve Jobs there. If you look back on his archive of keynotes, he always delivers the best material in the first seven minutes. Something that's sort of fun to look back and see that that's a framework that he used when he was the CEO of Apple.

There's so much here. I read, I think I read the first draft of this book a while ago. I loved it. And you guys are going to love it, too. Speaking of books, John, you know, I ask on every episode, what books do you find yourself gifting most frequently these days or just recommending others?

Well, this is a funny thing about me as a journalist. I get books in the mail a lot and they're hoping that I review it. And I'm often reading about 10 different books. Not literally at the same time, but at least they're around me and I pick them up once in a while. I have to say that, you know, anything that John Mark Kummer has written, even his most recent book, book called Live no Lies, I've bought for people and given to them another author and book that I typically recommend to people. I'm coming at this from the standpoint of what's inspiring me as a business writer, by the way. So Jonah Lair has a book called Mystery, and I've just been singing the praises of that one lately because it's so well written, so well researched, so much good material in there. And I just interviewed him for my Forbes column, so that's something to look forward to that I've got some of his insights that I'm going to write about for my own column.

This sounds interesting. What's this book Mystery about?

So what he's really done is he's said that the idea of having something be mysterious is where, you know, we get into like, you're compelled to find out more. He has a couple of examples, actually. This is my favorite example. When Agatha Christie first started out as a mystery writer, she faked her own death. And that's what intrigued people the most. Not her actual books, but faking her. So her book launch was pretty interesting back in the day after a couple of books and they never did figure out like, you know, they thought she had really died. And then I think in the book he talks about how someone just saw her at a cafe and it ruined the whole thing. Like she. He wasn't really hiding it that much back then.

That's really funny.

There's just something about stories and mystery and not knowing how something's going to end that compels people. He just does an amazing job of writing about that. I aspire to that because I can tell that he just spent so much time researching that book.

Now that's a good answer. I like that. I'm going to have to check that out. All right, John, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith influences their work?

I have to say Philip Yancey because he's influenced a lot of my own writing and he just launched a brand new memoir. I haven't quite read it yet. But I have it in. He's influenced me in so many ways. I even already mentioned him once when he talked about how God is just waiting for us to turn our attention to him. And I think that his writing has opened my eyes to really just understanding the theology of grace. He's written about grace many times in his books.

Yancey's a good answer. I like that answer. All right, John, what's one thing from our conversation today do you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

I have to say, if you haven't ever done a morning routine, there's something about it. Your brain cells are firing a little bit faster. Most of us, according to scientific research, are morning people. And it's such a precious time. If you first get the coffee, for sure, you know, go ahead and fill up on coffee, but the very next thing, just sit down with a Bible, with a journal. We're all just too quick to get going with our day. And we think that's what productivity is, and it really isn't. Productivity is not working really fast on a lot of different things. It's working with intention on the right things. And if you don't spend that time in the morning ruminating and thinking about your day before you get into your productive period, you might end up working on the wrong things and then you're not going to be productive. So the challenge is try to do a seven minute morning routine just once, just you in a journal, write down your thoughts. Doesn't have to be really fancy. And honestly, if you can do that on a consistent basis, it can really change how you work.

That's good. Hey John, thank you for the great work that you do, for spending your career as a journalist just revealing truth and for today, just helping us think about productivity in the right sense of that word. Doing this in a simple, peaceful, Christlike way. Guys, the book is called the 7 Minute Productivity Solution. How to manage your schedule, overcome distraction, and achieve the results you want. It's a terrific book. I read it a long time ago. It complements my own book, Redeeming youg Time quite well. So, John, thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure to be here on your podcast.

Hey, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. If you did, do me a favor, make sure you rate the call to mastery on Apple Podcasts so that more people can find this show. Thank you guys for tuning in, tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.