#224 | 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace with Jen Pollock Michel, Pt. 1

You know, we could find our different scriptural verses, like, you know, the days are evil. What is it in Ephesians redeemed about redeeming the time?

Yeah, but what we have to understand is like, in our 21st century, redeeming the time now is like, that's been co opted with time management assumptions.

It's watering time every. Hello, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day. They came up to me and they're like, travis, how are you doing? And of course, my reaction, not good, not, hey, my daughter just got married.

Not any of that stuff. My reaction was busy. I feel like that's what I say all the time is busy.

And I hate the fact that I say that I'm busy because it makes me feel like I don't have time for people who really matter. Now do you feel busy? Do you feel like the pressures of life are just unrelenting?

And do you look at it as a blessing to be busy, or do you look at it as a drudgery?

Or are you like so many people as they started off in the month of January, looking for your new calendar, waiting to get control of your life, to learn some new time management system to really take advantage of the moments that you have. I know I've been doing that. I know my wife does that.

And I know, though, that time is something that we all deal with, which is why I wanted our guest for today on the show. Today we're talking to Jen Pollock Michel about her book In Good Time.

When I saw the subtitle to this book, I immediately thought, yes, yes, we need to have her on the show because she talks about eight habits for Reimagining, Productivity Resisting, Hurry and Practicing Peace. That's the subtitle there. 8 Habits for Reimagining, Productivity Resisting, Hurry and Practicing Peace. It's a recipe that we all need.

And I have to say, the more that I read, the more I really did enjoy this book. She has a way of making ideas come alive. She's really a good writer. N. She's a time management junkie.

When I hear that, my first reaction is, I don't like being around time management junkies because it makes me feel like I am an outsider and I always fail. But she comes alongside you.

She is aware of the pressures and the habits that she talks about are not the ones that you often think about, at least if you're anything like me. So I want you to join me for this really fascinating conversation that covers everything from belonging to the unrelenting Amazon.

I have to say that I love the Amazon truck showing up in my house, but every time I see the employees, I'm like, did they get a break? I mean, it seems like they're just being pushed and they're treated like machines. Well, we talk about that.

We also talk about the assumptions that we make about the problems we face and how Covid really birthed this book. We got to talk for a while. So this is a two part conversation and there are some connection issues that came up in the middle of the show.

So when you hear that, don't freak out. Just kind of fast forward through that.

We've tried to remove as much as we can, but listen in because this is a conversation that I think you're really gonna like. As you're trying to go about fulfilling God's mission, you're trying to get a hold of yourself.

You're trying to figure out how to master yourself so you can share the truth of who Jesus is and show the truth of who Jesus is to those around you. That's why you're going to love this episode. So let's get into my conversation with Jen Pollock Michel on in good time. Happy listening.

Jen Pollock Michel, welcome to Apollo's watered.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Travis, are you ready for the Fast 5?

I'm ready to hear your questions. I don't know if I'll answer them quickly.

Doesn't have to be, but we'll try. Okay, number one, number one, you've traveled quite a bit. So what is your favorite travel destination? This is an easy one.

We are city people. So we went to London in Paris over the summer with our family of seven. We'd been wanting to do that trip forever.

So I'm going to have to go with like an international, like a global city. You know, London is amazing. Paris is amazing. The girls in our family liked Paris better, the boys like London better. So I'm kind of split.

Interesting. Why do the boys like London and the girls like Paris?

You know, I think the boys loved London like they loved the tube. They loved, like how clean it was, which is kind of weird. I don't know. I think it just felt very familiar.

And the girls, girls love Paris like They love the cafes. They love the joie de vivre.

You know, in French culture, that we went to the famous cafe the de Magot, and I don't know, I guess, like a whole bunch of writers hung out there and like, that was like their dream. Like, they could have just spent, like every afternoon in a cafe sipping coffee, watching people. So I think.

And then the fashion and, you know, I think just kind of the elegance of Paris, I think was what they loved.

I've always wanted to go. I've only flown through, so I need to stop and visit and go.

So I've kind of got one of those YouTube crushes where you voyeuristically follow people walking through the city.

Oh, yeah. I'm like.

But it doesn't. It's not the same. You don't get smell quite the same.

You can't eat the baguettes, you know.

Does it have gluten in does?

Yeah, if you are gluten free. Like, if you're allergic to gluten, I think Paris would be a very sad place to be.

My wife does. She is. But when she gets, like, Italian pasta, it doesn't affect her. It doesn't have anything in it.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I've heard that actually process it.

Yeah, that's how they process it. So I'm wondering if France is the same.

Maybe. Maybe. I don't know.

Well, here we go. Next question.

Okay, here.

Here it is. This is another easy one. Hobby, if you had more time.

Hobby. If I had more time, I would play more tennis. I have played tennis very occasionally. My husband loves to play tennis. Our family likes to play tennis.

My husband actually to teach tennis. So he, like, has taught all of our kids how to play tennis.

And when I was younger, like, I could play, you know, four times a year and it would be fine. And the older that I get, like, oh, I actually need to put the work in. I need to put the time in, so I would play more tennis.

Okay, that's fair enough. As we get older, it's not easy to do, but you're not going to embrace the pickleball thing, like, where Everybody's just getting 100%.

I would. Yes, we're going to play a lot of pickle ball because pickleball is huge in Cincinnati, actually. I mean, I think it's just huge everywhere. But I.

There's something about tennis. Like, I think maybe it just feels like, okay. With a few. With some lessons, some consistent playing. I guess the same would be true for pickleball.

So either. Either One. And honestly, platform tennis, too, actually, I heard is kind of a cool thing in Cincinnati, and I think it's in places like Chicago.

We were talking about Chicago earlier, where they warm up the courts and they. And there's like a squash element, too. Like, they've got. You're playing off the sides. I'm not exactly sure. I've never played.

I've never seen it played. But supposedly in Cincinnati, where the winter is fairly mild, you can play tennis outside all year round.

That I did not know at all. I'm not even sure if I know what platform tennis is. What is it?

It's just. I think it's just this heated platform, which is the reason why you can play it. And I think the court might be smaller.

And like I said, it's got these sides so you can play off the sides somehow, like squash. So that's. Is. That's about all I know. But I have heard it's really fun.

I feel like you're describing a ping pong table for humans is what it feels like in my head. I just. I got to get my picture right. Anyway, here we go. Next question.

Okay.

Habit that drives my husband and my kids crazy.

Oh, wiping the counters in the kitchen. I'm like a fanatic about it, and I make everyone else be a fanatic about it. My husband and I were actually just talking about this.

He's like, you've got these little quirks, like these little, like, fastidious habits, like tics or whatever. And I'm just like that in the kitchen. So, curiously, this question is coming right off the.

On the heels of a conversation with my husband about my annoying habits.

I'm thinking about that for Covid, though. Like, you had to have been going crazy, especially at the beginning.

I was cooking so much, we were running the dishwasher. Seven of us home twice a day. Yeah, we were. But you know what? I look back on Covid and I.

And I say, this is an incredible privilege, you know, because it was a devastating time. You know, people were getting sick, people were losing jobs, People were in danger. You know, people as they.

I think about my friend who I was just talking to on the phone, who was an emergency room physician.

Like, I mean, people were facing so much hardship in Covid, not to mention, like, isolation, all of that, but to be with the people I love the most for so long. We were also living in Toronto at the time, so. Longest lockdown in North America.

I kind of look back on that time a little bit fondly, just because it was Just great to be together. And. And we, like I said, had the privilege of staying healthy, being able to work from home and kind of get the kids.

Their schooling got, got done virtually. And so, you know, we had a lot of privilege at the time. So I'm thankful for that. But I do look back on.

There was a lot of cooking, there were a lot of dis. But it was good. It was a good time.

Okay, then we have to get to the next question then.

Okay.

Because I'm sitting there going, that was not my family's experience at all. But besides that, we'll move on. What is the best place to eat in Chicago?

Ooh, I'm thinking of the oven grinder.

I don't know.

Grinder is by the Lincoln Park Zoo and it has these little like, pizza pie things and it's. Yeah, it's really good.

So, I mean, obviously you think Chicago and you think pizza, and I do love all the Chicago style pizzas, but this is a little bit different than the, like, Giordano's, you know, kind of like pizza pies. Like, these are actually like, like all, all the sauce and the cheese is like inside. It's almost like a little pot pie. It's like a piece of pot pie.

Oven grinder, really good oven grinder that I'm going to look up when, When I go back to Chicago. I actually want to check that out because I'm always looking for different pizza places to try. But number five, last question.

If you were a proverb, what. What proverb would you be and why?

And I'm not just saying a proverb, like a biblical proverb, any proverb you could be, what would encapsulate your life. You can even make one up on the spot. What would it be and why?

Saying, I, I wish I could remember. Like, you know, there's some proverb about habits. Like you choose a habit, like make a lifetime or something like that.

I mean, I'm thinking it's like Aristotle or some Greek philosopher, but just that whole idea of like, you choose your habits and like really, like you choose your life. And I think that would probably be very, very apt for me. I'm very diligent about.

At least diligent about thinking about my habits, not always diligent about practicing them. I'm as inconsistent as every human being in practicing them.

But I do see that habits are so powerful, and I think that is very true that whatever you do habitually, you know, is. Is essentially who you become.

There is so much to that that I think People are starting to realize, especially as they go on. I've had this conversation with Matthew Bennett, who's at Cedarville. You mentioned the same thing about who we're becoming in the middle of this.

Actually, Jeff Hanan. Excuse me, Jeff Hanan.

We were talking about this, who we are becoming in the middle of these habits, which is why we, where we get to your book right here. You're talking about Eight Habits for Reimagining, Productivity Resisting Hurry and Practicing Peace in Good Time.

Even when I first saw the title, I went, I just saw the subtitle and I went, yep, let's read this.

I need that.

Let's read this. Well, then, even with the cool little art in the clock in the bottom.

I love that illustration. I'm so thankful for that cover.

So let's hear a little bit about you, and I want to hear why and how this book came about.

Yeah. Well, I have had a lot of time anxiety in my life. I mean, I think I'm one of those people who have just always, I've chosen to be busy.

I mean, I think that's one thing. Like, there have been seasons of my life where I've chosen busy. Seasons of my life where busy has chosen me.

The seasons of my life where busy chose me, where, you know, I've got five kids. So I had three kids. And then God was like, surprise. How about twins? He thought you were finished. I, I literally did.

I mean, we thought, I thought I was kind of like, okay, we've got these three wonderful children and I'm going to turn my attention to another graduate degree. You know, I was one of those people, like, I started teaching high school French and English right out of Wheaton.

And then, you know, that first year, my department chair said, well, time to go to graduate school. So, I mean, I've just always been that person kind of moving from goal to goal and deadline to deadline, I guess, too.

And I don't even, I wouldn't characterize myself. I don't feel necessarily all that ambitious. But I do feel a very deep sense of urgency to use time well. And that has been with me forever.

I mean, high school, college, early young adult years. I was reading books about time management.

All of these things that I had planned for, you know, some for years, you know, were completely canceled. And and then the interesting thing for me, I think the, the catalyst really for the book was just that I thought that that would bring great relief.

I thought that like suddenly being less busy was just going to be like amazing because again, like I said, I had five children at home, but they were very self sufficient. I mean, they were old enough to kind of be doing their own schooling. And so I was still getting my normal things done.

And then I was doing all the other stuff that people said we were supposed to do at that time. You know, I was cleaning out the garage and the closets and all of that. And so I'm like, great relief, right?

I suddenly have more time than I would have expected to have, but I had more anxiety and I had to just really talk to Jesus about that and just do some learning about that and think like, what is actually going on?

And so I think in many ways, like there was just a season of hard examine, a season of, I would say repentance, and then a real commitment to some resistance in my life to identifying some of the false ideals that I had about time. How I was telling a really a wrong story of time. I needed to enter into God's story and just take up some new habits and some new learning.

And I would say three years later, I'm still in the midst of practicing all of that.

I always wonder, when an author writes a book, is it something that it's an, it's something that they actually have done or is it something that they aspire to? It's one of those usually two things, like this is actually how I live. This one is, is this is how I want to live. Yeah, that aspirational side.

And I'm always curious to see which one that is because it is a period of time that we're in modernity is here, our culture is so busy and then everyone stops and then suddenly they're not busy, they're not producing. Which in our culture says if you don't produce, you're not anything.

Yeah, you're done.

And that's part of the idolatry that is very present within the modern world. And that's why I appreciated your book, because it's actively saying no, no, no, we have to rethink it.

I think there was like a realization of how much it had formed you in the middle of that. And then when you present these new habits for us, you've really broken it down into our everyday lives.

What are these eight habits that we need to reimagine how we are to live in the middle of this very modern world?

Yeah, so a lot of people are like, great, okay, so you're going to tell me to get up early or you know. No, none of that, none of that. They're all very heart centric in many ways. The first one is begin, begin.

Just to believe that we begin and we begin again always in Christ. I just think you, I really did struggle with whether to put the first habit begin. I was eventually what I decided on the first habit.

The second habit is receive, like the life and the time that we receive from God as a gift. So I'm like, ah, what should I put first?

But I put Begin first, you know, just to say we have to enter into the story of time that God tells, which is that every day is full of new mercies. I think we get, we get really stuck on thinking, well a number one, we could get stuck on thinking of our own beginnings.

You know, a lot of time management is like, a lot of time management is like begin. You know, here's your new system, here's your new strategy, like take control of your time, begin.

And it's like, no, this, this chapter is actually about thinking about God's beginnings, thinking about how we begin as we just participate in what he's doing in the world. And so today is a new day. But whatever energy and capacity I have to begin again, that will be given to me and a response to what Christ has done.

So the second half, the second habit is receive. And it's really just to think about time, not as a gift. You control or manage a gift you receive.

And you receive givens of your life too, you know, which affect your time. You know, you receive the gift of your body. And for some people, like there are real limitations. Oh, the body is always a limitation, quite honestly.

And some people have great limitations, some people have fewer. But you know, receiving the context of your life, your relationships, your calling, all of these things that we receive from God.

So we don't just kind of like bluster into the world, like I will do these things, but like first, like wait, you know, what life am I receiving from God? Because the only life I can offer to him is the one I've Received, you know, offers. The fourth habit. But I'll say, I'll try to do these in order.

Number three is belong. And so I talk a lot about relationships. I don't think there's a faith, a way to live faithfully apart from relationships.

God's called us to belong, as he's called us to belong to Him. He's called us to belong to his people. And, you know, belonging is a huge interruption.

There's a huge time commitment and time constraint when you are committed to relationships. And I'm. I'm grappling with that in the book. And then four is this habit of offering. Offering our lives in worship to God.

I think productivity is so often about usefulness. It's just an instrumentality. Like, time is just this, like, resource that I'm going to use to get things done.

Of course there's like, you know, the logic is sort of never really. It's sort of empty and hollow. Like, get things done for why? Like, for what purpose? Well, to be useful. But why?

So recalibrating ourselves to think about what it means to live a life of worship. And then number five is weight. Maybe I think I might be saying these and. Or not in order, but there's a way.

Is weight. No, you're good.

Five is wait. You know, we don't like to wait. Especially when you think about time management.

I mean, if every second counts, it's gotta count for something, and it's gotta count for, like, productive material output. Waiting is like, ugh, devastating.

So, full disclosure. Most of my notes that I took were in the waiting part. Like, I was filling just the pages with notes that I was taking. I was like, oh, my gosh.

Anyway, keep going. There's so much. Because I want to come back to this. I just want to get you through your list.

Okay, good. Wait.

And then, yeah, it's hard, but again, if we're moving toward what I'm trying to move and toward in the book is away from productivity and toward fruitfulness.

And when you think about fruitfulness as an image, as a metaphor, as a means to understanding the Christian life, which is given to us in scripture in many different places. John 15 being a very. A very primary one, a predominant one. But, you know, there's waiting in seasons of. For the vine. So.

And then number six is practice. Six, practice.

Nice. Okay, keep going. You got two more to go. Two more to go.

This idea of just. Yeah, the. That's what I said. The proverb of, you know, the habits are who we become. And there's so much practice involved in the Christian life.

And practice, again, is not that like, once and done effort. So there's an inefficiency to it. I think we can think of, you know, like, well, practice, like, I just want progress.

And there is progress, I think too, in the Christian life. There's just a lot of practice. And then number seven, enjoy.

It's not all doom and gloom and hardship and duty and groaning in the Christian life, but I think ultimately God's always leading us into his joy.

And there's so much joylessness, I think, in the productivity framework because, I mean, you're just thinking about all the things you got to get done. So you never have time to think about anything that might bring you delight and joy, bring God delight and joy.

And then number eight is never the habit that anybody chooses as their favorite, but it's just, remember, it's. Remember that you die. And these are the monastic. This is the monastic wisdom. But St.

Benedict told his monks they had to just repeat to themselves, to each other. It was just sort of a habit in the community. We have to rehearse, remember that you die.

Life is short and we don't choose well until we kind of get the full kind of like sobriety of like, yeah, 70, 80 years. Moses, you know, wrote in Psalm 90, if we're lucky, lucky. And those are the habits and sounds like we'll dig into them.

Hopefully that wasn't too long.

Oh, no, not at all. I think my issue is that there is so much in your book that was quotable.

There were so many different authors, articles you referred to that were still relevant to what we see going on in the world. And some stuff you hit. Of course, this is how God is doing something right now. Now where he's rising.

Of different people talking about the same thing, just a different aspect of it.

Yes, absolutely.

One of the things you mentioned about belonging.

We've had a lot of discussion on the show where we've highlighted neurotheology, where we can actually see spiritual formation on the brain and how intricate our brains are desired to belong and to be a part of this.

So what you have done, in very poetic language, you're a very descriptive writer, where you caught me off guard with terms and words that would illuminate it in my mind, just lighting fire to the imagination. And that I found to be very enriching. And it. But it then made me want to be almost verbose.

Like, I feel like I read the book and I'm trying to talk like you wrote and my Wife is like, come on, honey, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back. Fact, there was just so much. And I think it's also because of the same stage of life.

Everyone has gone through Covid together, but we're at a similar age, both having lived in Chicago, both been in Christian families, both losing our fathers at an age. So it. It's very much a certain perspective that does shape you.

That's.

That's what I appreciated about this. But one of the things that I wanted to do as we.

We went through the book, and I'm again, I'm opening up at the table of contents with everything where you have, begin, receive, belong, offer, wait, practice, enjoy. Remember, you illuminate, you really explain each one of those in detail as you go through and you illustrate in a variety of different ways.

The question that I always have is, why is this a practice necessary now? And what has the Church missed historically that this becomes so much more relevant?

As you even mentioned, I think, I can't remember where it was in the book, but you mentioned how previous generations didn't have that privilege of thinking about what they were doing and working in that regard. Yeah, we do today. That makes our time different than theirs.

But what has gone on that has made this practice, these practical habits so necessary for us to flourish as Christ followers?

Well, I'm glad that you're. You, you know, sort of of begging the question of the historical kind of context for all of this, which I think is a really important piece of it.

And I'm not going to say that I'm an expert, but I've read a lot of people who tell a pretty compelling history that I think makes a lot of sense to me. One of them, Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, where he really talks about, you know, up until we get to modernity, people assume the existence of God.

People assume, you know, some sort of relationship to God. I mean, atheism just really isn't a plausible structure in the ancient and really medieval world.

You know, I mean, we had paganism, we have lots of different kinds of, you know, faith, quote, unquote. But then all of a sudden you get to this idea that, you know, well, human beings can sort of live for themselves.

And so this idea that the transcendent is kind of cut off from us, you know, that our lives now live in this. This very imminent structure is what he'd say. You know, it's just a very earthbound kind of thing. But. But yet he says we have the.

All of these transcendent kind of longings these ways in which we do want our lives to have some kind of meaning and legacy beyond the years that we live on Earth. And yet we are uncomfortable to say that, you know, there's a God and we might owe allegiance to him. And so how does this interact with our time?

It almost is like we, we. We put so much emphasis now on the earthly years that are given to us that there's a lot of. There's a lot of urgency to use your time well.

I mean, if there's no time beyond this time, then imagine how every moment is now so urgent in a way that, I mean, you only live once, right? I mean, that's why there's kind of that cultural mantra that we have. So on the one hand, it's like every moment is.

Is just invested with a whole bunch of urgency and we don't have any sense of, like a scope of time outside of ourselves. Which is really sad because that means that's why, you know, time management kind of thrives on that.

Using your time really well, you know, I think so much of the language around time management came to us from the Industrial revolution. So we have categories that at first were applied to machines.

Like productivity, for example, is the way that we used to talk about machines in the factory. Like, what could they actually produce in an hour?

And, you know, for sure, factory workers too, you know, there's this, this thing that riot camp comes to light in the early 20th century, scientific management. So it's like we're going to app principles of science into the factory. We're going to try to work for efficiencies.

You know, how can we make labor more efficient so that it's more cost effective?

And, you know, we're seeing the results of that is that what has been at first was applied to machines is now just being applied to the human worker, to the human body. And anybody who thinks about their body knows that it doesn't actually work like a machine. Well, actually, your computer actually still has to be.

Your battery still has to be recharged. But there are all kinds of ways in which, you know, the body just doesn't work like a machine.

And I talk in the book about seasons of grief, seasons of ill health.

These are the kinds of interruptive seasons where, sure, maybe we quote, unquote, manage our time so long as we have, like, the most favorable conditions.

But as soon as you throw the wrench into, like, you, you know, you have a grief, you have a child who's sick, who, you have yourself a sickness that you're facing. You have dep these things where all of a sudden your kind of capacity to produce is greatly diminished. So you actually don't work like a machine.

You just can't. I mean, I'm in a season, like, yeah, it's just we can think about all kinds of different seasons of life.

So we don't flourish when we think that we should act and behave like machines. But those assumptions just aren't questions, they're not interrogated.

You know, if you say to somebody, for example, I think if we were just to poll the average churchgoer, is it a good thing to manage your time? Well, they'd be like, yeah, of course.

God wants me to manage my time, steward it well, you know, we could find our different scriptural verses like, you know, the days are evil. What is it in Ephesians redeemed about redeeming the time?

Yeah, but what we have to understand is like, like in our 21st century, redeeming the time now is like, that's been co opted with time management assumptions. I mean, ancient readers weren't thinking, well, I better make all these efficiencies in my day. I mean, it just wasn't possible to speed up time.

You know, Jesus had to walk everywhere, for example, you know, and so there's a lot to say about that. But that historical story is really important because if you don't understand it, number one, you don't question the assumptions.

And number two, you just actually read them right into scripture. And I think that can be, that can be really. I think that can. Yeah. Disastrous. I was like, how, how, how, you know, exaggerated do I want to sound?

But I think disastrous is probably true.

Well, one of the things that we've tried to highlight is as we look at the state of Christianity in North America and it's, it's not good. No matter what statistic you look at, it just doesn't fare well.

Whether it's the, the pastors burning out at an unprecedented rate, Christian institutions that are closing, churches that are closing, the decrease in population. And then the question people are, I see are like, wow, it's crisis right now.

And we need to, as one church growth guru said, we need to evangelize and pray for the next 30 days that God will turn the tide. It's like, but you, you haven't challenged the cultural assumptions, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Topography has shifted in the ministry methodologies that we have developed, that we've inherited was developed in the growing era of, as you mentioned, productivity, when it's just coming into the dawn of that age. And now we're in the zenith at its very high length of it. And we're seeing now this isn't what we wanted.

This isn't at all creating the better life that we, we should have, that God desires us to have. The problem that has been, as you just brilliantly said, is that we haven't examined the assumptions and then we read it into the scripture itself.

Right.

Rather than seeing how the original audience understood it. And pastors leaders are doing that, that.

And they are then disseminating that to their people in their sermons and their messages, their blogs, whatever it might be. And it's causing an unbelievable stress.

And one of the reasons I think of what Russell Moore had said when he said we're seeing younger people leave evangelicalism, not because they don't believe it, because the church itself doesn't believe it. We're not offering a better view of humanity. We're not offering a better way of living.

Yes, we mentioned the forgiveness of sins, but if our lives look just as ragged and torn by the cultural aspirations. Yeah, what has it? And that's why I even laughed when you mentioned I was laughing. You were talking about Matt Perman's book early on in yolo.

That part was so funny. I want to read this for people.

Got a little grumpy there.

Oh, yes, you did. But you said in the book Perman offers up his own timeout for a typical week. This is right at the beginning in the YOLO chapter.

Chapter suggesting ways that readers might envision prioritizing family, work, leisure and spiritual formation, noting that four days a week Pearman dedicated the hour between 5 and 6pm for exercise. And I know that hour for my wife is like, yeah, you need to be available to me at that hour.

And I'm laughing because you said, I once published a grouchy review of Herman's work. I'd like to see his wife's time map. And I love that because that's my wife's question.

If these people are fighting in the ideal situation, removed from the normality of life, even when you're talking about the Proverbs 31 woman. And you brought a humanity to her where you're like, well, this assumes she's got money. Yeah, this assumes she's got money to do this.

She has the privilege to be able to do that.

She doesn't have an autoimmune disease, which even that part I was, I thought someone who's understanding and putting another lens for us to see through. Not that we don't believe the scripture.

We do believe the scripture, but we also need to understand it in its cultural context and how it speaks to us in our cultural context against the assumptions that we have now. This is what I've really appreciated about your book. And you. You bring out so many different authors. You bring out poetry.

I mean, you really go back and examine history. You bring out Saint Benediction. Benedict.

Yeah.

You bring out some of the. You even refer to Monk manual. You. I mean, these different practices that are there. Why do we need to understand.

Bring those recent aspects of history into this current historical moment?

Well, they're just interesting. I mean, I think that they're interesting. Like, the Harriet Beecher Stowe one was so interesting for me because.

And she is essentially a feminist, but she's describing. I think she's arguing for the importance of the home, but she's basically done a history of the home in the United States since colonial America.

And I thought that was just. That was fascinating for me years ago when I read it and I actually quoted it in a different book, but just to kind of.

No, maybe that was actually counterproductive. Now that I'm thinking about it. That was another book that I read that was hugely impactful for my understanding of time. Another academic book.

I think it was published by Duke. But why is it important? I mean, I just think. I think that so often.

I don't know how you feel about this, Travis, but I think often the church is offering cures for things that we haven't diagnosed. Well, you can only diet. Like, so let's just say I am a patient and I go see my doctor, and I have aches and pains.

You know, my doctor would do really well to. He, like, he needs to, you know, perform a physical exam. He needs to get my health history. He needs to understand sort of the symptoms.

You know, have me kind of anecdotally describe what's going on. So there's like, quantitative and qualitative. There's all these different things.

You know, you have a good doctor when they spend the time I mean, it's easy to put a pill into your hand. The, the right cure is always about the right diagnosis. And I think so often we kind of jump to cure.

And I think actually in the church, we often jump to a cure that, that is based on a diagnosis from like 20 years back. Like, I feel like we're always a little bit behind.

And so I actually think right now what's happening in the time management industry and genre is there are non Christians now saying, whoa, hold on a second. We don't have a vision that is sustainable. It doesn't promote human flourishing.

You reference it in the book.

I do reference it, yeah. Okay.

So I remember reading it like late into my own research and I, because I had actually followed Burkman's work in the Guardian because he was one of those voices he would. He was writing about time management and I was thinking about time management. So I'm kind of following him.

And then all of a sudden, like we're taking a parallel track here where, I mean, I don't want to compare myself to Oliver Berkman, but I want to say here's a non Christian writer who has. Who kind of like hook, line and sinker, you know, bit on the bait of time management and now all of a sudden realizes.

I think I was kind of fooled here. I think this is not a means towards human flourishing.

If God gives us, redeems all of our capacities, like in our ability to think, like, I think we should be on the forefront of all these things. But unfortunately, I don't know why we're often. Seems like we're often kind of delayed. So. Yeah, why, why do we do that? I don't know.

But why is it important for me to offer all of these kind of relevant source data? Because I think that's. That's to kind of shore up the case for like, wait, okay, do you agree with this diagnosis? Okay, now we gotta seek the cure.

And scripture is a part of that. But I think reading the culture is another part of that, of that diagnosis.

I mean, the scripture is scripture, diagnosis and cure, you know, because scripture can tell us about our own hearts, our temptations, our pitfalls, you know, the perils of being human. But it thankfully gives us the good news of Jesus.

You have really, to me, hit the nail on the head if I, if I might use that. So many pastors that I Meet and encounter. Don't have. Have uncritically assumed something where bigger is always better. Better. Big. Bigger is better.

If I don't have a growing church, if I don't have all of this going on. I mean, pastors are just susceptible to these cultural idolatries as anyone else. Sometimes even more so because you can Christianize it.

Yeah.

And it can be syncretized very, very quickly. And it becomes its own idolatry in and of itself. And I think we've seen that with the fall of different pastors and ministries who became so.

We became so enamored with their. Their personality and their. How they presented themselves and their version of what they saw the world to be in the ills that were there.

But they themselves were just as immediately plagued by it.

I had to laugh a bit at your illustration inside because I have friends that are doctors and they have lamented to me that some of them have said, off to the side. We are so busy, busy. The way that they have constructed. We only get so many minutes with a patient.

Yes.

And then sometimes we don't even have an opportunity to have a bite to eat or go to the bathroom because they themselves are running it. And they're not thinking of the holistic notion. It comes down to the dollars in the sense, the material prosperity, the greed that is there.

And as you've already said, so many we have been behind. Instead, we should be at the forefront of what human flourishing is. Is.

But for many of them, if there's not chapter and verse, they don't know what to do. That's why they can talk ad nauseam about the Reformation and say by grace through faith, which we should.

But this idea of what it means to be flourishing as a participant within the kingdom of God is lacking because it requires a cultural exegesis outside of the world, the scripture in which they inhabit.

Where your work brings us back, it's not so much concerned about the cultural manifestations or at that level, but it's more of how do I do this for myself? How do I do this in the. In. In the. With those in the front row of my life.

Yeah.

That I. I very much enjoyed.

And what really brought it forth for me is when you gave the picture of Amazon, you drawing out how Amazon treats its employees, which we now. It's become everything to us. We wait for the door, the bell rings. We're expecting an Amazon package all the time.

But you draw out or cite some of the. Of those authors who have highlighted what the cultural of Amazon actually is. And how they've constructed it is not designed for flourishing at all.

In some respect, it is the epitome of what our cultural values, but at the same time, the ramifications, the collateral damage for the practice that they have had is hidden from our sight.

Yeah.

Can you elaborate on what Amazon has created and how it affects, in some respect, how it represents the zeitgeist of our cultural moment now?

Well, this was from a couple of years ago, so just a disclaimer, like maybe Amazon has reformed its ways. I don't know, but essentially highly doubt it. I mean, and you know, the context for the book is. So it's the pandemic disclosing. Right.

That's kind of the language that I use. And Amazon, we all had a very close relationship with Amazon during the pandemic. And in many ways, you know, we benefited from Amazon.

We were able to receive things to our home when it was difficult to get out and get things. And that's the paradox. I mean, that's the complication of telling this story.

But, but when I started to think about, I started to think about my own pandemic kind of record as like, as just my Amazon purchases. Like, I could tell the pandemic story just by what I was buying on Amazon. And so I sort of tell that.

And then I dig into Amazon and honestly just learned that it literally has been their stated practice to kind of use up their workers and then dispose of them.

Them.

They actually have like, sort of built into their, into their strategy as a company.

Their corporate strategy is like, we never intend to promote within our ranks of like, you know, it's not like there's ladder climbing in Amazon necessarily.

I'm sure there's some, but just those people who are on the floor fulfilling our orders, putting our things into boxes, getting them on the conveyor belts, you know, whatever. All those little things, like they are used up as actual human. Like their labor is used up and then when it is expended, they are expended.

So it's not like, oh, you're gonna then become a manager and then you're going to become a director and then maybe you could climb the ring. No, they expect that the average worker, and I don't remember exactly, but I want to say it was like 18 months, 12 to 18 months.

They kind of figured this is, this is going to be the length of life of kind of the average Amazon employee, that when, when you kind of project the growth that Amazon expects and the, the rate at which they will just dispose of American Workers like, it is, it is actually staggering. It is staggering. And the way that the employees like they are just treated like machines. They are rated.

They have kind of time off T time on task, time off task. Like just all these different ways where their movements are measured and you know, measured against a certain standard. And it's really troubling.

And it's not just Amazon now. I mean one of the things that I think I put in the book or maybe I've written about since.

Since because I actually have done a lot of presentations now around productivity is that you're seeing this in across industries now and think it was probably last summer that the New York Times ran an article about just how different industries are now using different kinds of productivity measures including.

And I think the, the one that sticks out to me was the chaplain in, I think it was Minneapolis who had a point score for like if you go to a funeral it's this many points and if you visit someone who's sicken in the hospital it's this many points. Like, like, yeah, I was a chaplain and, and it's just mind boggling. But this is sort of where we are right now.

And I think it begs the larger question, Travis, because I mean obviously what you're doing is. And I think you've said a really good thing. My book is like, it's not about changing the cultural conditions.

It's very much about the personal choices. But we grapple with that, this dynamic of like you can only make, make certain choices within the conditions that are given to you.

You know, if you're a Jew enslaved in Egypt, you have certain choices that you can make, but you have other choices that are not available to you. And I think that's where, where we're struggling with as Christians today. It's like. And I think that's why the call is. I would love to see that.

I want to see more people write in this, this vein of like, what are the rules now?

The rules and the rhythms, rules of life, the monastic rules that we can take up as communities that help us as communities to live different, like, differently.

Because I don't know, you know, I mean, I look at my husband who works for a Fortune 500 company and there are just things that are demanded of him that I mean, he's not in control of. He doesn't work for himself like I do. He doesn't have self directed, self guided work. So Amazon is a good example of that.

What if you even just wanted to pray the hours and you were an Amazon employee Like, I don't know how that would work.

So let's review. We've got begin, receive, belong, offer, wait, practice, enjoy, and remember.

Not exactly the kind of things we normally think about when we are contemplating new habits to help ourselves with time management, but they are all things that help us to reexamine how we are looking at time, reimagining how we engage with it, then put these habits into use in our here and now. This book was convicting to me. It made me take stock and think about how I view my relationship with time and the assumptions that I have.

Am I viewing the time that I've been given the people that I interact with with as gifts from God? Or do I view them the way that Amazon views the people in its warehouses? Which was really scary by the way.

I mean, I love getting stuff from Amazon, but now I hear about how they're living. Oh, that's just depressing. If we want to truly flourish, we have to remind ourselves and preach to ourselves that we're not machines.

God didn't make us that way. He didn't make you that way. You are only human. And no matter how much our culture presses on us, we have to keep that humanity in focus.

If we're to offer people the truth of who Jesus is, we need to be able to demonstrate that in how we live. We want to be good stewards, we want to work hard, and we are going to grow weary in doing so.

But we're not machines and we need to show that we are human and offer a better way of living in the middle of our crazy world. It's a good conversation. I hope you enjoyed it and you're going to enjoy the next conversation as we continue discussing in good time there.

We're going to talk about hope, the seven deadly sins, and the difference between European and North American redwood trees. And that's not on Monty Python sketch. So I hope that you have a wonderful and blessed week and make sure you tune in next week.

As we continue this discussion, I do want to thank our Apollos water team for helping us to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Water Stay watered everybody.