Jeremy Madsen

February 2022

February 28, 2022 By Jeremy Madsen

February 23: Social Media Questions and Answers

A discussion with social media expert Mimi Bascom

What is a social media “brand”? How often should I post? How is Instagram different than Facebook? How do I build an engaged audience on Instagram?

Bio: Mimi Bascom is an influencer and freelance social media manager/strategist. She enjoys creating content for her personal brand to show people that religion is still relevant, and she helps brands organically build an audience online and increase revenue (you can view her work at mimibascom.com). She is a recent BYU graduate with a bachelor’s degree in communications, and she has been working in the social media industry for the past three years.

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December 2021

December 31, 2021 By Jeremy Madsen

December 16: Empathy, Dignity, and Cultural Diversity

A discussion with author Kaela Rivera

How can we effectively portray cultural diversity in our writing? Using her recent award-winning novel Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls as an example, Kaela Rivera will discuss writing latinx characters, the difficulties of bringing Cece Rios’s latinx fantasy world to life, navigating her own mixed heritage, and using empathy as a guiding tool for writing characters with dignity, especially those from marginalized backgrounds.

Bio: Kaela Rivera writes about the folktales of her Mexican-American and British parents. When she’s not crafting stories, she’s working as an editor for a marketing company. Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls—which won the 2022 Charlotte Huck Award—is her first novel; the sequel comes out in fall 2022.

There is no recording available for this Zoom discussion.

November 2021

November 30, 2021 By Jeremy Madsen

November 18: Heeding the Spiritual Call to Create

A discussion with songwriter and author Michael Young

How can we as Latter-day Saint Christians heed the call to consecrate our time and talents to the Lord? Author and songwriter Michael Young will share his experience writing and collaborating on 100 songs submitted for the new Hymnbook and Children’s Songbook. Michael will share how he was able to succeed through both spiritual preparation and networking and give us tips on how we can apply these strategies in our own creative pursuits!

Bio: Michael teaches in a German immersion program and enjoys acting in community theater and writing music. He played with the Handbell Choir Bells on Temple Square for several years and is now a member of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. He is the author of the novels in The Canticle Kingdom Series, The Last Archangel Series, The Chess Quest Series, and The Penultimate Dawn Cycle, as well as the nonfiction work The Song of the Righteous. He runs several podcasts, including Chapter and Verse, The Carols of Christmas, and Songs for All Seasons.

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Why We Should See Goals as the Means, Not the End

November 11, 2021 By Jeremy Madsen Leave a Comment

By Jeremy Madsen

We’ve all been there. We set a goal. We make plans to reach it. We have the best of intentions. We work hard. And then we fall short.

For me, this happened a lot on my mission. Each transfer, my companion and I would set daily, weekly, and monthly goals for standards such as lessons taught, new investigators found, investigators in church, or investigators baptized. And most of the time, we ended each period with zeros for the last two categories and woefully low numbers for the first two.

What frustrated me most was the seeming capriciousness of whether we met our goals. One week we could work incredibly hard and get ten new investigators; the next we could work equally hard and get one. There seemed to be no correlation between our efforts and how close we came to our goals.

Now, the mission is an extreme example. Unlike most areas of our lives, success in mission goals depends almost entirely on the agency and choices of others. But even when we’re completely responsible for our goals, we still often fall short. For example, in the summer of 2017, I set a goal to write a novel from start to finish in a year. Four and a half years later, I’m barely two-thirds of the way through the first draft.

But back to my mission. By the time I finished my two years of service, I had developed a dislike, or at least a distrust, of goals. Why set goals, if most of the time we fail to reach them? Why subject ourselves to feelings of inadequacy and frustration over and over again?

Then, a few months after coming home, I was reviewing chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel (the missionary manual). The chapter, which was on using time wisely, had a section about goals. And I began to notice something. While the chapter talked a lot about setting goals and working towards them, it rarely talked about achieving goals. The closer I looked, the more I began to notice what the chapter didn’t say about goals.

To illustrate, I have selected some statements from chapter 8, and beside each I have written what the manual doesn’t say:

What *Preach My Gospel* says:	What it *doesn’t* say:
“Meaningful goals and careful planning will help you accomplish what the Lord requires of you” (p. 143).	“Meaningful effort and careful planning will help you accomplish your goals.”
“Through goals and plans, our hopes are transformed into action” (p. 148).	“Through actions and plans, our hopes are transformed into reality as we meet our goals.”
“When you fall short of a goal, evaluate your efforts and seek for ways to accomplish the goal” (p. 148).	“If you fall short of a goal, evaluate your efforts and identify what you did wrong.”(Notice the contrast between if and when.)
“For each key indicator, set goals that help you stretch, exercise faith, and work effectively” (p. 153).	“For each key indicator, you must stretch, exercise faith, and work effectively in order to achieve your goal.”
“The ultimate measure of success is not in achieving goals alone but in the service you render and the progress of others. Goals are a means of helping you bring about much good among Heavenly Father’s children” (p. 148).	“The ultimate measure of success is in achieving goals. Only by achieving your goals can you render service and help others progress. By achieving goals, you bring about much good among Heavenly Father’s children.”

This exercise taught me a powerful lesson. I had always seen goals as part of the end: we need to do x, y, or z, so we set a goal and work hard to bring about x, y, or z. But I was wrong. Goals are the means. And they aren’t the means to a certain achievement, prize, or destination. They are the means to a better journey—a better life.

We set goals and strive to achieve them because by so doing, we exert greater effort than we would otherwise. Goals push us off the couch and out of our comfort zones. Goals motivate us to work harder and smarter than we normally would. Goals help direct our energy, time, and resources towards what’s truly important. As Preach My Gospel says, goals “help [us] stretch, exercise faith, and work effectively.”

For me, the main takeaway from this realization is that we don’t need to feel bad when we fail to reach a goal. As long as the act of setting the goal pushed us to greater efforts—as long as the goal helped us be more godlike than we otherwise would—then it was a success.

I’m learning to adopt this new attitude about goals. Remember my ongoing project to write a novel? A year ago, I set a goal to complete two chapters of my rough draft a week. The first week, I completed one chapter. The second week, I completed another chapter. Then it took me two weeks to finish the next chapter, and four weeks for the chapter after that. School, work, and family responsibilities pushed me farther and farther behind. But I didn’t despair. I didn’t get down on myself for not meeting my goal. Rather, I recognized that setting the goal had pushed me to complete four more chapters during a busy semester than I probably would have otherwise.

So when the New Year rolls around soon and it’s time to set goals, don’t get down thinking about all the resolutions you failed to meet, the diets you failed to keep, and the books you failed to finish (or start) since the previous year. Think about how your goals helped you be a little better and work a little harder each day. Then set new goals that are means to those ends.

Summary

The value of goals is not so much in achieving them, but in how the process of setting and striving for goals alters our behavior. When we set goals that motivate us, focus our efforts, and exercise our faith, we work more effectively, accomplish more, and live better lives than we would otherwise. By seeing goals as means instead of ends, we can avoid the frustration and discouragement that come from the many times we fail to meet our goals.

Points to Ponder

What are my current goals, and how do they help me be a better person?
What is a goal that I failed to meet in the past? How did it help me grow?
What is the difference between a goal and a promise/commitment? Why is it more important to meet a promise or commitment than it is to meet a goal?

5 Reasons You Should Read “Done!” by Don Aslett

June 23, 2021 By Jeremy Madsen 2 Comments

By Jeremy Madsen

Do you perpetually have a dozen too many irons in the fire? Do you struggle to keep your head above the flood of work projects, Church duties, family responsibilities, personal commitments, emails, text messages, phone notifications, laundry, dishes, and prayers? Is your life’s greatest problem that of never getting enough done?

If so, I strongly recommend reading Don Aslett’s masterpiece on productivity: Done! How to Accomplish Twice as Much in Half the Time—at Home and at the Office.

From when I was first introduced to Don Aslett’s books growing up (via my mother, herself a model of effective productivity), to when I revisited them this last year, I have found each of his publications inspiring and empowering. Done! has shown me how to get more done more quickly and more effectively, with less hassle, less stress, and less wasted energy. Here are five reasons why you should give Done! a try:

1. Don Aslett knows what he’s talking about

Rarely do the credentials of an author matter more than for a book touting itself as being about productivity. In this regard, Don Aslett leaves the masses far behind. The founder of a cleaning company now with over 4,000 employees, author of 40 books, and sought-after speaker and presenter, Don Aslett embodies the principles he teaches. (And he’s a Latter-day Saint!)

**2. Done! is packed with actionable and specific advice**

Done! offers no gimmick, secret formula, or calendar system for productivity—instead it is packed with specific strategies, tactics, and principles for cutting out time-wasting habits, approaching common problems in more efficient ways, and maintaining motivation and momentum throughout your day and week.

For example, chapter 3 is devoted to listing and describing in gory detail all the activities that rob us time, space, and energy, including three I’m especially guilty of as an editor and writer: interruptions (silence that phone when working!), oversleeping (get up when that alarm goes off!), and “rubbish reading” (ignore those tempting click-bait articles!). This book will help you identify your own productivity weak points.

**3. Done! will make you rethink conventional productivity “wisdom”**

Occassionally, Don Aslett offers advice that runs counter to the standard productivity fare. At one point, he warns against following schedules—at least, schedules that we rigidly stick to. “Schedules will bind and stiffen you if you follow them too closely. People who have become such expert schedulers that they run around with a planner in their hand at all times lose creativity and flexibility—the schedule becomes their master.” He then tells a story of how, when two weeks of solid rain threw off the yard work he had planned (“scheduled”) during a trip to their summer home in Hawaii, he immediately pivoted to use the time to draft an entire book, write some TV scripts, and even fly to New York and back for a business trip—all completely “unscheduled.”

**4. Done! is a fun read**

Done! is a delightful book to read. Each subsection is largely self-contained, meaning I can pick the book up for a three-minute motivational pick-me-up while waiting in a doctor’s office or giving a bottle to my baby daughter.

Don Aslett shares many anecdotes—from his own life or others’—that infuse life into his book, grounding each piece of advice in a concrete, memorable, and often funny story or observation.

A warning: Don Aslett’s positive, even exuberant attitude towards productivity is highly contagious!

**5. Done! will teach you the greatest secret of productivity: be early!**

In chapter 5 (my favorite chapter), Don Aslett lays out what he believes is the one great “secret” of getting more done: be early! A task performed one week early (or one day or one hour) can be three or five or ten times more effective than the same task performed on-time or late.

In the last week alone, here are ways I’ve seen earliness or lateness affect my life for good or ill:

Early: My wife was assigned to prep some Father’s Day card assembly kits for a family reunion. She finished the kits more than a week in advance, and she also made extra. When I needed a Father’s Day card on short notice three days later, it was a cinch!
Late: For a teacher council meeting, the Sunday School counselor in charge didn’t finalize or announce the topic until an hour before church, meaning no one had time to study the material beforehand.
Early: When our temple opened to phase 3 during the 2020 pandemic, I jumped online within the hour and reserved our family a session on the best day for our calendar. Later that day, every available reservation for the next two months had been filled.
Late: We invited a couple to join us for the sealing session we had scheduled, but the husband had let his recommend expire during COVID, meaning he’d either have to miss the session or scramble to set up two recommend interviews in a week’s time.
Early: On a vacation up to Idaho, we reserved a hotel in Pocatello several days in advance. When we got to the hotel and checked in, we learned from the desk staff that every hotel in Pocatello had since sold out for that night!
Late: My wife and I were planning a cross-country move and began apartment hunting about a month out. But by then, many of the places we called had no available units until two or three or even four months after our moving date, decreasing our options and multiplying our stress.
Early: I gave myself plenty of time to arrive at an unfamiliar airport. After taking 20 minutes to navigate security, I looked around—and realized I was in the wrong terminal! I had to go back out of security to another corner of the airport and pass through a different security checkpoint—but I had arrived two hours before boarding time, so I never felt stressed or rushed!
Late: On a trip I took this week, three out of my four flights were delayed almost two hours beyond their original departure times. I have seen one long round of stressed passengers, tired booking agents, long help-desk lines, and missed connections. The shockwaves of those late flights disseminated outward like ripples, delaying and postponing everything in their path, from vacation plans to babysitting arrangements to other flights—and the vicious cycle of lateness rolls on.

Think about your typical workday. How many projects do you stress about because they’re behind schedule? How many emails do you get asking you to solve a problem caused by somebody being late? How many opportunities do you lose because you respond to them three days after hearing about them, instead of three minutes or three hours? How much prime writing or editing or brainstorming time do you lose in the morning because you sleep in? Take a page from Don Aslett’s book—be early!

Still not convinced? Listen to this endorsement from the Lord Himself: “He that seeketh me early shall find me, and shall not be forsaken” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:83, emphasis added).

Get more done with Don!

If you want to reach more of your goals, if you want to win the fight against your endless to-do lists, if you want to make a greater impact on the world—I cannot recommend Don Aslett’s book Done! more highly. A delightful read packed with time-tested tactics and unforgettable anecdotes, Done! will forever change the way you approach your workdays and weekends. You don’t even need to read the whole thing—just mine it for all the five-minute nuggets of wisdom it contains. Then put away the distractions, ignore the diversions, and start doing!

Jeremy Madsen is a fantasy writer, freelance editor, and biblical scholar. With his three siblings, he runs the website Atrium of Light, a repository for scripture songs used to memorize scripture passages through music. Jeremy is the founder of Universal Cape Day (March 10), a day to wear a cape, look epic, and feel heroic. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and kids. He is also the operations manager for LDSPMA.