I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
Don't underestimate a pile of notecards | Self-Publishing with Chad Brooks
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Hey Friend - Just wrapped up a chapter of editing and typesetting. This one was a bit intense because I had more footnotes to add than any other chapter. If anyone has done academic writing, or other kinds, you know the citations can be tedious. When I was wrapping it up, I realized this pile of notecards in front of me was the beginning of the book I am working on. Not only was it the beginning, but shifting into an analog way to save ideas and reading last summer broke down the wall I had in front of my desires to one day write more. Ryan Holiday, most famous for his writing on stoicism famously develops his books using a giant crate of quotes from books. This YouTube video shares it really well. I've used a tool called Readwise for years to save digital highlights and other quotes. I review a handful every morning (and tomorrow I'm hitting a 365 day streak!). So I started using my Readwise review and saving the quotes I liked on 4x6 note cards and threw them into an old box. What bothered me was how this random pile started growing more and more. It had no organization behind it. While this was going on, I kept searching more and more on YouTube about Holiday and his notecard system. The robots of the internet started showing me videos on a system developed by a German Sociologist named Niklas Luhmann called Zettlekasten. It used notecards and organized them with a dewey decimal like system. In addition, Luhmann created an index and method for reading a book with a notecard for broad ideas. This was all it took. I pulled out my giant box of random cards, used ChatGPT to work on a categorization system that matched my reading interests, and started reading every book with the system in mind. 6 or so months later, my main card box is approaching 1200 cards and my index has around 400 tags. All the books I am working on are primarily outlined using notecards and filled up with ideas I've already categorized. Reading notes get filled in as well. This little pile of notecards in front of me is the result of the last 6 months of note-making, building my own zettlekasten and learning to build ideas from each other. The system even allows me to save all of my Bible reading and notes as well. I made a YouTube video about that part of the process earlier this year. If you want to write one day, start taking good notes today! Chad |
Hey. I'm Chad Brooks.
I steward Productive Pastor, a podcast and community of ministry leaders focused on how productivity and strategic ministry in the average church. I write about practical approaches to ministry productivity. I also write emails about church stability/development and my own theological musics in our current social moment.
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A decade ago, when I was church planting, I was in a season where I wasn’t “at” a local on Sunday mornings. I spent some of that time preaching for colleagues when they needed a Sunday off. I also led worship at another United Methodist Church frequently. But on the Sundays when I didn’t have some assignment at a local church, I decided to skip church. I think you need to do it every now and then as well. Does this sound a bit off? Well, I realized this past week how the idea is actually...
Let’s wrap up these conversations on “calling on the name of the Lord” as a primary spiritual act. I’ve got a few articles* you can read if you want to catch up, but let’s get right into it. You might know I’ve got a really intense system of Bible notes and list-making. One of my commenters on YouTube remarked last year, it seems like what you might find in the Thompson Chain Reference. I’ll call that a compliment! This feeds into today. It isn’t about a specific mention of “calling on the...