I’m blessed to serve in various roles, and I love each of them. But, that fact also means I’m busy. If I don’t manage my time well, I quickly find myself in trouble. Here are some things I do, though, that help me:
- Train myself to get up earlier. I’m usually up by 5am, and that additional time gives me time to do my devotion, work out, and simply pray through the day. That does mean, though, that I go to bed earlier—but the uninterrupted time in the morning is invaluable to me.
- Pray through each day the night before and the morning of. Each night, I review my next day’s calendar and pray through the scheduled things. Then I pray about the unscheduled things that are likely to happen. This time of prayer helps me to see what’s on my plate the next day, and it helps me “give” the day to the Lord so I steward it wisely. Then, I quickly pray through the day the next morning, too.
- Prayerfully use a “to do” list. Here’s my point here: I try to prioritize what I must do during the day, but (and, here’s my primary point), I pray before I begin a task and when I complete it. Starting everything with “God, help me,” and ending everything with, “God, thank You for helping me” has kept me focused on the task while also strengthening my prayer life.
- Do the things I don’t want to do first. I usually have some tasks I don’t look forward to, and it’s easy for me to put them off—which means they’re always hanging over my head. If I do them first, though, (a) I can do them when I have the most energy, and (b) I always have more exciting things to look forward to during the day.
- In most cases, limit meetings to 30 minutes. You can accomplish a lot in that time if you’re focused and intentional. I simply tell folks, “I’m glad you’re here. We have only 30 minutes, though, so let’s use our time wisely.” If I need to make exceptions for ministry purposes, I can always do that.
- Wisely use email, texting, and social media. For example, I quickly delete and unsubscribe to emails I don’t need. I respond to every email I receive, but the response will likely be concise. As much as possible, I use my phone to call somebody rather than go back and forth with emails and texts. Except for tweets about my blog posts (tweets my assistant sets), I simply avoid social media as much as I can—and as far as I can tell, I’m not missing much.
- Do quickly anything I can do quickly. If I can resolve an issue with a quick phone call, I do it. If I need to sign a paper, I do it then. If I need to have a conversation/meeting with a staff member, I do it as soon as possible. Anything I delay doing when I could do it now only increases the stack of things I need to do—and that’s not good time management.
If you’d like to hear a few more of my time management tips, you can find them here in this older post.
