Time Management

How does [Jim Collins] manage his time? "I use a stopwatch," he says.

Does that mean that like any excessively busy, highly successful business researcher, author and consultant, he runs from meeting to meeting, tethered to his Blackberry calendar, measuring out his worklife in minutes and seconds? When I sat down with Jim at the annual CIPD conference and asked him, among other things, about his working style, I was surprised to find that rather than filling up his time, he intentionally empties it.

When he says he uses a stopwatch, he means that he tracks his time to make sure he gets the most from his waking hours. He divides his life into blocks — 50% creative time, 30% teaching time, and 20% other stuff ("random things that just need to get done").

Read the whole article here: Manage Your Time Like Jim Collins - Harvard Business Editors’ blog

A brief comment: we're afraid of 'creative time.' We're afraid that we're not doing enough 'for the Lord' and that He'll berate us for wasting time. I remember when I was (temporarily) in full-time care of a church that my biggest concern was that I was afraid to relax, in case someone caught me not 'working.' It's a dangerous approach to pastoring as well as business.

Keeping Time

John Sweetman, on the Neoleader blog, makes several good points about watching how you handle your time as a minister.
A couple of these are of particular value:

Keep a to-do list. It's better to have a list of jobs to do (it can be updated daily) rather than trying to keep things in your head, and hoping you'll remember what's important. Otherwise it's easy to get sidetracked onto less important tasks. And keep the list handy: if it's hard to access, like being in some program on your computer, you'll be less likely to pay attention to it. (Paper and pen are still valid tools in the postmodern age.)

Let your diary be your protector and pay attention to it. It's perfectly valid to book yourself up on so many days of the year, but not on others. An essential number of days need to be kept free for family, relaxation, retreats, exercise and friends. It's a good idea, John writes, to block out these days at the beginning of the year, and make them non-negotiables. Only true emergencies should take them over.