The One Todo List That Will Actually Help You Pray

November 19, 2017 Mike StPierre

I had a nagging feeling. It would come back several times a week and pester me, reminding me of various things that I had forgotten to do. Each time, I would jot something down on a notepad and then schedule some time to do it.

Then, I decided that I was tired of the nagging.

I remembered a trick that I had heard of years before. The waiting for list. I made one for work and another for home.

In the waiting for list I've added things like:

Remind Cary to fill out the application form
Hear back from the high school re: the recommendation
My parents to get me their arrival flight information

Besides getting rid of the nagging thoughts in my head, I've found the waiting for list to be helpful in prayer. By putting various things on the list, my head is more clear and I'm worrying less.

“We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!”

— Thomas Merton

When your head is clear, you're less distracted when you go to pray. This is the perfect intersection of prayer and productivity.

What's on your waiting for list?

What to do When Your Prayer Life Falls Apart

November 18, 2017 Mike StPierre

If you’re reading this, you have some affinity to prayer. Either out of curiosity or a desire to be a better practitioner, each of us has some sense of “praying well”.

Unfortunately, praying well isn’t as easy as we might like it to be. This may be due to inconsistency or a lack of confidence or an inability to focus. Whatever the case, we want progress and if you’re an American, you want fast progress that you can measure.

But, as 14th century mystic Meister Eckhart indicated, much of the spiritual life is about subtraction, not addition and certainly not measurement. Our efforts can fall flat when we don’t “see” progress. ‘

As Eckhart says, “God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.” At first glance, this can sound like the stuff of fluffy spirituality, sort of like a “let God be God” approach to life.

But look deeper at the quote.

Prayer, as a means to an end, is just that- a lever through which a relationship can grow. Our relationship with God uses prayer as a means of communication and intimacy. When our prayer life falls apart, we can fear that our relationship with God is faltering as well.

I can relate to this through a recent personal story.

As I am the early riser in our family, morning dog care has become my responsibility. While I don’t mind the chore, it has wreaked havoc on my morning routine. Instead of coffee, a Bible and a journal for 30 minutes, I’m taking out the dog, feeding him and then making sure he doesn’t have an accident. It’s an odd process- feed, wait, watch, wait some more. This doesn’t make for a calming morning routine.

Lessons learned

First, a settling reassurance from God that this “season” won’t last forever. Having had Ace (our puppy) for a month, I can see that the strong foundation of prayer which existed before Ace has propelled me through this time of regrounding a morning routine. Quite amazingly, I haven’t gotten discouraged and have found other times during the day in which to pray. Not ideal but better than nothing.

Second, and this is thanks to some wise counsel from my spiritual director, I’ve been able to reframe my morning routine into a prayerful experience. This is the funny part of the story. I am what you might call “kitchen challenged” but thankfully, I married a woman who is a wonderful cook.

Over the years, my attempts at cooking dinner (or any other meal for that matter) have been greeted by polite tolerance from my children. Still, I dabble occasionally and keep trying to improve.

In the month since we’ve had Ace, I discovered a chunk of time in the morning (30 minutes) which used to be reserved for morning prayer. As the adorable and demanding puppy has now claimed that time slot, I wondered if I could use the rest of the 30 minutes for something else.

Why not make a hot breakfast for everyone?

The first thought of this was hilarious. Remember, I can’t really cook that well. But, when people are tired, they will eat almost anything. So, without fear, I ventured into the kitchen and decided to re-use what had been my morning routine into cooking.

The results have been decent and on some days, rather wonderful.

Blueberry muffins.
Bacon.
Pancakes.
Cranberry muffins.
Sugar cookies.

After a week, the kids are now asking what the next morning breakfast will entail. It’s become a game of sorts.

Another discovery from this is the awareness that I might be able to use this time of cooking as a time of praying. To be fair, when you are busy in the kitchen you are typically stirring, measuring and paying attention to your ingredients. But, with some intentionality, you can (as I have) turn this simple act of cooking into a pure act of praying.

Here's how it works

Here’s how it works: first I put out the ingredients, then I put on my Dad Apron, then I make the sign of the cross and ask God to turn my cooking into praying, then I go to work. The final product, even if imperfect, is something wonderful.

I won’t go so far as to say that “God and I cooked this for you” but you get the point.

What I’ve learned is that yes, there are times in your life when your prayer life really falls apart. This will happen to each of us at some point. If it hasn’t yet hit you, I dare say “get ready”. When a mom has a baby, things get crazy. When you get into a car crash and have to recover, things get crazy. When you are traveling or on vacation, things can get crazy.

If you can let God turn the crazy into something new and different, you'll be ok.

By taking the long view and then reframing how I thought of prayer, things have now settled and I’m finding new rhythms for prayer. New spaces are opening up in my day that I didn’t see before. God is being God in me and I’m learning, once again, to graciously get out of His way.

And of course four children plus a puppy are getting to enjoy fresh muffins each morning.

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Four Things You Can Do When You Feel Overwhelmed

October 22, 2017 Mike StPierre

I signed my kids up for basketball this week. Here’s a snapshot of how it went:

1. Daily emails from the school reminding me of the signups.
2. Creating an account online.
3. Confirming my account via email.
4. Paying for the two kids to play basketball.
5. Capturing my password and login credentials in 1Password.
6. Marking on the calendar the key meetings and events that go with signing two kids up for basketball.
7. Creating a project in OmniFocus so I can “park” all of my basketball-related items in one place.

If this was the only thing in my life, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Two kids playing basketball… sounds great right?

Except that it’s only one slice of the pie. Life as a forty-something dad with four kids has become exceedingly complex. The basketball signup process is just one thing that I’m managing.

Other (similar) projects include my daughter’s Fall Drama rehearsal schedule and what role parents need to play. There’s winterizing the house before the first frost. Then there’s the committee that I should never have signed up for but did out of guilt. The conference calls for that commitment add another layer of stress.

I could keep going… but I won’t because you probably have similar things on your project list. We all add more complexity than we’d like to our lives.

“Noise is our accumulated list of projects, tasks and todo’s that need to be managed. It’s life really. ”

And complexity equals one thing and that is noise.

Noise is our accumulated list of projects, tasks and todo’s that need to be managed. It’s life really. Nothing more, nothing less.

The key is this- do we have a system that is capable of helping us manage all of these projects? Does a person really need to use a productivity app to manage basketball signups? Can’t life be simpler than this?

Sadly, no it can’t. Sure, when you’re about 10 years old life is simple. You wake up and do whatever comes to you during the day. But once you hit middle school and beyond, you’ve graduated to Project Manager status.

Your system needs to keep up.

The “problem” I have (and maybe you do too?) is that I get tired. On some days, I just don’t want to have to manage projects in my personal life. I don’t mind it at all in my “work life”- we use Nozbe for that.

But it’s the Saturday morning kind of thing that bothers me. It’s a tension to manage- having projects for my kids’ commitments and my non-work activities. It just gets overwhelming at times.

You could just say, “the heck with it” and toss up your hands and hit delete. This might be effective for a short while but is probably irresponsible or reckless for the long haul.

Instead, here are four creative strategies for when you feel overwhelmed by your system:

Visit with a spiritual director on a regular basis. Visiting with my spiritual director, a Catholic priest, has been the most impactful decision of my adult life. Without someone to talk to about deep things, most of us are left to wrestle with our internal world on our own. Overwhelm is definitely one of the things that a spiritual director can help with.
Take an intentional hiatus from social media. More and more studies show that the more time you spend on social media, the unhappier you are. By hitting the pause button on your Facebook and Twitter usage, you’re making more time for simpler things that matter much more.
Reclaim your Sabbath. When do you take “sabbath”? When do you stop picking up socks around the house and sticks in the yard? When do you enjoy doing something that truly makes you smile? By reclaiming your Sabbath, you’re not escaping your overwhelming list of projects and todos. Rather, you’re giving them a context of the rest of your life. I recommend Terry Hershey's Sabbath Moments as a place to start if you want to reclaim your Sabbath.
Cut it out. At a certain point, you just need to do less. Which project can you cancel or delete? Which committee can you gracefully bow out of? Which event can you skip?

We all get overwhelmed. The real key is to respond with patience and calm. Be compassionate with yourself and realize that you have much more agency than you think.

You’ll get through it!

The Real Reason You Are Distracted When You Pray

September 10, 2017 Mike StPierre

The scene goes like this. You arrive at your local parish church for Sunday Mass and you have 2-3 minutes before the celebration begins. When I grew up, this was fairly typical and it provided a few moments to look around and check out the folks in your pew or a few seats in front of you.

Before you knew it, Mass would begin and you were off and running.

Today, the scene plays out differently. The arrival is similar. The pews feel the same, hard as ever. Nothing has changed about the Mass. It’s what’s in your hand that has impacted those few moments before Mass.

The supercomputer, known affectionately as a smartphone, has invaded our churches and more importantly, our minds and hearts. What used to be a few minutes of boredom or curiosity before Mass is now just another time when we pull out our phones.

God forbid we would miss an email, text or Facebook post from one of our hundreds of friends.

It seems, sadly, that we’ve begun worshiping our phones when we should be praying to God. Smartphones have tapped into every buffer in our days- waiting in line at the grocery store, pausing at a red light while in traffic, and unfortunately in the few moments before Mass.

I know, I get it- we need our phones to schedule things and communicate and get our email. The problem is that our iPhones and Samsung Galaxies (with “infinity displays”) have sucked all of the oxygen out of what used to be moments of ordinary life.

The real danger isn’t so much that we are tethered to our phones with our hands and portable chargers. No, the more subtle invasion reveals that our phones have begun to influence our prayers. Let’s be honest in saying that it’s more interesting and dopamine-inducing to check our Twitter feed than pray to a God we cannot see and rarely hear.

The prayer challenge for all of us isn’t to put our phones down completely but to calm the noise they produce in our heads. The good news is that a steady diet of “less”, marked by strategic days off from technology can break the chains that currently bind us.

Some apps can help with using our phones less during the day. Apps like Self Control (for Mac) and Moment (for your phone) can monitor your phone usage and report back to you in terms of how often you’re using your phone. Just seeing that you picked up your phone 45 times on Monday is a powerful motivator to use it less on Tuesday. This is similar to having a weight scale in your bathroom- an occasional weigh-in is a powerful motivator to eat just a littlebit less.

Apps are only part of the solution. What I’ve found to be the most effective means of breaking our addiction to our phones is to take a day off from them each week. By using a “digital sabbath”, we reintroduce ourselves to a simpler time and marry our busy lives with the ancient practice of sabbath. I’ve been using a digital sabbath for several years and have found it to be deeply spiritual.

A digital sabbath gives us permission to reconnect with people offline. Conversations seem richer. Naps find a way back into your schedule. Twitter and Facebook can wait.

Best of all, a digital sabbath gives license to time with the Scriptures and time alone with God. By temporarily pausing your use of technology, you are giving God space to do what God wants to you in and through your life. That’s a wonderful thing.

Technology isn’t a bad thing. With a little practice and some useful tools at the ready, you can regain focus when you pray and be at peace with God.

3 Apps That Will Help You Focus at Work

August 30, 2017 Mike StPierre

We’ve all been there- you sit down to do some work at your computer and you get distracted.

If you’re like me, it goes something like this:

I’ll just check Twitter real quick...
... and follow a link from a sports writer to a story online...
... which makes me think that maybe there are related stories so I turn to Google for a quick search...
...which then takes me down the rabbit trail of three other articles related to the same topic.

Can you relate?

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The rabbit trail is a dangerous thing. It's seductive really. The rabbit trail taps into our desire for quick, dopamine-inducing searches and internet expeditions. The rabbit trail affects us all, whether we are aware of it or not. If you have an internet connection, you've experienced this. If you use social media, you've experienced this. If you have a smartphone, you know what I'm talking about.

I suppose the question is this: what are you going to do about it?

If you need to work online and can’t become a monk (although that sounds good sometimes right?), the good news is that there are a number of apps you can use to stay focused. Here are the three that I use regularly:

Self Control. This Mac-only app is very smart. It allows you to create a list of applications or websites that you know you’ll be tempted to visit. Then, by launching the app, it knows to not allow you to open those websites. I’ve used Self Control for months and find it very handy. You can also launch the app and tell it how long you want to do focused work. Self Control then begins and ends when your timed work is done. (cost: free)
Coffitivity. Cofffitivity is a website (and app) with some pre-recorded sounds that simulate a coffee shop. The makers of of the application have stepped up their game and now offer a handful of different coffee shop soundtracks. Just launch the one that fits your mood and you’re off and running. There’s something about a little bit of back noise that helps you to focus and do your work. (cost: free; a $9 premium version is also available)
White Noise. White Noise comes in both a free and for-pay version and it’s great. There are tons of sounds that you can try out, from the sound of a hairdryer to the purr of a cat to the sound of a rowboat along the water. White Noise is what I use when there is some other noise in the house or in my office. I launch White Noise and it serves to negate most of the other noise around me. This is very subtle but good news- it actually works. (cost: free; a premium option is also available)

Another tactic you might try is to use an iPad for as much of your work as possible. While you can certainly multi-task on an iPad (with split-screen that allows you to have two apps side by side), it lends itself to using one application at a time.

Whether you go with the iPad or the apps that I mentioned above, the key is to outsmart the distractions in your head. Once you do that, you’ll be more free to do your focused work.

BONUS: if you’re a person of prayer, you may want to try White Noise in order to set the mood and tune out the other noises around you. While this isn’t practical for praying at church, it does the trick for those times when you want to have a quiet time at home but just can’t seem to tune out the noise.

FOMO and What You Can Do About It

August 7, 2017 Mike StPierre

FOMO, or the “fear of missing out” is more pervasive than we’d like to admit. While the internet certainly enhances our vulnerability to FOMO, I can remember being in college and wondering what others were doing on a Friday night.

What if, my thinking went, other students are doing something more fun than what I am doing?

I was left with a feeling of not only being left out but maybe that I wasn't as valuable as others.

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Download the FREE PDF, "5 Ways That Noise Wreaks Havok on Your Prayer Life."

Social media makes FOMO more of a reality than ever before and you might not be aware of its effects on your psyche. If you're consuming large amounts of social media, it may be impacting you more than you realize.

A recent BBC article detailed the experiences of British teens who accepted the challenge to lay off social media for a week. (Source)

It didn’t go so well. The students struggled mightily during the week to stay off Facebook and Snapchat. They actually felt as if they were missing out on life while staying off the internet.

This NPR piece explored the effect of too much Facebook on a young woman’s desire to be happy. She explained that Facebook allowed her to post the good and the beautiful and avoid the ugly aspects of life.

Talking about the view outside of her home, she put it this way, “If you looked only from the porch, you could see mountains straight, but if you looked to the left, you could see this huge factory. But, of course, I didn't take pictures of the factory because why would you do that?”

The result of Rachel’s savvy use of social media revealed an awareness of its inherent bias towards posting only what’s good. Beyond that, she realized that she didn’t want to be posting everything for the world to see. Sure, life is good when it’s good but sometimes things can go south, like when Rachel’s marriage fell apart. She didn't feel like posting much of that aspect of her life.

FOMO increases anxiety. We feel somehow “less” than the others we see online, especially if what they're posting looks exciting.

The good news? It doesn’t have to be that way. First, from a posture of how you use social media. I suggest using it in the way that you want it. There are no set rules to how often you should post to Facebook. If you feel like posting, go for it but never feel pressure to stay up to speed each and every day.

Related to this, if you feel like social media has been getting the best of you, take permission to ditch it altogether.

After all, the world won’t stop if…

you don’t post to Instagram
you don’t check Facebook for a week
you miss someone’s new pin board on Pinterest
you can’t stay on top of everyone in your Twitter feed
you go "off the grid" for a week or two

It’s ok. Put the phone down. Look around and be with those that you are with. As Jim Eliot famously said, “Wherever you are, be all there.”