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What's Best Next: How The Gospel Transforms The Way You Get Things Done (2014)

by Matt Perman(Favorite Author)

4.36 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0310494222 (ISBN13: 9780310494225)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Zondervan

review 1: This book is full of valuable theological insights, selective adaption and sometimes adoption of secular writing on productivity, a plethora of practical points, and gospel motivated good works. But a few things need to be said, justifying my rating.Firstly, and quite ironically, for a book on effectiveness (careful, not efficiency) and productivity it is hopelessly longwinded and lacking in brevity or precision. One might point me to the 'core idea boxes' at the end of each chapter but that would only prove the point that many other reviews note: the book feels like a collection of blog posts that are at the same time disjointed and repetitious. This book is a treasure-trove of practical tips and ideas, priorities and planning, along with cleverly gleaned advice but in th... moree end it failed to carefully and concisely arrange those numerous and excellent elements. To recast an illustration from Tolkien, who borrowed it from Dasent, Perman failed to thoroughly boil his contents down to soup and I was left annoyed, picking bones from my teeth.Secondly, this book simply does not apply to everyone. While the author encourages an eclectic approach to his content I am not sure that he does enough in prefacing, or fencing, his material so that certain personality types and people from the swathes of vocations where his principles might not apply are not left feeling overwhelmed, or that they're wasting their lives. The author does a good job of providing general principles before unpacking them practically but I'm not convinced that the principles, barring their broadest presentation, will apply to everyone and every job. Tying this point in with the above I think that Perman should have been more careful in explaining how the gospel truly transforms us, and therefore all of our lives, and leaving the more specific out workings and catchy acronyms for his blog.Finally, God does want us to be productive, useful, and generous but that does not mean he desires for us to be maximally effective. While Perman speaks about intangibles - frequently reminding the reader that he isn't telling us to become bound to to-do-lists - the overall feeling I came away with was to tackle tasks, moving from the most significant to the least and organising everything else (including my own thinking) around that. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism, since the author does touch on life apart from our vocations, but I fear that this book might enshrine productivity (call it gospel productivity) at the expense of other components of Christian living and character.
review 2: I was pretty apprehensive when I began this book. Christian literature can tend to be pretty poor quality, especially when dealing with issues that aren't, on the surface at least, explicitly Christian. But, by about page 3 of the introduction, I was hooked. Perman does a great job of stating clearly and concisely how the gospel and our everyday lives coincide. His integration of work and Christ is phenomenal, and I will never really look at work the same. Christ came, died, rose again, and saved us, not so we can hold back from the world, but so that we might be genuinely, actively and consciously concerned with our society and community at large. Get it in ya, readers. It won't disappoint less

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