Alan Robertson is a great friend and Student Pastor from Ruston, LA (Who recently got engaged! Congrats!). I wanted to post this from his blog because it really made an impact on me! We all have enough time to do what God has called us to do. It is just so easy to let time slip away and not fulfill what God is calling us to do!
You can read more from Alan here.
Time… (Cue Steve Miller – Fly Like An Eagle… Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’…. into the future…)
Time is fleeting.
Time is often wasted because it is far too easily spent.
Time is money.
It is probably a far more valuable commodity in the long run.
Given the choice between an increase in my paycheck and an increase in the number of hours in a day I would be tempted to take the hours over the money. Provided of course I didn’t have to spend those extra hours working.
Time management is not my strong point. If you know me you perhaps chuckled to yourself when you saw the title of this blog. In fact the only the thing I may be worse at than time management is probably following directions. (Me and maps don’t exactly get along, and I’m a bit too stubborn to pay proper attention to a GPS.)
But what I have learned as of late is the importance of guarding my time.
Guarding time… I think that’s an interesting way to look at it.
Not just managing the 24 hours I have in a day, but guarding them.
It’s easy to create a schedule for your day. To put on paper the number of hours in a day that you need for work, study and play. But living by it is a different issue.
It’s like budgeting your money. If you took an hour you could probably have a rough budget on paper and have a decent idea of how much money you have, how much you need to survive, and where your money is currently going. You probably have a good idea of how much money you waste and how much you spend effectively.
The trick is taking the budget off the paper and putting it into action.
The same principle is in effect when it comes to time.
We (We being Me. I think I am hammering this one out for myself) have to learn not only how to budget our time, but to guard that time.
It’s not just about avoiding procrastination, but it certainly involves it. (I’ve checked Facebook and Twitter about 10 times since I sat down to write this)
It’s about structuring your day in such a way that you make the most effective use of your day.
For me I have learned that the most productive hours of my day are between 5 and 8 a.m. Now that was a pretty depressing realization considering the fact that most of my friends are available to hang out later at night, and that in order to take advantage of my most productive hours I have to go to bed shortly after dark and wake up before the sun comes up.
It’s not easy, but I have learned that if I want to be at my most effective and my creative efforts to be more productive I need to guard those hours of my day.
I’ve not mastered the art of waking up before the sun, but I am getting there. I still fail a lot of mornings. But guarding those hours is becoming a thing of extreme importance. Once I’m up and place a phone call to my girlfriend my phone is off until about 8am. I take my morning to exercise, have a focused time of prayer, read, study and do work.
Whether it is personal creative work (blogs, writing, etc) or work for LifePoint Church (various projects my pastor has asked me to work on or prepping lessons for our student ministry.) I am amazed at what I can get done when my phone is off and I am not checking my social networks. An added plus is very few people are on Facebook at 6am should I decide to sign on…
Guarding my time means I turn down opportunities to have fun on some evenings so that I can focus on my priorities during a time at which I can be more focused. While it is true I can pray, study or do creative work at any hour of the day I have learned that later hours are not near as effective. My mind has been dulled by the tasks of a full-time job and my energy is waning by the time I finally get around to it. I’m learning to guard my most effective hours and focus on priorities during that time.
How you guard your time is up to you. It may be about structuring your day in a more effective manner. It may be that you, like me, need to learn how to say “No” on occasion. Whether that is saying “No” to a chance to have fun or to a new responsibility or obligation. Perhaps you need to build practices and habits into your day that help you to guard your time better.
I do believe if we are going to be effective leaders and creative individuals we must learn what it means to guard our time.
You can read more from Alan here.
