We all seem to have a common problem – not enough time to get everything done.
Here are some helpful hints Doug Wilson posted last fall on “getting things done” over the long hall…
.
First, I believe in plodding
Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one-hundred-yard dashing. Doing a little bit now is far better than hoping to do a lot on the morrow. So redeem the fifteen minute spaces. Chip away at it. For example, I have a stack of six books that I am working through most weekday mornings — a page or two of each every time I sit down to read. I do the same thing with writing — if you have time for a little bit, then do a little bit.
Second, maintain boundaries for everything, boundaries that suit the circumstance
When the kids were little and still at home, the daily routine was completely different than it is now that they have families of their own. Generally, pastors need to set boundaries to keep their work from spilling into family time, and not the other way around. So, for example, when we were first married… I would be home with the family a minimum of four nights a week… As my responsibilities grew I had to figure out ways to be more fruitful in those allotted times. When an extra load developed, the idea was to have it land on me and not on the family…
In the evenings, Nancy and I hang out with the kids and grandkids who come over frequently, I play the guitar, read, and so on. It is a full and busy life, but we work hard at preventing it from becoming frenetic. I hate frenetic, which returns us to the previous point on the fruitfulness of plodding. Living this way, we have found that it adds up.
Third, measure progress by the extended video, not the snapshot
Set goals for getting things done, but have the time for measuring the goals be extended enough to allow for daily or weekly fluctuations. For example, when I first began to work as a minister I set a goal for my weekly reading, as measured by the month. I wanted to read on average 1-2 books a week, calculated by how many I finished in a month, which would be somewhere between four to eight books.
Set hard but reasonable goals, and measure them in reasonably extended time units.
Fourth, use and reuse everything
I know that my blogging pace sometimes creates the illusion that I do little other than sit here typing like a madman, but that is really not the way it is at all. Prepare things with an eye on reusing them in the future, and make sure to use (any useful) work from the past. This is how former Credenda articles are shaped into books, sermon outlines are shaped into books, Bible study outlines from fifteen years ago are lightly edited into continuous prose and turned into blog posts and may one day find their way into a book, and interesting quotations from books I have read are posted here with a view to using them as the research background on future books.
Posted by Douglas Wilson – 7/1/2008 Here’s the original link.
