You may be stressed and slammed and busy and overworked and overcommitted and up to your eyeballs in obligations.
You want to learn more about time management. You think perhaps a new system might help – or perhaps reading more about how to optimize some routine tasks you perform.
But the problem is you don’t have time to do the reading! You can’t find the time to learn about the new techniques. You can’t find the time to get going with the systems.
Sometimes time management is about large, sweeping goals and major projects that affect our lives. Other times, it’s just about a quick trick or two that will help us have a little fun and shave some minutes off of your workday.
This Thursday Time Tip is definitely one of the latter – a fun technique that can give you a little drive to close out some tasks.
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Duration 39:50In this podcast episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Barb Raveling, author of The Renewing of the Mind Project.
Whenever we talk about managing our times in more effective ways – ways that bring glory to God – we are talking about more than simply behavior changes.
Changing behaviors and habits starts with changing our thought patterns. And Barb is an expert at what scripture says (and doesn’t say) about how to go about that process.
I haven’t really shared this anywhere, but my wife and I are just getting out of a difficult season in our marriage. We weren’t in major trouble or on the brink of divorce, but we were going through one of those valleys in our relationship where we both needed to step up and work on our marriage.
So for the last year or so, I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to be a good husband – the husband that God calls me to be.
What a great and holy desire, right?
But it wasn’t, in my case.
I went about it the wrong way. And the mistake I made is a great illustration for how we can get off-course in attempting to be good stewards of our time.
There’s only so much mental effort that you can pour into a particular task before you need a break.
These breaks aren’t giving in to temptation. As mentioned in The Power of Full Engagement, taking the occasional breather helps you increase your energy levels before you tackle that difficult project again.
But there’s another strategy that I’ve toyed with that has allowed me to be quite productive and still enjoy the energizing effects of a break.
So you failed today. Maybe you lost your temper. Maybe you blew your diet. Maybe you procrastinated for a while and left your to-do list virtually unchanged.
To get back up, you’ve got to forgive yourself. But make sure you do that in the right way.
Give yourself grace – not tolerance.
How do you spend the 24 hours you have in a day?
I mean, how do you really spend them?
By performing a time audit, you can find out. And with a realistic perspective on how your time is actually spent, you have the information to find areas of improvement.
In fact, this audit has been one of the tools that has helped me the most over the past few years.
When the way you planned to run your day, or the way you planned to live your life is cut off or slowed down, the unbelief of impatience tempts you in two directions, depending partly on your personality, partly on circumstances:
For many people, we are our own harshest critics. We have high expectations for ourselves. We push for perfect performance.
But sometimes having high standards can backfire.
Expecting perfection can lead to a psychological phenomenon that I will call the “might as well” effect.
Philippians 4:13 is one of the most popular motivational scriptures: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
We see it in T-shirts and posters and tattoos. Philippians 4:13 is recited before we take tests, go for job interviews, play football games, or tackle the tough things in life.
It’s what I would imagine a Christian hero in an action movie would say right before the final battle.
But this scripture isn’t just about the challenges that make us nervous or the ones that make us sweat. This scripture is also about helping us relax and rest.