A Pastor's Thoughts

From time to time people have asked me what I use on my computer and iPhone to manage my schedule and tasks.  How do I keep track of everything that needs tracking.  My tools have evolved over the years but currently this is what I use: Hardware      Computers:           iMac           Macbook Air      Phone           iPhone      Devices           iPad When I look for software tools, it is vital that things sync between all my devices.  If I make a note on my phone, it must show up on my computers and iPad.  To this end, I have stopped using some tools in favor of these Calendar Management: Google Calendar stores the church calendar, the calendar for my denomination's region, public meetings that other things that the church is used for.  There are four other people, besides me who can enter events on the church calendar.  Good Calendar is good at allowing multiple editors and handling conflicts. iCloud Calendar stores all my personal things.  If it is just for me,

I became a full time pastor in 2005.  Prior to that I was a computer programmer.  As a computer programmer I had many projects going on at once.  I read  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People  by Stephen Covey.  It was very interesting and gave me great insights into managing my tasks.  Years later someone gave me  Getting Things Done  by Dave Allen.  The idea behind GTD, in a nutshell, was to split all the tasks I had into manageable chunks.  Then write all those chunks down and do them.  This worked very nicely for writing computer software and I became very proficient at getting things done .  Part of using the GTD system is to manage a calendar for date specific things. Along the way, Stephen Covey released  First Things First  an expanded explanation of one of the seven habits.  This book helped me prioritize and choose the difference between urgent/unimportant, urgent/important, non-urgent/important and non-urgent/unimportant.  A graphical representation of this concept