Feeling a little too busy?
Wish there were more hours in the day to get things done?
Busyness can take its toll on you in more ways than one. You lose sleep. You’re stressed. You do mediocre work. You forget things. Life becomes exactly what you never wanted it to be.
It’s time you start doing everything on your schedule on purpose.
Especially as church leaders and pastors, we overwork ourselves in the name of “ministry” while our families suffer for it. While our health suffers for it. While, dare I say, our legacy suffers for it.
I can think of at least 5 things we can do to organize our chaotic lives. I can’t promise life will get less busy. If you are working to make a difference in the world and obeying the Great Commission, you will be busy.
But it’s possible to do everything on your schedule on purpose. Here’s how:
1. Define what you should NOT do
With the help of your pastor/supervisor, decide what you shouldn’t be doing. As Michael Hyatt talks about in his Life Plan ebook, break your life down into the most important “accounts”. If a request comes your way, line it up to your pre-defined priorities and decide if you should invest your time into it. It’s amazing how freeing it is to say “no” when you need to. If you haven’t defined what you should NOT do, you’ll accept everything and continue the cycle of chaos once again. Sure, we all have aspects of our work that are essential that we don’t necessarily enjoy. But defining our priorities frees us to say “no” and stay focused on what matters most.
2. Limit social media interaction
Twitter & Facebook are great tools to spread your message, connect with friends, and influence people online. But it’s also a great time waster. We like to check the RTs, blog stats, and facebook comments to make ourselves feel better, but it’s a distraction from you being present in your day. What I try and do is schedule three times throughout the day where I check my social networking sites: once in the morning, once after work, and once in the evening. As I mentioned in this post, I’ll even schedule 4-5 tweets within HootSuite every morning so I can provide helpful content without tweeting it all day. It’s really helped my productivity.
3. Be fully present within meetings
Let’s be honest. Meetings can suck most of the time. While a meeting can suck because it’s lead poorly, you also contribute to the sucky-ness by not being fully present. Imagine if you showed up to every meeting prepared to contribute, without your distracting laptop, and with a pen and paper ready to write down action steps. Imagine if your whole team did that. If you work with someone who leads sucky meetings, determine to change that by being fully present, contributing, and making it awesome.
4. Think about your work before you do it
If you don’t think about your work before you do it, you’ll waste time everyday figuring out what to do. As leaders, our work is focused around projects, strategy, problem-solving, and people.We’re not just told what to do but relied upon to come up with creative solutions. Michael Hyatt wrote another super helpful post that talks about creating your ideal week. If you don’t decide what you’re going to accomplish, someone else (or something else) will do it for you. Use a task management app and break it down into life goals, projects, and next actions. Be sure to review it weekly and keep it up to date. This will help you do everything in your schedule on purpose.
5. Focus on people
Ministry is about people, right? But how often do we get caught up “pulling off events”? As a worship leader/young adult pastor, there are technical things I need to do every week in order to create successful events. But too often I go into auto pilot and just crank it out, oblivious to those around me. When I slow myself down and choose to be fully present with the people who come to my events, I love ministry so much more. Listen to people. Laugh with people. Pray for people. Love your people.
I really believe that if you do these things, you’ll have more energy for what matters in your life. There’s opportunity to make a difference all around you. Live purposefully and start today.
Question: What are some things on your schedule that you mindlessly plow through? How can you start doing everything on purpose? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Another post of great, useful ideas. Dude, Is there anything you write that I don’t think is killer?
I really like the Getting Things Done approach of clarifying so you can work on what’s important now.
And a stuffed panda would be a worthy prize for your top commenter. 🙂
You’re too kind, Rob. And a stuffed panda sounds incredible. I’ll add that to the list of potentials 🙂
Hi,
First of all, I was brought here via the blog Proworship. Secondly, what an amazing site! I’m definitely adding this to my RSS reader.
And thank you for this article. This week I started working as a youth leader in my church so this was helpful. Especially the part about social media.
Question. I’m trying to figure out a way to keep track of how many hours I work every week to see that I’m not overworking myself. How would you suggest that I do that?
Thanks again,
Johan
Hey Johan, sorry I never responded to this comment. If I were you I’d set a specific schedule as to when you start and end work every day. When that time is up, stop. It can be hard to do but so essential to a healthy lifestyle. Does that help?
Hi,
Thank you for the reply, hehe. I solved it by creating a custom spreadsheet where I write down how many hours I’ve worked everyday. I also calculate the weekly total and the monthly average hours/week. I try to stay around 40 h/week, since that’s the standard workweek here in Sweden. If I work hours when I shouldn’t, I add them up in an overtime bank. That is hours I can use when I have to take a leave.
Take care!