Procrastination . Today I did a quick re-read of the main points of Neil Fiore's book about procrastination: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. When I read it the first time, 2.5 years ago, I marked up the important sections with a pencil. With some help of the faster reading book I read a few weeks ago, the pencil marks allowed me to zip through it in 1.5 hours. Nice.

My goal: remind me of the important points of the book. The book gave me good input when I first read it, having been a procrastinator for a long time, especially during my studies. Well, time for a summary!

Procrastination is a defense mechanism. You're getting pressure from yourself; from a critical parent; from circumstances; whatever. When you can't cope with it effectively, procrastination is an (ineffective) coping strategy that's almost always available.

The goal of the book is to get you from procrastinator to producer. The number one strategy that helped me: change your language. Of all the characteristics that separate producers from procrastinators, none is more liberating than the producer's focus on "choice" and "choosing". So ring an internal warning bell every time you say "I have to" and "I must". Even if your boss is going to fire you right away if you don't do xxxxx, don't say "I have to do xxxxx", but say "I choose to do xxxxx". You are making a concious adult decision to do it, right? The number one tip.

For a productive life, you need guilt-free play. I'm going to a model train exhibition with my 5 year old daughter tomorrow. I have not a single doubt that that's a good and fun thing to do. And I've known that all week. Knowing I am going to do that tomorrow might have made me more productive. It will definitively recharge me for another round of productive work next week. Playing guilt-free is essential.

An example. Being a christian, the sunday theoretically "ought to be" pretty work-free. Halfway my procrastination-filled student days, I made the concious decision to treat the sunday as a gift: a really study-free day. It is intended that way. That made a difference in my weekly schedule: finally a day to recuperate without guilt! Time to hang out with friends after the morning service, sipping coffee. Having dinner at my place of at a friend's place in the evening and popping open a bottle of wine and having some great conversations. Guilt-free!

Another suggestion to overcome procrastination: paint a good picture of the current situation, the goal, the work involved, etc. An invaluable motivator in the last 1.5 years of my loooooooong study (it took me 9 years, 5.5 is about average) was a *full, online, public list of courses I still had to do. On my own website. And I kept it up to date: showing the courses that I made; the dates of the examinations; my plan on when to do them. A great motivator as I was getting credit for finishing off those courses. And it felt great to publicly check them off on the webpage when done. It forced me to make a plan, which made the whole daunting task of "finishing my study" much less threathening.

A final quote from the book: one of the best-kept secrets of succesful producers is their ability to let go of goals that cannot be achieved or started in the near future. Make choices. Make realistic choices. And don't be afraid to postpone something explicitly. But make sure you have a system that makes you re-view those choices at a later date.

If you're procrastinating, I highly recommend this book. The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

In quite a number of christian environments, there's some attention to God's gifts (Dutch: gaventest ). The basic idea is that God gives every human being certain capabilities. In practice, this theory fully focuses on the use of those gifts for church activities. In general, I think they're way less researched than the belbin/enneagram type of personal capabilities theories.

Anyway, I'm including this test (which we did recently with a small bible study group) here as it does give some background. In the (Dutch) test I did, there were 24 categories. I'm including my top 5. The first two ones are the highest scores, 3 till 5 are a little bit below those.

Computer capabilities (vakmanschap)

Definitively not included in the bible, but the test apparently placed great responsibility in the hands of those individuals that could either tame a computer or handle financials. Well, of course I scored major points here.

Knowledge (kennis)

Gathering knowledge and information and being able to pass it along to others. Yep, this actually fits. People look at our (my plus Annie's) bookcases in the living room and are pretty impressed. Ahem, the other half is upstairs :-) At work, I regularly pass along handy blog entries or mailinglist posts to possibly interested colleagues. On the churchy side: once a month, I get to amuse the 11+12 year olds at sunday school. For that, I often do quite a lot of research. I show maps. I grab video fragments off the internet. I search for photos. All to make the subject of that week more palatable and remindable for the kids.

Serving (dienen)

Basically behind-the-scenes work. Setting up the chairs. Brewing coffee. Cleaning up afterwards. Making minutes. Yes, I really don't mind.

DIY handiness (handvaardigheid)

I already mentioned sunday school. I'm the only man at our church that does that. Three times a year, there's a special longer-running project (christmas, easter, pentecost). Sometimes, some special prop needs to be made out of some pieces of wood or so. Wild panic ensues at the meeting at which that becomes clear. Until I tell the rest that I'm prepared to build it. I get to duck all the rest of the work and responsibility, provided I get cracking with a hammer and a saw. No kidding. I'm not that handy, but relatively... Stereotypes...

Teaching (onderricht)

I can be terribly unclear when explaining things. I've got a lot I'd like to say and sometimes the sentences get a bit long... But I bloody well don't shy away from explaining some things to 11 year old youngsters. Or reading some bible verses out loud in a church service. Whether 3 or 300 people, I don't mind. 30k neither, probably. One thing that's mentioned as crucial in the "God's gifts test": honesty/real-ness. You gotta be real. You've got to be honest and open when you teach. Regarding most topics, I don't mind being open and honest. I don't mind listing my top 5 gifts here in public, so take that as proof :-)

This might sound like I'm pounding my own chest, but remember there were 24 gifts in this test and I've only listed 5. I'm not a visionary. You shouldn't entrust me with caring for really really hurt caring souls. I'm not much of a (monetary) giver. Encouraging others structurally? Neither. Etcetera :-)

Part of my personal capabilities series.

Ejection by the church, captured on video :-) Funny, but with a serious message underneath.

Easter bunny versus Jesus

Rubén Gómez wondered about taking his PDA to church with him. I'm doing it regularly, so I posted a comment,

Don't worry about taking your PDA to church. I've been doing it for over four years now, just to take notes during the sermon. I've got some 200 summaries (in Dutch, before you ask). Very handy for that 1-hour-after-the-service-thought "what was that sermon about, I can't have forgotten it already...". And for when you remember, during bible study, that you heard a good sermon about that passage half a year ago.

In those four years I got maybe 20 strange looks and 5 questions. And the surprise was more about me writing things down than about the PDA. That set him thinking further on how to use the PDA there

Reinout says he takes notes during the sermon - presumably he is not the preacher ;-). I don't know how extensive his notes are, but I find it difficult to imagine myself doing it, particularly with the virtual keyboard...

To answer that: no, I'm not the preacher. About that keyboard: it's worse. I've got a palmpilot and I'm writing it down with handwriting recognition. Presumably at an even lower speed. But, when comparing it with the amount of notes I took when still doing it on paper: I'm writing as much in my palmpilot. It's actually more like a summary.

I can imagine checking references etc. would look a bit inattentive, just like those SMS-ing youngsters over there in the far corner. And I doubt you'll really have time for it, perhaps this is better done at home afterwards.

Suggestion? Something I'm keeping on my "maybe sometimes" list: Going through all those sermons and doing a bible study on them and putting the results online. Having all those supporting bible programs on your PDA might allow you to do it while commuting or waiting somewhere. I only have just a simple bible reading application, btw. Great for 15 minutes of reading while in the train!

On taping the sermon: better try and making mp3s centrally and putting the last few ones online somewhere. I haven't done it, but my brother used to until they started doing some live streaming thingy.

Below you'll find an example of a sermon I wrote down, just to give you an idea of the size.

The text below is copy-pasted directly from my palmpilot. It is in Dutch, so for the rest of you the only use is to give a raw indication of the amount of text I'm normally producing. Ok, I didn't take the shortest one, but lets say this is about 130% of an average length. It's from late 1998 during a short holiday. I remember really liking the sermon.

-----------------------------

1998-12-27 mat 24:1-14 & 15-22

van Deursen, gastpredikant in Voorthuizen

Jezus zit op de olijfberg en kijkt in het eerste gedeelte naar de tempel. Deze generatie zou de vernietiging meemaken. maar daarvoor zouden de joden EN de christenen grote moeiten moeten doorstaan.

( 14: "het evangelie moet overal gepredikt worden = overal in het romeinse rijk in de synagogen )

De christenen konden daaraan ontsnappen door op de tekenen te letten. Het uiteindelijke teken om pleite te maken was "de gruwel der verwoesting op de heilige plaats" uit Dani�l. Lezen dus. Zij, maar wij ook als we het willen begrijpen.

Dan 11:31 Dan 12:11

Kennelijk was Dani�l indertijd bekend! Lees bijv 1makabee�n 1 en 2mak 6 als voorbeeld van waar de Joden daarbij aan dachten: Antichonus Epifanes van Syrie. 200 jaar daarvoor net gebeurd. Eredienst gestopt, tempel misbruikt...

Dit zou zich volgens Jezus dus nog eens voordoen.

Toen de Romeinen op Jeruzalem lostrokken gingen er ook drie rivaliserende troepen Zeloten op af en brachten de stad in staat van verdediging. Beste plek: de tempel. => katapulten en soldaten in de tempel. En in eerste instantie om elkaar te bestrijden om de "beste plekjes" (en daarna omdat ze het niet met elkaar eens waren...). Oh ja... Die Romeinen kwamen er ook nog aan geloof ik...

De in Lucas 21:20 genoemde legerkampen zijn niet de romeinse maar van de Zeloten. Als de Romeinen er al waren was het te laat: ontsnappen uit de stad en gegrepen worden door de Romeinen betekende kruisiging. Ze kwamen uiteindelijk bomen tekort..

Maar ga dan gelijk weg, want de Romeinen zijn niet ver weg. Jezus geeft hetzelfde advies als Jeremia 600 jaar daarvoor: wegwezen!

Lucas 21:22-23 heeft het over de toorn van zijn wraak... Net als Jeremia overigens. Veel vluchtelingen, hongersnood, rivaliserende nationalisten, Romeinen die het met de Joden gehad hebben.

De verkorting kwam door de Romeinen die de stad veroverden. ([ duurde wel lang... )

In totaal 1.2 mln doden...

Pas op voor "sektarische" toekomstvoorspellingen die het probleem hebben dat Jezus NU nog niet mag komen.

Jeruzalem's val viel te berekenen. Maar Jezus zegt zelf dat hij niet weet wanneer de laatste dag is. Dus luister niet naar allerlei Enkhuizer Almanakken v/d Eindtijd.

end of sermon

Robert Scoble writes about a big (and I mean big) church in Dallas. Funny to see so much cultural differences to what I'm used to in the Netherlands. Huge use of technology. Wireless Internet in the church. Fifty people to greet you and to give you a nametag (nametags?!?). Plasma screens throughout the building.

Well, it seems like a ruthlessly focused execution of an idea/vision. Worth a read.

I found on James Tauber's weblog another article about the semantic web and the bible

Christian Bible usage has some interesting similarities to Semantic Web stuff. The Holy Bible can be seen as a small Semantic Web itself. Some social and cultural practice around the Bible are similar to Semantic Web practice.

And at the end of the article:

To a savvy Christian, all this Semantic Web stuff is thousand years old and we relax by quoting Salomo (Ecc 1, 10):

 "What has been will be again,
 what has been done will be done again;
 there is nothing new under the sun. "

This is going to be fun: Sean Boisen (updated the name) is busy using semantic web technologies for the bible. He's got a vision of a semantic new testament. Besides being personally interested by this, this is also nice professionally: it's real semantic web data. Data to test with. Needs a further look!

Update: Apparently I copy-pasted the wrong name from his site. (The name of the person who designed the template, not the author...). Thanks Sean for taking the effort to clear it up! From a first new testament names owl file I took the following snippet:

  {owl:Class rdf:ID="SonOfGod"}
    {rdfs:comment}Both Human and God{/rdfs:comment}
    {rdfs:label xml:lang="en"}Son of God{/rdfs:label}
    {rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#God"/}
    {rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="http://suo.ieee.org#Human"/}
  {/owl:Class}

I had to change the xml characters to { and } to keep my old weblog software happy.

Just found out about a website with a few sermons by Ted Pibil. Nice and short. (And never mind that I got the address from a mailinglist message about xhtml :-)