Media Outreach

I just need a little more time in the day.  I wish I could count the number of times that I have said this in the last several months … probably years.  The great poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, said that time was, “a maniac, scattering dust.” It has been called “all-devouring, all-destroying” and “the wreckful siege of battering days” by Satirist Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare.  So it would seem that I am not the only person who has had these malicious thoughts toward time.

We are going to highlight three different aspects of time management over the next three articles.  The concepts for these articles are taken from http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org and “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” by John C. Maxwell.  As a church planter these are things that I believe can hinder and even block God’s plan to reach the fullest potential that God has for your new work.  I would also say that I had to write this to help myself; with 4 different focal points right now, this is becoming a pretty big issue more and more.

“Busy people have two options when they decide how their workdays will go: they can choose to be reactive to urgent demands on their time or proactive about focusing on what they decide is important. The only way to actually get things done is to mitigate the urgent to work on the important.

Let’s differentiate between what I call urgent and important.

Urgent tasks include things like that frantic email that needs a response RIGHT NOW; a sudden request that seems like it’ll only take two minutes but often ends up taking an hour.”
More honest than most are willing to admit, these are “tasks that you’d rather do first because they’re less intimidating than your current project list.”

The Urgent can be exciting.  Can anyone say, “Adrenaline Rush”?  The urgent is by nature “short-term and we’re drawn to them because they keep us busy, make us feel needed” and important.  If your day is filled with the urgent then the end of the day comes and you have this horrible feeling that you worked extremely hard, but the time is gone and the undone actual work is still there even more intimidating than it was yesterday.  It leaves this bad feeling right in the pit of your stomach.

“Important work moves you […] towards your goals […]  It can involve actually thinking out longer-term goals, being honest about where you […] and just doing plain hard work that feels boring and tedious.”  Include both personal and business items in this category.  Whether planning your nutritional and work out habits or “devising your yearly plan, breaking it down into quarterly and monthly deliverables” these are important aspects of your life that should take precedents over checking your email one more time to find something that you can respond to?

Here are three things that will help.

1. Make a 3-point checklist – “Write them down on a slip of paper and keep it visible on your desk. When you have a moment, instead of checking your email, look at the slip, and work on an item. Keep the list to just three, and see how many you can complete.”
2. Isolate Interruptions. – “Shut down Outlook, […] new email notifications on your BlackBerry,” disconnect from the internet if possible.  “Give yourself an hour […] of uninterrupted time” in certain parts of the day.
3. Review and revise weekly – “Put it on your calendar” and always make that meeting happen. Get out “your project list, to-do list, and calendar, and [review] what you finished that past week” and decide what needs done by the next week.

Until next time, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (Eph 5:15-16)

Concepts and statements for the article were taken from: How to Migrate to the Urgent

pic by ~Twon~