If you will allow me, I would like to return to the issue of time management. Recently, I have been thinking about it some more, and I have a couple things to say.
The Importance of Being Earnest
No, I’m not referring to Oscar Wilde here. One of the things I have observed in my struggles with time management skills is that it is incredibly important to be earnest in your desire to grow in this area. Otherwise, it’s like trying to build a sandcastle with too much water in the sand: it just crumbles when you remove the mold.
Does this mean that we have to hold unwavering resolve in order to make any progress? Of course not! Our God is a forgiving God, and is used to working with flawed clay (Heck, He’s been doing it since the Fall). He does not require that we …
I think that many of us are, by now, facing the summer. For students this is a time free from the responsibilities of projects and papers. But those of us who agree with The Rebelution want something more than just freedom for our summer: we want to be productive in our summer. But what does that mean?
The Myth of “Great Exploits”
The Rebelution blog is all about combating the Myth of Adolescence by setting higher standards for teens. But I think that in some ways it can be misleading. The Twins (as we Rebelutionaries affectionately call Alex and Brett) focus of political exploits and public life as methods of fighting the Myth of Adolescence.
This focus in the literature surrounding the Rebelution has resulted (at least for me) in the misconception that that sort of stereotypical “great exploits” is the only sort. I slowly shifted …
In the first installment of this series, I described the slippery slope of having too much and too little to do. But when you’ve found this balance, what do you do with the free time that you have? This is just as perplexing a matter as finding the time to rest. I hope that I can give some insight into making wise decisions.
I think part of our problem of not knowing what to do with our free time lies with our attitude towards that time. We call it “free time,” and that is a very telling name. We view it as time with no commitments, time we can use as we please. Having this attitude of independence, we heed no instruction concerning how we use this time. We defend this “free time” vigorously, doing almost anything to preserve it.
I think that my father was on to something when he decided to stop calling it free time and use the term “discretionary time” instead. Removing (or at least deemphasizing) the entitlement aspect of free time, this term nurtures a more biblical understanding of time management. For the sake of ease I will continue to call discretionary time “free time” in this article, but please remember what I mean.
Time management is something we all struggle with. It is something that God has put on my heart lately, and so I thought I’d write a few posts about it. I’m hoping that this will be the first in a series on godly time management.
The Slippery Slope
Peacemaker Ministries in their description of conflict management uses the illustration of a slippery slope. At either end are the two extremes, murder and suicide, and in the middle is the most godly option, mediation. They use this analogy because it is extremely hard to consistently turn to that middle part of the slope, the godly part. I think that this concept can be applied to many things other than just conflict. One of these is time management.
The Slippery Slope of Time Management has the same layout as the Peacemaker’s Slope. At one end of the spectrum is the extreme of being totally sluggardly, while the extreme of completely over-scheduling yourself is at the other end. In the middle is the ever-elusive middle ground of the godly balance between having too much and too little to do.