What’s Best Next

Author: Matthew Perman

Published: 2013

Amazon link

Favourite Quotation: Where does the Bible talk about productivity? When it talks about good works. This changes everything. It means:

• The things you do every day are good works – whether that is going to meetings,  delivering mail, designing bridges creating financial reports, developing marketing plans, or making chicken sandwiches.
• The purpose of what you do is to serve.
• The purpose of productivity tactics is to amplify your effectiveness in those good works.
• You don’t have to quit your job to have a meaningful life.

Having just finished this book I am finding it quite difficult to review. Ask me again in six months whether or not I am now more productive than I was before reading What’s Best Next or discovering Gospel-Driven Productivity.

As you will see from my previous reviews this book doesn’t sit in the usual genres I tend to read however after my supervisor began encouraging me to improve my time management I started to look for a book which would tackle the issue of productivity from a Christian perspective and stumbled across this book by Matt Perman.

He explains that in order to be productive we don’t need just to get more done but to be productive in the ultimate sense we need to center our productivity around God. This doesn’t necessarily mean taking up full-time ministry or traveling to Africa to build schools but rather to allow the gospel to determine our priorities. This means that the good of others will become the main motive for everything we do and this is both spiritually and economically the best way to be productive. It is therefore our duty as Christians to apply biblical wisdom and our best common sense to living in the most productive and therefore others-centric and God honouring way we can. To do this Perman advocates the DARE model: Define, Architect, Reduce and Execute.

Three key points I have taken away from this book are firstly the reminder that biblical good works are not just the proverbial helping the old lady across the street or serving in church but simply doing your job well is a good work which God has prepared in advance for us to do. Secondly, I found this book a huge challenge not to become more productive so that I am more successful at work or to have more time for myself, but rather to improve my productivity so I would have more time to do good to others. Finally, I found the Define section particularly thought-provoking. Taking the examples of William Wilberforce and Jonathan Edwards, Perman advocate developing a whole life mission statement and life goal by which is regularly reviewed and filters down to determine what’s best next for all the smaller life decisions.

This book is packed full of good advice and the later chapters deal with how to plan your week, handle email etc. This did often result in it feeling like it was trying to pack too much in and Perman does give large amounts of space to reviewing the various merits and issues with other approaches which, having not read the relevant books, largely passed me by. Also, Perman dismisses dealing with approaches to stay focused or get motivated towards the task in hand saying ‘I think that if you are doing a lot of work you have to force yourself to get done, you are probably in the wrong job.’ Although this may often be wise, advice on these issues would have been helpful as  numerous reasons seem possible where someone can find themselves struggling to be motivated in their job yet not be able to or wish to change career. On the whole I would definitely recommend it, not least for the reminder of our Christian call to action to do all the good we can to our neighbours. Perman has suggested he will follow it up with a book on finding our vocation and I will certainly keep an eye out for it.