Tag Archives: time management

Life management: Meeting Jesus at the heart of it.

A life in the Spirit, Marriage and Family, , , , , ,

Getting serious about one’s life might start with time management, but it needs to end with eternity. Having enough personal value to keep a schedule of our time is a good starting point that many of us never reach. But we are much more valuable than our schedule and there is a lot more to our time than what is passing by so quickly.

Good management hopefully leads to the greater good

I briefly taught the Leadership Team the other night that time management is not just in one’s mind, as if following the laws of effectiveness will really result in getting what needs to be done accomplished. “Good time management” can also lead to burn out and joyless toil. Lots of good managers are resentful, put-upon people who don’t feel like they have a life, just a schedule. For our purposes in the church — and where else is there but “in the church,” since we are in Christ?, time management is from the heart, not just the head.

I was drawn deeper into my heart to meditate on my time not long ago. I was praying about what I should do. I always have a million things to do, but almost every day I wonder what I should be doing. I was thinking about the limits of my time (for one thing, the social security trust fund is dying when I am about 80, so that’s one limitation!). While I was praying, a surprising word came to me: “keep building.”

I somehow connected that word to Nehemiah and discovered that he probably began the walls of Jerusalem when he was in his thirties, but he kept rebuilding the city until he was in his 80’s, or so Josephus implies.  I did not think I needed to keep building things — on the contrary, I hope I never get into another building project! But as I meditated, I realized what the Lord was telling me was about the process of building, not the results of building.

More things and more buildings could be important, and more well-built Jesus-followers is certainly a worthy goal. But there was something deeper. I needed to be encouraged when it came to the building that builds me. “Keep building” was about the verb, not the noun. The joy in exercising the gifts God gives me feeds my heart. At the heart of me, I am a builder. What is happening in my schedule doesn’t really change that.

Jesus exercising time management

Jesus feeds our true selves to live our truth

I don’t think I will efficiently build things unless I find joy in building. My mind may be kind of useless if my heart is not in it, and even deeper, if my soul is not in it. I don’t think you will manage your time for the greatest good, unless you have a heart that loves the greatest good. The greatest good is God. We are going for being like Jesus when he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Does saying that mean Jesus was working too hard? His schedule might suggest that. Or is he just working out who he is? What Jesus does doesn’t make Jesus who he is. Neither does merely doing our assignments efficiently and most profitably makes us good workers. We are works of God who need to work out what we have been given to be, like a tree needs to grow.

To use our time well, we need to feel our value and respect the value we bring to the greater good. No amount of scheduling will solve the problems of lack of heart, not hearing from God, and not feeling your true self. Choosing how to allot our time will always be hard, but it is only when our food is to do the work of the One who sent us that we can face the challenges with our jobs and commitments and not just bend under the load of our anxiety or fatigue.

Our twenties and thirties are crucial for developing our hearts as we refine our schedules.

I often run into a lack of vision with married couples. They are strangely in their heads, even when they are trying to connect heart to heart. They want solutions, not redemption. They want a road map, not a Guide. For struggling couples, the question is usually less about how to make the little changes in relating that make life pleasant. The question is, “Do you have a heart that intends to present your mate complete in Christ?” Deeper understanding, better behavior and changes in the schedule will definitely improve things. But when it comes down to it, love that comes from Christ saves the world, not one’s love for what someone else is doing. Life is not about being pleased or being pleasing, that’s good, but the greater good is pleasing the Lord and enjoying the food that is eternal. Like Jesus told the woman at the well, “Thanks for the water. But if you asked me, I would give you water from an eternal well.”

What organizes our time? It is a big question when people are making decisions about their lives — and what 20 or 30-something person is not doing that? Are we really going to be like all the people I follow on the freeway who are reading their phone while driving? Even when we are sitting in our prayer chair, we can’t look up from our GPS and be steered by a deeper instinct! Are we more obsessed with taking the perfect next step when we could stride across the landscape, confident that we are eternal? Is time a threat or do we redeem it?  The apostle Thomas was troubled that Jesus was going to His father’s house and he did not know the way. Jesus told him:  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Thomas may have immediately asked Siri for answers Jesus would not tell him! Even so, the truth remains: knowing Jesus provides us with a deeper sense of direction than GPS or a perfectly managed week.

When I get to talk to people about their time and having more heart than mind, they usually want to know what I am talking about. That’s nice. But when they leave the office they often fall back into their rut; they are steered by some “best practice,” or by the invisible hand, or by whatever their friends are into at the moment. I can relate to that. I have been thinking about how to use my time well for decades. But when it comes down to it, what I really need, beyond better technique, is God speaking something  into me that transcends the worries I bring to my day. One day, it was “Keep building.” I’m glad I had devoted time with God in my schedule because that was really helpful!

Shave off some workweek hours that could be better used elsewhere

Leadership, The Mission, , ,

We want to get a lot done. Not only are we responsible workers doing good things at our money-making jobs, we have a family business to tend, now that Jesus has called us into the Kingdom of God! Our limited time is organized around the big project of redemption that comes with being our true selves in Christ; our daily jobs, our human family requirements and our sense of mission are all defined by the good work we are assigned by our Leader. We all need to be adept time managers, since the time is short and the days are evil. The people called out to lead the church have a big challenge when it comes to managing the workweek, so this is especially for them.

clock eyeThe pastors are always struggling with managing time, as are all the church’s leaders, since their project is so large and the demands are so variable. So we often appreciate advice from people who give advice on these things. One of the blogs we often run into is by Michael Hyatt, former Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and a Sunday school teacher in Nashville. I decided to re-do one of his posts today to offer some basic help with managing time so we can feel less breathless about the big things we want to do together. Here we go:

Are there ten hours of unnecessary work sucking the life out of your week? Here are seven suggestions Michael Hyatt thinks might work for you if you applied a little thought and effort. How can we shave off some workweek hours that could be better used elsewhere?

1. Limit the time you spend online.

The web is probably most people’s #1 time suck. We can mindlessly surf from one page to another with no clear objective in mind. Before we know it, we can eat up several hours a day. The key is to put a fence around this activity and limit our time online. Set a timer if you have to. This is also true for email. Unless you are in a customer service position where you have to be “always-on,” you should check email no more than two or three times a day. What’s more, don’t get anything pushed to your phone so it doesn’t push you around unless that is the essence of what you do. Turn off the ringers and bells or just turn off the phone until it is time to check up on everyone!

2. Touch email messages once and only once.

Email is great for group projects (like building an authentic church), but how many times do you read the same email message over and over again? The information hasn’t changed — reading it again is probably just procrastinating. Try making a personal rule: I will only read each message once then take the appropriate action: do, delegate, defer, file or delete it. Hyatt describes these in more detail in another post.

3. Follow the two-minute rule.

Keep a short “to do list” (never longer than about thirty items) because you do everything you can do immediately. If you need to make a phone call, rather than entering it on your to-do list, just make the call. If you can complete an action in less than two minutes, just go ahead and do it. Why wait? This “bias toward action” will reduce your workload.

When we don’t do things promptly, we end up generating even more work for ourselves and others. The longer a project sits, the longer it takes to overcome inertia and get it moving again. The key is to define the very next action and do it. We don’t have to complete the whole project, just take the next action.

4. Rebel against low-impact meetings.

Don’t create them or attend them. It seems like we have too many meetings when the meeting organizer isn’t prepared, the meeting objective isn’t defined, or we can’t really affect the outcome one way or the other. Every meeting should have a written objective and a written agenda. If we don’t have these two minimal items, how do we know when the meeting is over? When the meeting is done we should feel energized and assigned, not worn out.

5. Schedule time to get work done.

This is crucial. As the saying goes, “nature abhors a vacuum.” If you don’t take control of your calendar, someone else (or something else)will. You can’t spend all your time in meetings or being available for “emergencies” and still get your projects finished. Instead, you need to make appointments with yourself and be unavailable to whoever else would like to schedule your time. Go ahead and put the work time in your calendar. Then, when someone asks for something, you can legitimately say, “No, I’m sorry, that won’t work. I already have a commitment.” And you do—to yourself!

6. Cultivate the habit of non-finishing.

Not every project we start is worth finishing. Sometimes we get into it and realize, “This is a waste of time.” Fine, then give yourself permission to quit. Try this with reading. Most books are not worth finishing – many could be cut in half and we wouldn’t miss a thing. Many articles are summarized at the end and that’s all we need – or read the subheadings! The key is to read as long as you are interested and then stop. There are too many great things to read to be spending time bogged down in the merely good ones. And remember that project I mentioned that was languishing undone on the to-do list? How about declaring it dead and starting it over right? Or just leave it to someone else.

7. Engage in a weekly review and preview.

Part of the reason our lives get out of control is because we don’t plan — or, for Jesus followers, we don’t pray. Hyatt says: “Once a week, we have to come up for air. Or—to change the metaphor—you have to take the plane up to 30,000 feet, so we can see the big picture.” We know that we have to do better than that! We have to develop a deliberate habit of prayer to breathe or see at all! We want to pray without ceasing! But the rule he is shooting for with his work schedule makes practical sense. He says: “I review my notes from the previous week and look ahead to my calendar. I have written elsewhere on this topic, so I won’t repeat myself here.” We need to review and reschedule as a rule, but following rules without the Ruler enlivening them is a delusional waste of time.

If we are responsible for many people and the work of the kingdom of God, it will take some good time management skills. The jobs we do for money and career focus will need to stay in productive boundaries and the mission we are on together as the people of God will need to stay on track. We will create less anxiety for ourselves and be able to handle the anxiety of others if we scale down our hours to a manageable level by cutting out the wasted motion and developing a few good habits.