Learning to Purge Your Calendar
Time Management for Believers – Part 3
Have you ever felt like your life was more reactive than anything else? You can never get a head? Sure you do, it’s natural, which means it’s normal. Most people feel this way. Well, I hate reacting to everything. What’s funny (not) is that the things we’re reacting to are things we have control of. Why find yourself in a reactive state regarding the activities and decisions you have control over? It’s as if we’re constantly fighting against time to do the things we really would like.
Here’s an idea you may have never considered. Your month is like your garage. Have you ever studied why a person’s garage must be cleaned out over time? You see the garage begins to accumulate things over a period of time. Once it’s full there is very little room for much else. Your time is the same. Over time, you have filled your calendar with activities that leave very little room for much else. Therefore, like your garage you need to clean out, your calendar needs to be purged of items.
Get Good at Replacing Old with New
Here’s the problem. While the items in your garage may be all usable goods, they may no longer have a use for you. In this case, you can discard some things. Your calendar has the same challenge. There are activities on your calendar that might be good, but they are no longer good for you. In fact, they might be working against you. In order to get better, you must get better at removing the old, for something new. For those who are believers, in order to become something new, the first thing that must go is the old. “If any person is in Christ, the old gets replaced by the new. ” [1] That means we must get good at replacing old with new. Old habits with new habits. Old choices with new choices. Old standards for new standards. Old me with new me.
You have control of what gets scheduled, thusly what gets replaced.
The activities and decisions you have control over are the best candidates for replacement. It’s easy to feel like you have zero control over your schedule. People have a way of making you feel obligated to certain things. This is why managing what you do with time isn’t easy. That is also why the average person doesn’t manage it well and why time management is such a problem for many. You must realize that you have complete control of your calendar, but you must enforce it. Actually if i can be totally honest, you will have to fight to remain in control of what you do with your time. Like your money, everyone is trying to get a little bit of your time.
Allow me to give you one example. The people in your office make it seem like it’s a good thing to work more hours than required or asked. Those who work around us make it seem like it’s a good employee characteristic to put in more hours. But what’s more important, you working more hours or you getting more done? Just because you put in more hours doesn’t mean you put in more time, it means you waste more time. I want you to take such control of what you do with your time that you get more done using less time. Your new job is to fight for your time. When you do, you get it done so that you can get out at your desired time and not the other way around. Here’s a simple prayer I pray often. Lord, help me accomplish more in eight hours than those around me do in 40 hours. Now that’s a game changer when it comes to what we do with time.
Your calendar is like your garage.
The things that filled your garage are things you placed in your garage for the most part. Your garage isn’t filled with other people’s things unless you place them there or allow others to place them in there. Your garage only has so much space. It’s just like your calendar. How many activities do you have on your calendar that don’t belong? What are you allowing to fill this space that you do desperately need for something else? It’s time to clean it out.
You may not think of it this way, but a month is a lot of time. When we don’t think of it this way, many make this major mistake. The key to successfully cleaning out the garage is to take everything out – step 1. Then refill it starting with the large items first – step 2. Following that begin inserting the small things where there is space – step 3. For your calendar, remove everything that’s on the calendar – step 1. Fill your calendar starting with the large time transactions – step 2. This doesn’t mean large in length of time, but the large time transactions as it relates to the calendar are the must do’s and the things one must not miss. It’s the important things. Then and only then begin to insert the small time transactions – step 3. These small time transactions represent the items that if they can fit in good and if they can’t oh well. Our calendars must be purged in order to get the right items a place in the garage and the items that no longer need a place out of it.
At the end of the day, we can all stop blaming someone other than ourselves for what happens with our time. I would love to take the easy route and blame someone else. However, placing blame is the same as making excuses which doesn’t produce results. Therefore, in order to do a better job with our time, we must do something. We can not continue doing the same things over and over and expect new results. In order to have the new results we desire, we must get rid of the old way and begin some new ways of doing?
Question: what old activities are standing in your way of the new activities you desire?
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[1] 2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT, Bible.com, accessed January 4, 2023, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/2CO.5.17.NLT
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.
