Welcome to Wise Men Wednesday, your weekly dose of Christian wisdom to thrive at home and in your business.
Posts I recently published:
Holy Hour for Amateurs and last week’s Holy Hour for Beginners
Words of wisdom:
Marc Andreessen On Productivity, Scheduling, Reading Habits, Work, and More
”It’s a pile of physical books and then the Kindle books. And you’re reading them all at the same time. When you sit down to read, you just read the one that’s the most interesting of that pile. It turns out those are the ones that you finish. A month later, there’s a bunch that you’re theoretically reading and you’re on Chapter Three and you’re never gone back to it. That’s like having the shirt in your closet you haven’t worn in a year. It’s a signal to get rid of it.”
Happy birthday Ben Greenfield! Over the weekend my friend Ben published a surprise new book. Fit Soul – Tools, Tactics, & Habits for Optimizing Spiritual Fitness. I read an early version of the book in October and was completely floored. He took hundreds of books written by C.S. Lewis, John Ortberg, Richard Rohr, Richard J. Foster, Dallas Willard, John Piper, and many more and distilled them into this one succinct book. Make sure you pick it up! (It’s free!)
My 5 favorite podcasts from 2020:
Legacy Dads:
Hosts Lance and Dante share lessons from within the trenches covering topics including marriage, parenting, and leadership. They help men prioritize and balance their Christian faith with leading their families and living and working in our hyper connected fast paced world. I love their podcast because it is always connected directly back to Scripture. This podcast has helped me be a better husband.
Front Row Dads:
This podcast is quite similar to Legacy Dads. They are focused more on the needs of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Their tagline is “Family men with businesses, not businessmen with families.” Running a business is hard work. Successfully being a good husband, father, friend, and having a strong mind, body and spirit, while also running one is even more difficult. This podcast equips me with quick and actionable bits of wisdom and they have a premium Brotherhood group to take you to the next level.
The Tim Ferriss Show:
I’ve been listening to this podcast for at least six years. Tim Ferriss is one of my favorite interviewers and is always able to pull interesting and novel nuggets from his guest’s lives. He also interviews guests you won’t hear anywhere else including some of my favorites from this year: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, two with Steven Rinella: one and two, a fantastic interview with Matthew McConaughey with a great quote “Less impressed, more involved.” and Josh Waitzkin inspiration for the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer and author of one of my favorite books The Art of Learning. I once had the pleasure of hanging out for a few hours with Tim and a small group at the Detroit airport. I was quiet and didn’t ask any questions because I was more interested in learning, but I filled pages of notes with interesting takeaways.
Entrepreneurs on Fire:
John Lee Dumas must hold the record for the most podcast interviews ever conducted. Since 2012 he has recorded over 3000 interviews and still manages to discover new and interesting guests each week. You are guaranteed to find experts within your business category on the podcast and if you don’t already own a company you will be inspired to start one.
Ben Greenfield Fitness:
My friend Lisa suggested Ben’s podcast to me during a nutritional consult July of 2015. I have listened to almost every episode since and have been working with Ben since 2016 on many different projects including the Christian Gratitude Journal, Boundless, unschooling his sons, and much more. Ben’s podcast covers the whole gamut of mind, body, and spirit lifestyle improvements. Ben walks the walk and is not afraid to change his tune if the science is updated.
Next week I will share my 5 favorite books from 2020. Have a great rest of the week and Merry Christmas!
James Quandahl
P.S. Please reply with your favorite podcasts from the year!