Here’s my 3 step process to finding loads of great articles.

1. Add bunches of subscriptions to Google Reader.
a) Create folders on various topics of interest to you
b) Spend time finding the 10 best blogs you can find on each topic.
c) subscribe those blogs’ RSS feeds and categorize them by folder.
d) Sort each subscription “by magic” – Reader will learn and bring you headlines it thinks you want.

2. Skim lots of headlines in Google Reader.
a) Spend time getting good at spotting potentially good headlines.
b) Skim fast, starring headlines that are potentially good.
c) Go back and spend time on the starred items.
d) “Like” the items that are indeed good, “Share”  those “really really” good.

3. Watch as Google Reader learns from your Likes/Shares.
a) Start reading in the “All Items” folder – and notice the vast majority of good headlines will, over time, bubble to the first few pages.

Once you’ve got this system going, you can add loads of subscriptions to Reader – I presently have over 300 or 400 – because “sort by magic” will tend to bring you good articles. I never worry about the unread count. Every so often I mark “as read” everything more than 2 weeks old. The more subscriptions you have, the more likely it is that a really important article will get picked up and reblogged, so you’ll catch it.

  • Share/Bookmark

As a case study for assessing your work, let’s look at how I decide on what I’m going to write about on this blog.

My ultimate goal is to see 50,000 pioneer teams deployed long-term into cross-cultural situations among unreached people groups, each of which develop healthy, sufficient, sustainable ministries that can and do impact 100,000 people over 10 years.

My writing helps this ultimate goal by providing a repository of knowledge and ideas that people can use to build their teams. (I also do other things, but the great thing about a blog is that it’s content is available 24×7x365, often to people who have Internet access whom I will never meet.)

My goal with the writing, then, is to create a practical collection of knowledge that, if applied, will help my readers build their momentum to reach the unreached. I try to write or collect material that contributes to someone’s momentum in six specific ways, using the key words drive, energy, effort, inspiration, power, strength (see “6 ways to build momentum,” Sep. 1, 2005):

  • Drive: A picture of the world or some segment of it that drives us to have a bigger or more accurate or clearer vision of the world and particularly the unreached.
  • Energy: Something that builds up the capacity of someone to act. Generally hear I look for articles about new skills, new competencies, new abilities to act.
  • Effort: Energy used. I want to provide a prophetic challenge to people not just to build skills, but to use those skills practically—to get up and do something about the vision that drives them.
  • Inspiration: infusing energy to bring about sudden change. I want to write articles which motivate people who have “low momentum” to act.
  • Power: control and discipline, focused power. I want to write “how-to” articles which give people the skills to control and focus their energy on their vision.
  • Strength: resistance to force or attack. I want to write articles which help people resist distraction and apathy and stay true to their goals.

In addition, I generally divide articles into two kinds: those that have to do with the intersection between swarms and the unreached, and those that are about the unreached in general. If it’s about swarming, then I’ll often devote a longish article to it and post it on the left. If it’s a link to someone else’s article relating in some way to the unreached, I’ll usually put an annotated link to the right. In this way, I’m assessing how much time I should devote to a particular subject.

In addition, I use article categories to help classify what “kind” of article I’m writing: a Reality Check, an Analysis piece, a Trends piece, a collection of Statistics, etc. I don’t use the 6 categories above (these are more “impact categories”) as the blog categories (where I use such things as Analysis, Trends, Statistics, etc.), although perhaps I should. What do you think? Write a comment below!

As you can see, these are still fairly “small steps” toward measurement. None of these have numeric goals attached. Like you, I am struggling with how to assess the success of my own writing. The important thing is to keep the struggle moving forward, further refining these goals and ideas as we go along.

How do you assess your progress on your own vision?

  • Share/Bookmark

No assessment may be better than a bad one.

March 2, 2010

There is an age-old argument in missions and the church in general when it comes to assessing anything: the argument of quantity vs. quality. Pick up any review of a statistical reference on the church (e.g. Operation World, the World Christian Encyclopedia, World Christian Trends or the recently released Atlas of Global Christianity, reviewed in [...]

Read the full article →

Leader development to reach the unreached

March 1, 2010

I have begun the month of March with some strong reflections on the impact of leader development on unreached peoples. When we think of unreached peoples, most of what I’ve written in the past is focused on the idea of unreached peoples, the need to reach them, how to recruit workers to reach them, how [...]

Read the full article →

Realignment Day: Exodus 1

February 26, 2010

One of the activities LeaderSource has its folks do – which I’m getting used to, this being my first one – is that one day out of the month is a “Realignment Day.” You take it and spend time realigning… with God, with who God made you to be, what you’re doing, etc. LeaderSource makes [...]

Read the full article →

Storytelling the Status of Missions

February 25, 2010

As many people know, I am now on staff with LeaderSource, an organization that equips churches to build healthy leaders by helping them design healthy leader development movements. It’s a great org, very swarmish, and I’m enjoying my first weeks with them.
Later next month I will be traveling, participating in a couple of conferences. One [...]

Read the full article →

Resilient Communities

February 25, 2010

Resilience, according to Merriam-Webster, is (a) the ability to withstand shock without permanent damage and (b) the ability to recover easily from misfortune or change.
Resilient communities, therefore, would be communities of individuals that have within themselves the wherewithal to withstand shock and to recover easily.
Such communities would:

Be aware of and strong against vulnerabilities
Be defended against [...]

Read the full article →

The difference between an Impossible Goal and a Plausible Promise

February 22, 2010

In http://bit.ly/cvpSXq, the writer considers how Google believes in setting “impossible” goals each quarter and striving to reach them. “65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary.” This approach is very similar to the idea of a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG).
We’ve written here before about the idea of the Plausible Promise: something [...]

Read the full article →

The Power of Zero: a compelling vision

February 18, 2010

I wasn’t at TED this year (obviously) but apparently Bill Gates gave an incredible speech. It was reviewed here. I found this review of the speech (I’m looking forward to seeing it on ted.com) to be fascinating on several levels which apply to swarms, leader development, debates, plausible promises… Here are some brief notes.
1. This [...]

Read the full article →

Buzz: Google’s Game-Changing Instant “Crowd”

February 17, 2010

Recently, Google has launched “Buzz,” it’s new social networking platform. The response has been varied, but here are two articles I think capture why Buzz in my opinion will be a long term success.

Google Buzz has completely changed the game: here’s how
How Google went into “code red” and saved Google Buzz

I am writing here about [...]

Read the full article →