Capture

Pity your poor mail carriers. Their shoulders must burn under the mailbag strap as they haul each day’s load. On a recent day, chosen at random, my mail drop included:

• a brochure promising (for only $1,495) an “intensive, hands-on workshop” from which you “go back to your office with a complete solution-oriented plan.”
• a four-page flyer (see the metallic inks shine!) about a Web site that will give me “innovation, perspective, and impact.”
• a packet of six book reviews, which left me feeling guilty about all the great books I should be reading but probably won’t.

I dropped the mail and booted up my laptop—and found 17 e-mails in my inbox.

To live in our Information Age is hard; to lead is even harder. How can you keep up? Learn what’s important? Filter out what’s not? Grow as a person? Get things done?

I’ve asked those questions often. And I’ve noticed a subtle but key difference between leaders who get things done and leaders who don’t. We’re all awash in information; some leaders swim while others sink. The difference, I now know, lies in the essential skill of selecting only the information most needed, and then making use of it.

To keep from drowning in a heaving sea of information, you need to spot the strong floating timbers, swim to them, and hang on with all your strength. This is the essence of a leadership skill I’ve dubbed “Capture.”

Capture is not complicated and doesn’t cost money. It asks for no herculean multitasking, no leather binders or color-coded lists.

Capture should not be confused with orderliness. Two people I know who use Capture effectively work in cluttered offices and sometimes lament their lack of organization. Capture is not a neat desk; it’s a mindset to grow, to learn, to accomplish, and a system to help you do that. Capture turns intention into action.

Capture involves three simple skills that build on each other, like taking a photograph: point, focus, and shoot.

Point: Look for your key information areas (and skip the rest)

Capture begins with a simple, wonderfully freeing premise: I do not need to know everything.

A few short generations ago, it could be said, Information Is Power. That was true when there wasn’t enough of it. Today, the motto should read: Information Is Fatigue. We get too much information, and a high percentage of it is inane, meaningless, enervating. (Do I really need to know whom Anne Heche is dating?)

Richard Saul Wurman writes in Information Anxiety 2 (Macmillan, 2000): “Information was once a sought-after and treasured commodity, like a fine wine. Now, it’s regarded more like crabgrass, something to be kept at bay.”

No, information alone is no longer power. What is power is the right information, at your fingertips, when you need it.

The fact we must focus our learning should be self-evident, but for many years, I struggled to believe it. Growing up, I admired DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin, and other polymaths who excelled in multiple fields.

I felt the gold crown of knowledge rested on those whose learning ranged not just deep but broad, stretching across disciplines: Pascal, Erasmus, Schweitzer. I chose a liberal-arts college because I believed in being well-rounded.

Pastors may feel, more than most, the pressure to be omni-knowledgeable. In sermons they are expected to speak intelligently to the concerns of the bond trader, the Montessori teacher, and the long-haul trucker. To some degree, each parishioner hopes the pastor will acknowledge his or her world, speak the language, share the concerns.

But whatever understandable forces create the longing to be a Renaissance scholar, guess what? We don’t live during the Renaissance.

We live in a time when the giant galaxies of knowledge are expanding and streaming apart. My favorite online search engine, Google, currently indexes 1,326,920,000 Web pages. My mind can’t comprehend the very number, let alone those pages’ content. I can’t know everything.

Theologically, this truth keeps me humble and dependent. Practically, it frees me to concentrate my learning in key areas. I can always ask others about what I don’t know, and no leader should be afraid to do that. Ignorance is not a sin; acting like you know something when you don’t, is.

Here’s the rub: How do you determine which areas of learning to ignore? What information can any self-respecting pastor neglect?

Each person’s answer will vary. But these questions will help you with your unique answer:

1. Is there someone else (a staff member, church member, or denominational exec) who is expert on this?

If the answer is yes, then how knowledgeable do you really need to be?

Solo pastors may need to be the expert on copier repair or on which mic to buy, for no one else has the time or energy to be. But in general, if there’s anyone else who knows (or would enjoy finding out), say, the details of CCLI licensing, why should I?

This distributed-knowledge approach means sometimes I have to admit, “I don’t know; ask So-and-so,” which can be mildly embarrassing.

But Peter Drucker explains, “Once beyond the apprentice state, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does—or what good are they?” This approach empowers staff and colleagues: they are the experts, and I have to trust their knowledge.

2. Can questions in this information area be looked up relatively quickly?

R. C. Sproul tells the (possibly apocryphal) story of the student who asked Albert Einstein, “Dr. Einstein, how many feet are there in a mile?”

Einstein said he didn’t know.

The student assumed he had to be joking, but when pressed for an explanation, Einstein answered, “I make it a rule not to clutter my mind with simple information that I can find in a book in five minutes.”

In my work, I oversee a sizable budget with multiple accounts. People expect me to know it. But the truth is, I don’t (except in broad terms), and I don’t need to. I keep a thick, blue notebook with budgets and reports, and when someone asks me a question, I simply pull out the notebook.

You don’t need to know, if you know where to look it up.

3. Is this area of information essential for decisions I’m making now?

Years ago I visited Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Minnesota, when the church was building its current sanctuary. As we walked the construction site, Leith pointed to one wall that would be the back of the sanctuary.

“See that?” he asked. “We had to ask for special, rubber, sound-absorbing insulation on that wall, because there’s a rest room on the opposite side, and we didn’t want the sound of a flush to fill the sanctuary during a quiet moment in worship.”

Verily, I’d never thought of that.

Yet Leith knew the fine points of construction: thickness of insulation, the relative advantages of large brick vs. small brick, the material costs per square foot.

“I’ve learned what I’ve needed to as we’ve faced major decisions,” he explained. “Before next month’s board meeting, I’m going to learn everything I can about classrooms.”

For Leith, minute knowledge of construction was necessary, but only for a limited time. Once the building was built, he could forget most of what he’d studied. The key principle: Learn what you need for the decisions you’re making now.

Look at the three questions above. Then list the areas of information that (1) only you can specialize in, (2) can’t be readily looked up or obtained elsewhere, and (3) affect major decisions you’re making now or will make in the year ahead. If you’re like me, you will end up with a short list, a manageable list.

Final check: if your list has more than five key areas, you probably are still not giving up enough. Remember that this first step, Point, frees you from having to know everything. Less is more.

Focus: Intently gather information in your key areas

John Kilcullen was having dinner with a friend, when the friend described overhearing a customer ask a bookstore clerk, “Do you have any simple books on Microsoft DOS—something like, DOS for Dummies?”

That throwaway comment—a joke—stuck with Kilcullen, and he launched the “Dummies” books, now a worldwide phenomenon with 370 titles, selling more than 60 million copies, in 31 languages.

“So often you hear an idea and you forget it,” says Kilcullen in The Marketing Revolution Newsletter. “Or you hear an idea, you write it down, but you don’t act upon it. Grab the idea, write it down, and do something with it.”

This is the essence of the second stage of Capture. You say to yourself, “I refuse to be passive. I refuse to do nothing. I will not let the rushing water of information flow over me like a rock. Instead, I will choose to be active, to reach out and pluck nutrients from the water like a hungry anemone.”

Call this self-disciplined approach to learning “The Purpose-Driven Education.” You record the ideas you hear or read or think—if they fall in your key areas of learning.

Don’t underestimate the importance of immediately capturing an idea. My friend Dave Goetz, founder of CustomZines.com, explains, “For me, when an idea hits me, it strikes fire, almost like God speaking. I know that sounds heretical, but there it is. The more time that passes after the idea strikes, the less heat it gives off. I forget parts of it, it doesn’t seem as great. Ideas have a short half-life.”

The way you capture good ideas will vary from crayon-on-napkin to Palm Pilot. In Bird by Bird, author Anne Lamott explains, “I have index cards and pens all over the house—by the bed, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, by the phones, and I have them in the glove compartment of my car. I carry one with me in my back pocket when I take my dog for a walk. In fact, I carry it folded lengthwise, if you need to know, so that, God forbid, I won’t look bulky.”

Why?

“I used to think that if something was important enough, I’d remember it until I got home, where I could simply write it down in my notebook like some normal functioning member of society. But then I wouldn’t. … If it feels natural, if it helps you to remember, take notes. It’s not cheating. It doesn’t say anything about your character.”

A friend, one of the most extraordinary networkers I’ve ever met, carries a pocket-sized dictating recorder. In the midst of lunch, he’ll record a brief message: “Call John to find out the questions he uses with search committees.”

Whatever system you use, the point is to gather—record so you can use—the information you need.

I listened to an audio-book about the Battle of Agincourt purely for enjoyment. As I drove and listened, I jotted on notecards in my car, trying hard not to cause an accident. Then I typed those notes into a “reading journal” file on my laptop. They became the basis of an editorial I wrote in a recent online newsletter, a year after jotting the notes.

Some captured ideas I may never use, but that doesn’t deter me. I have seen the tremendous power of capturing a good idea.

At this point, you may be feeling, “This is tiring. I can’t be on mental alert all the time.”

True. You can’t exercise Capture at every moment. But you don’t have to.

You may be reading a book right now and be struggling to finish it. With Capture, you can ask yourself, “If I’m not getting something out of this book—if this is not helping me in my key growth areas as a Christian or leader—why am I reading it?” Capture might save you hours reading a book of marginal value; this more than offsets the minutes jotting notes from a book that is central to your growth.

In addition, your goal is to capture the information, but that doesn’t mean you must do all the capturing. I know several pastors who merely stick a Post-It note on a book page; from there a secretary or volunteer enters it into a sermon illustration file in the computer.

Finally, to intently gather information does not mean you force your mind full, choking down information by speed-reading or multitasking. You can and should take in information the healthy way, chewing thoroughly and resting between bites. Eugene Peterson writes that spiritual reading is “leisurely, repetitive, reflective reading. … It is a way of reading that shapes the heart at the same time that it informs the intellect, sucking out the marrow-nourishment from the bone-words” (Take and Read, Eerdmans, 1996).

Focus does not mean rushed learning; it means strategic and intentional learning.

Shoot: Act on the information you gathered

True wisdom does not come from information alone. Clifford Stoll quips that, “Data is not information any more than 50 tons of cement is a skyscraper.”

Wisdom comes from meditating on, then acting on, meaningful information. James exhorts us, “Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves; do what it says.” In a similar way, I can hear or read words and deceive myself into thinking I now know them. But I usually don’t, not until I do them.

Peter Drucker writes, “The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.”

In football, it’s better to score a few times than to gain lots of yards and fail to get in the end zone. The goal is not to march 95 yards and turn over the ball on downs. It’s to score.

The following questions help you get into the end zone of applied knowledge. Ask them after you’ve attended a conference, enjoyed a stimulating conversation, or read a book.

1. What did I learn?
2. As a result, what action will I take?
3. What long-term impact does it make in achieving my mission?

Let’s look at three common situations.

Seminars: Two people go to a seminar. Attender A takes clear and accurate notes, which he puts in a notebook and files once he gets home. Attender B scribbles a few words on a napkin but makes specific changes in his work routine when he gets home. Which person got the most out of the conference?

If the church or company is paying for me to go, I have an ethical responsibility to deliver a return on that investment. The only return I can make is to do my work $129 or $279 better than I did before the seminar. The way to do that is to apply at least one thing I learned.

Now, when I attend a conference, I do two things:

1. As I take notes, I put a star next to any point I want to implement immediately. What will I do, whom will I call, what will I change when I get back?
2. I block time on the first or second day I return from the conference to send memos, hold conversations, make calls, change systems. If I don’t do those things right away, I usually lose the motivation and then, the insight.

Books: Someone hands you a 300-page book and says, “You really ought to read this.” Given the relationship, you’d like to please the person, but your shelf is already sagging with books you don’t have time to read.

First, decide if the book is in one of your Focus areas. If not, thank the person but don’t feel guilty about not reading the book. Only you, not well-meaning friends, can direct your continuing education.

If the book is in your Focus areas, but you lack time to read, it’s better to read a 30-page chapter and take one action as a result, than to read all 300 pages and do nothing. So I select the key chapter of the book—usually chapter 2 or 3—and choose one action:

• file an illustration or quotation for use in a sermon
• photocopy a few pages for a key leader or staff member who needs the information
• write a key thought in my journal to be a prayer focus during the next month
• call a person to discuss the chapter I read or to get more information about it
• add an idea to the agenda of a key meeting coming up.

No, I didn’t read 270 of the 300 pages, but I did act on something I read and became more effective as a result. That, to me, is success. Plus, I can say to the person who loaned me the book, “I liked the idea of _____, and I did _____ as a result,” which affirms the giver.

Meetings: How many times have you been in a committee meeting that went well, but in the weeks that followed, little happened? People didn’t act on what was said.

Having endured that many times, I finally abandoned the traditional minutes of the meeting and went to a short list of action steps. The only written record of the meeting lists what action will be taken, by whom, and when. Then I send this list to each person immediately after the meeting.

The important part of the meeting is not so much what was discussed (yes, we’ll have a retreat) but acting on what was discussed (who is doing what to actually prepare the retreat). For example:

In short, “Shoot” comes down to: How can I apply what I’m learning? How can a decision be made, an action taken, a matter closed?

Not every idea you capture will be acted on immediately, and that’s fine. Some ideas you’ll use in next Sunday’s sermon, but other ideas—often the simplest and most powerful—should be stored away to mature and ripen. Ponder them, treasure them in your heart. A friend calls these vectoring ideas: nothing changes at first, but over time, the idea redirects your thought or your life.

For example, for four or five years I’ve been returning to this quotation from Fenelon: “Your mind is a good thing, but learn to distrust it and you will make better use of it.” Gradually this idea I captured in my journal is re-vectoring me from overuse of the rational faculties toward a fuller use of the intuitive and spiritual capacities God has given every person. I captured that idea, and now that idea has captured me.

An information fast

For spiritual leaders, it’s important to recognize that information must not only be managed, but also dethroned. At least one day a week, we must rest from gathering information, just as the ancient Israelites rested from gathering wood. We must still our racing minds and rest our information-soaked souls. By so doing, we declare that humans cannot live by information alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

In Tabletalk (November 2000), commentator Ken Myers writes, “We should regularly practice media fasts: days or weeks during which we reduce the flood of information we receive to the merest trickle. Not only will such a practice enable us to set our knowledge in perspective, it also will help us recognize the love/hate relationship we have with information overload. We say we are frustrated by having so much to respond to, but we still carry cell-phones everywhere and check our e-mail every 10 minutes. It makes us feel important to be so busy. Media fasts help us become more honest about our motivations.”

If we read at all during a media fast, we limit ourselves to something that nourishes the soul—and read it slowly, meditatively.

In the presence of God, we really must lose our insecurity about knowing everything, our anxiety about not being able to keep up. In God’s presence, we develop the peaceful spirit that God seeks, the quiet wisdom that orders knowledge. Jack Trout, in The Power of Simplicity, quotes a scholar from George Mason University that today, “the comparative advantage shifts from those with information glut to those with ordered knowledge, from those who can process vast amounts of throughput to those who can explain what is worth knowing, and why.”

One more reason why the meek will rule the earth.

Kevin A. Miller is editor-at-large of

Leadership. Kevin@leadershipjournal.net

Copyright & 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.