Resisting the Tyranny of Algorithms in the New Year

January 21, 2017 By Guest Contributor

By Timothy Askew; reprinted from Inc. with the kind permission of Timothy Askew. Thirteenth century Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi once said, “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Among Steve Jobs’s many entrepreneurial insights was a perspicacious observation that creativity emerges out of a synthesis of “diverse experiences”–an amalgamation of seemingly unrelated dots that later link up as a new thing. He famously said, “It is in Apple’s DNA that... Read more

Business Travel: When to Bring the Kids and When to Leave Them Home

January 17, 2017 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

A little while ago, my faith-and-work-movement colleague Jeff Haanen of the Denver Institute published a great post on his personal blog called “Business Travel Have You Exhausted? Bring a Kid.” It contains good advice on how bringing along a kid on a business trip can actually help you see the world through new eyes, avoid unfortunate temptations, and generally break down the artificial divide our culture makes between work and family. The only problem about it from my perspective (and... Read more

Paul Behaving Badly: Of Paradoxes, Jerks, Infallible Scriptures, and Grace

January 10, 2017 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

This post is a participation in a Patheos Book Club on the book Paul Behaving Badly. A few years ago, a friend gave me a little book called Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O’Brien. I loved it. So, okay, I have been to seminary, so I knew some of the things in the book, but its clear explanations of the cultural world of the Bible made it an ideal choice to recommend to people who want... Read more

Why time management is killing us

January 8, 2017 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

This is the most life-changing thing I’ve read in the past bit. Instead of TL:DR (too long, don’t read): long and important, and read every word. Slowly. If all this increased efficiency brings none of the benefits it was supposed to bring, what should we be doing instead? At Take Back Your Time, the consensus was that personal lifestyle changes would never suffice: reform would have to start with policies on vacation, maternity leave and overtime. But in the meantime,... Read more

Taking a detour off the career path to live Jesuit values

January 3, 2017 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

A bit late to the party with noticing this (file that under “need better work-life rhythm,” or maybe under “productivity isn’t everything and may in fact be illusory.”) Anyway, great article about six kids trying to figure out life, work, the universe, and everything: Hope for the future arrives in the capital on the fourth weekend of August. There are six of them. Angela. Camille. Hanna. John. Liz. Noah. They are between ages 21 and 23. Five of them are... Read more

Why You Need to Stop Doing Your Work in Bed

December 10, 2016 By Guest Contributor

By Timothy Askew; reprinted from Inc. with the kind permission of Timothy Askew. There was an interesting article by Sue Shellenbarger in The Wall Street Journal last year about the increasing amount of work being performed in bed. It has a lot to say about several things, including the increasingly international nature of even small business, as well as physical health and implications of omnipresent technology for personal relationships. Ms. Shellenbarger reports, “Researchers who study work habits say a new... Read more

Do All People (Even Shut-Ins) Have a Calling to Work?

December 1, 2016 By Guest Contributor

By Kevin Kinghorn I’ve heard that phrase thrown around a lot: that “all people have a divine calling to work.” And I’ve even written about the ministry work that all Christians must be doing, if the Church is to fulfill its mission as Christ’s body in the world. But is this really true in every case? It’s perhaps one thing to point out that you don’t need to be a member of the clergy to be called to “genuine ministry... Read more

The Gift of Not Knowing

November 30, 2016 By Guest Contributor

By Timothy Askew; reprinted from Inc. with the kind permission of Timothy Askew. Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” I hope Voltaire is right, because a lot of my experience of what little success I have had as an entrepreneur has come out of my supreme ignorance and inexpert background in my business. I founded an elite executive sales outsourcing company called Corporate Rain International over 20 years ago without a priori... Read more

On work-life balance and not going to the Asbury Project

November 26, 2016 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

Some of you may remember how for the last two years I’ve spent some time at a conference called the Asbury Project. It’s a two-day conference focusing on social entrepreneurship and featuring a business plan competition by college and seminary, and it’s held in part at my seminary alma mater, which is less than an hour from my house. (Anyone who read my post on the election is now saying “Unexamined Marxism at Asbury? Really?” Some other day I’ll... Read more

Gratitude: An Elixir for a Time of Sadness

November 22, 2016 By Guest Contributor

By Timothy Askew; reprinted from Inc. with the kind permission of Timothy Askew. Willie Nelson once said, “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” I write a Thanksgiving column every year. I always look forward to it. Gratitude is my most welcomed emotion and Thanksgiving my favorite holiday. (Note my Inc. Magazine column from last year titled “Thanksgiving and the Power of Gratitude in Business.”) Yet this year I am having a hard time with it. Why... Read more