The Seven Laws of Time-Management

Recently my daughter asked me, "Dad, how do you have the time to get everything done?"  I said something like, "Well, I have to be organized and disciplined."  But it got me thinking about the essential principles that help me to manage my time.  I came up with seven laws of time management.

1. Commit your time to God.  Ephesians 5:16 says, "Making the most of the time, because the days are evil."  As a Christian, everything you have belongs to God and must be used to glorify Him.  That includes your time.  God commands you to not waste your time, and to make every minute count for His glory.

2. Take responsibility for your time.  Accept that your problems with time-management are your fault.  It's not because there aren't enough hours in the day.  It's not because too much is asked of you.  It's not because your life is harder than everyone else's.  We all have the same amount of time.  You have exactly enough time to do everything God wants you to do.  If you have problems with your schedule, it's because you have been managing your time poorly.  Things won't get better until you get better at time-management.

3. Don't try to do it all.  You can't do everything.  It is physically and logistically impossible.  You aren't called to do everything.  Opportunities are not obligations.  Invitations are not imperatives.  FOMO (the fear of missing out) will land you in hot water.  Your time is limited.  When you choose to do one thing, you are limiting the amount of time you have left over for other things.  The biggest reason for time-management problems is simply over-scheduling.  You are trying to do too much, and you need to cut back.  I know.  Pruning is painful, but necessary.

4. Don't mistake busyness for effectiveness.  Your schedule may be full, you may be burning the candle at both ends, but that doesn't mean that you are effective and successful.  Success is being faithful with what God has called you to do.  You may be doing a lot of things, maybe even a lot of good things, but if you aren't giving ample time to the best things, then you are failing.  The enemy of the best is often the good.

5. Keep first things first.  Figure out what your priorities are, decide how much time your priorities will require for you to be successful, plan out when you will devote time to your priorities, and then guard your schedule with your life.  Don't allow less important things to detract from your priorities.  By the way, everybody's priorities start out the same: First, God (time alone with God; church).  Second, marriage.  Third, children.  

6. Learn to say "No."  Other people are not responsible to guard your time.  That's your job.  They don't know how busy you are, and how much time you have.  And they will constantly ask you to do things with and for them.  To avoid overload, you have to learn to say "No."  Remember, you can't and aren't called to do everything.  Opportunities are not obligations.  Invitations are not imperatives.  Good things are not the same as best things.  You may upset some people, but that's their problem.  Your responsibility is to protect your time.

7. Pencil it in.  If something is important to you, you have to pencil it in your calendar or it won't happen with consistency.  In other words, you have to make appointments with yourself.  For example, if you want to learn the piano, you can't just play whenever you have spare time.  You'll never make progress that way.  Instead, you actually have to figure out when and how much time you will practice, and write it on your schedule so that nothing else interferes.