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Help! I’ve Fallen Behind and I Can’t Catch Up!

By Mel Surface

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is (Ephesians 5:15–17).

Can someone who is not a sock-arranging, numbers-crunching, paradigm-talking bean-counter "redeem the time" for fruitful living and effective ministry? I think so, despite time management workshops that leave me wondering. Typical sessions offer principles that should help, but I’m not hopeful. The speaker’s time-use skills seldom come across as learned behavior.

Reality forces us to blend spiritual life and service into the demands of job, school, marriage, and family. Many feel inadequate and frustrated, but are we undisciplined people? I don’t think so. We discipline ourselves to do what we have to do or what we value most. You probably do better than you give yourself credit for.

Despite our feelings, we get some things done, and sometimes they are significant. We usually meet our deadlines and keep appointments. Maybe we can set our own deadlines and make our own appointments to leverage us to best results.

The Puritan perspective says, "God never gives up on a man who doesn’t make peace with his sin." He won’t give up on us either as we try to do our best with all the time, talent, and treasure He’s given us. Time-beaten believers can find healing and release from guilt as we explore how to make our "best" better.

TIME MANAGEMENT BY RESPONSIBILITY

To develop a meaningful life plan, I need to recognize time management is my responsibility. Time is life—a gift from God and my gift to God. Both the Bible and nature reveal God is organized. If you organize, God can bless it. Jesus instructed His disciples to organize the multitude and serve them systematically. Then, He fed 5,000 with a little boy’s lunch. Elijah set his altar in order before calling down fire from heaven. God always holds the miracle, but organized obedience is in your hands.

Successful time management rests on a three-legged stool: desire, design, and discipline. You will not use time well unless you want to or plan to, and you will not use time well without self-control. It doesn’t happen at the emotional level. Seal your desire with a decision. Commit to it, even put it in writing. Spell out your strategy, then stick to it. Desire, decision, design, and discipline will end in delight.

THE S.A.V.E. TIME ACRONYM

You can use time, invest it, or waste it. Whatever you get for every moment, you exchange for an irretrievable segment of your life. You cannot put time aside and use it later, but here is a S.A.V.E. time acronym to help you get the best of the trade.

Stop the bleeding.

If your schedule hemorrhages, stop the bleeding. Identify where and how you are losing or wasting time. Find out what you are doing or not doing that keeps you from being most productive. You probably cannot abandon the rat race. You may have irrevocable obligations, but you can look around while you are running. Analyze your lifestyle and start to change.

Common time thieves include lack of planning, lack of priorities, overcommitment, paper shuffling, indecision, and hyperindependence. They usually come in combinations. Indecision aggravates paper shuffling. Overcommitment reflects failure to utilize the gifts, abilities, and availability of others. Lack of planning and priorities underpin them all.

Start your adjustments here. Plan first. Know your God-called purpose and let it guide you in setting priorities. Establish your objectives to best cultivate your relationship with God, your spouse and family, your ministry, and then every other area of life. Veteran pastor H.E. Allen inscribed his credo in the flyleaf of his Bible: "It is most important to keep the most important the most important." Good time management means more than just accomplishing tasks, just as success is more than accumulating things.

Don’t let the urgent demands that arise daily overrule what is lastingly important. A pattern of emergencies suggests lack of planning. Instead of putting out fires, practice prevention. Learn to say "no." Commitment to your priorities will strengthen your resolve. Busyness doesn’t impress God. It is not how much we do, but what we are that matters first. Be what God wants; then doing (including using time well to do it) begins to fall into place.

A practical measure to stop time loss is to use proper equipment. Start with a large wastebasket. Act on the papers you tend to shuffle, file them for action at the proper time, or trash them. Beyond that, proper equipment will be whatever you use best—computer, tape recorder, etc.

Next, organize your work area. Colleagues snicker at me here. A distraught secretary once called to report burglars had struck the church and ransacked my office. They had stolen money and equipment, but I found my work area pretty much as I had left it. As a newspaper reporter, I cultivated a habit of piling my desk with resources. Daily deadlines militate against neatness. I am not a neat person, but I am organized. My wife insists, despite appearance, that I’m a perfectionist. So be it. Just stack for function and file for retrieval.

Finally, to stop the bleeding in your schedule, quit stalling. Divert your diversions. I have to add television to the list of time thieves. The computer—with or without the Internet—can also suck the life out of your timetable. Even good things, like browsing the encyclopedia and circuitous Bible searches, rob you if you really need to be preparing a lesson or writing that article on time management.

Attack your day.

Don’t drift or discover your way through life. Some people have only a nebulous idea of what they need to accomplish. They live by the Christopher Columbus system. When he left home, he didn’t know where he was going. When he got there, he didn’t know where he was. When he got back, he didn’t know where he’d been. Use your priorities to chart your course. You will never keep God first in your life until you put Him first in your day.

Plan, organize, and prioritize to get the most out of every day. Make a daily "To-do" list. The time you spend planning will multiply results for the rest of your schedule. As your last item each day, update your plan for tomorrow. Whatever is not completed one day, move to the next, and list according to importance. Keep moving and relisting until you accomplish the task; or, if you keep bumping it down, drop it as really not important.

Make a "This Week" plan to overview things to do and people to call, visit, or write. Also, list projects to be launched or completed. At the end of each week, lay out your plan for the next. Draw from this weekly page to establish your daily "To-do" priorities. Keep a calendar for the month, year, and beyond.

Extend your planning to each task. Organize your thoughts before you make a telephone call. Have all your resources at hand before you dial. Organize your thoughts and materials before a meeting or interview.

To attack your day is to live aggressively. Be positive. Trying not to waste time can be as frustrating as trying not to sin. As a Christian, you do not earn God’s favor by living right. You live right because you have God’s favor through faith. "Kept by the power of God,"

(1 Peter 1:5), you focus on fruitful living. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). Once you stood condemned in sin, now sin is condemned in you. No longer a slave to unrighteousness, now you are free to live for God. You cannot gain God’s favor by filling and following your schedule, but God’s grace liberates and empowers you to live to the fullest for Him.

Value your Zone.

You may begin to find fulfillment as you value your zone. Recognize the period of the day or night you are most alert and productive. My mother worked 3 to 11 p.m., and my father worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Our family schedule molded late night work habits. Working days and studying nights as a college student and as a missionary pastor, followed by years as an evangelist, further set my internal clock for the night shift.

Though job or ministry may require conventional office hours, my most fruitful period is approximately 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. I best produce articles, sermons, and seminars—almost any creative task—after 11 p.m. I am learning not to struggle to fit a popular mold, but to mold my schedule for best results.

In so far as possible, stack your schedule toward your strengths. Plan to do difficult, demanding, or distasteful tasks first, or when you know you will be at your best.

Execute: Effectively and Efficiently

Peter Drucker defines effective as "doing the right things," in contrast to "efficient" as "doing things right." Our goal, our life commitment, needs to be: Do what needs to be done, the way it needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

Time management principles are the same for everyone. But each of us must learn to apply them in the context of our unique qualities of background, personality, and life schedule. Decide where and how you need to improve. Develop a plan. Determine to give time management a reasonable try. Set deadlines for yourself. Make personal appointments. Don’t be afraid to fail, again. Fine-tune your plan with what you learn from success or failure. It’s easier to steer once you get moving. (In fact, you don’t need any guidance until you get off the launchpad.)

Certainly we can do better, but we need not let workload, other people’s expectations, or even our own put us under condemnation. God will be pleased if we reject emotional stress and devote our real energies to making positive change. Refuse to be guilt-driven, but determine to be grace-guided in redeeming the time. You may have fallen behind, but you can catch up.

Mel Surface, Waxahachie, Texas, is Christian education director for the North Texas District of the Assemblies of God.