Like beads on a string, our minutes slide by. Poor, cynical Solomon bemoaned the futility of it all, dismissing his significant accomplishments as a chasing after the wind. Author Annie Dillard speaks a better and more hopeful wisdom:
How we live our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
The most common complaint about time management is lack of time. With most of our moments already spoken for by the work that pays the bills or the tasks that keep family life on the rails, the challenge is to make the most of our little minutes, the time on the fringes of our days.
For example, if you are an average reader (250 words per minute), 15 minutes per day will take your eyes through 3,910 pages in one year. That’s 20 books! If you struggle to set and keep fitness goals, consider the efficiency of a 20-minute walk.
A Matter of Focus
If that’s the truth and if managing my moments makes a difference, I want to steward my days with Leviticus-level attention to detail. I want to invest in my daily, mundane tasks the same purposefulness that transformed curtains of goats’ hair and rams’ skins into a house of worship.
Elisabeth Elliot, virtuoso of terse and gritty truth, maintained that “there is always time to do the will of God.” While that stings a bit, I recognize the mathematical reality that if I have more planned than I can accomplish in a day without sinning, then some of it is not God’s will for me.
Several years ago, I started using a smaller planner. Smaller pages mean smaller calendar squares with fewer lines. When I run out of lines, it’s time to refuse, reprioritize, or bump something to another day.
Beware the Idol of Efficiency in Time Management
It’s true enough that my huge garden and my history of homeschooling four sons have given me plenty of opportunities to fine-tune the art and science of multitasking:
- I’ve folded laundry and entertained a baby while listening to an eight-year-old practicing his piano lesson;
- I’ve canned green beans while quietly scribbling rhymed clues for a birthday scavenger hunt;
- I’ve made strawberry jam while preparing a lesson to teach at VBS the next morning.
However, like any good thing in our lives, efficiency stands ready and willing to become an idol. My prone-to-wander heart needs continual reminders that productivity is good, but little boys grow up overnight.
Folding several mindless tasks into one discrete unit of time is a salutary thing, but people are not made to be folded. One regret from my days of parenting small children is my failure to stop my work and lock my eyes on theirs sooner and more often.
Advice from a Puritan Preacher
John Owen, the 17th-century English theologian, wrote about sin management and the Gospel, using Romans 8:13 as his launch pad. One of his most famous quotes warns believers to “be killing sin or it will be killing you.” To riff on his words, I have learned that if I fail to manage my time before long it begins to manage me.
Procrastination, lack of follow through, and over-scheduling sow seeds of chaos and impatience as I follow in the footsteps of the foolish woman in Proverbs, “tearing my house down” with sharp words and long days of hurry and worry. Balancing the tyranny of tasks and the tenderness of meaningful relationships continues to be my walk on the razor’s edge. The prudent use of little minutes requires a few good practices that become habits over time:
The prudent use of little minutes requires a few good practices that become habits over time.
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4 Easy Time Management Tips
- Write it down. I have one place–my planner–where I write reminders, appointments, schedules, commitments, and needful tasks. If I’m reading my Bible and something comes to mind, I write it down to address later. Depending on memory is stressful, distracting, and unreliable.
- Embrace YOUR list. My athletic friend who coached her kids’ soccer teams had a posse of sons, but a very different list from me. Most women my age have full-time jobs. I’m a part-time substitute teacher and an available Bam, and this is God’s gift to me. Longing for a different list or evading my assignment because I wish it was different is a time management disaster.
- Do it now. Folding towels as they come off the line, dealing with the mail immediately instead of leaving it in a pile to be dealt with “later,” making phone calls for work or church while stirring a pan or loading the dishwasher. We’ve all got our time-saving shortcuts. The key is to do the next thing without delay—and without complaint.
- Remember the Gospel. Whether married or single, childless or presiding over a lively crew, godly women have been tasked with the glad-hearted, life-giving work of pouring our lives into others. The cross is central to all we do. Gospel-based living comes from an understanding of what Christ has done and lends perspective to our own feverish planning and doing.
If all this sounds overwhelming, that’s perfect! Come empty-handed and open-hearted to receive grace for doing the everyday, mundane work of faithfulness. Time management is centered in following God, trusting the Spirit’s leading—and then making prudent use of those little minutes through a power that is not our own.
The cross is central to our time management strategies. Come empty-handed and open-hearted to receive grace for doing the everyday, mundane work of faithfulness through a power that is not your own.
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And Now Let’s Talk Books…
Ritual is an edgy word in my circles, often preceded by the word empty or dead, cautioned against as misleading at best and, at worst, soul-destroying. But what if ritual was not empty but full? Not dead, but living?
In Meaning in the Moment, Amy F. Davis Abdallah employs ritual “to honor life’s ends, middles, and beginnings in ways appropriate to a Christian community’s subculture.” There’s no magic in the words or the forms of a ritual, but attention, preparation, and sometimes repetition allow us as humans to hold a moment up to the light, to mark some event as special or significant.
Divided into three sections, the book answers three questions anyone might bring to the topic of ritual:
- Why practice ritual?
- How do we ritualize?
- What do we ritualize?
I appreciated the author’s focus on celebrating endings as well as beginnings. Rituals both celebrate and grieve and “grieving the loss of the old enables us to celebrate the new” with integrity.
Like the Abdallah family, my kids also looked forward to pizza and movie nights. We also lit Advent candles, visited the same beaches and picnic sites every summer, and hunted for birthday scavenger hunt clues without once using the word ritual, but that’s what we were doing!
As embodied creatures, rituals help us to connect spiritual concepts with our lives here on the ground. Paul instituted one of our best-known commemorations with repeatable words: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord’s death until he comes.” So we take the cup, we chew the bread, and we wait. In hope.
Holding You in the Light,
Rituals connect spiritual concepts with life here on the ground. #MeaningintheMoment employs ritual “to honor life’s ends, middles, and beginnings in ways appropriate to a Christian community’s subculture.” @amyfdavisa @BrazosPress
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On the third Thursday of every month, I send a newsletter with biblical encouragement straight to my subscribers’ email inboxes. Frequently, I share free resources, and the newsletter is where everything lands first. I’m committed to the truth that women can become confident followers of God and students of his Word, and it’s my goal to help you along that path.
To add this free resource to your pursuit of biblical literacy, simply CLICK HERE. There, on Substack’s website, you’ll find a prompt that looks just like this image for Living Our Days with Michele Morin. Over on that site, simply enter your email and then click on the purple “SUBSCRIBE” button.
You’ll receive a welcome letter to confirm your subscription and monthly encouragement in your email inbox.
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Many thanks to Brazos Press and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.
“4 Ways to Take Your Time Management to the Next Level” first appeared at Kelly R. Baker’s site in 2018 when my time management challenges included homeschooling and caring for a loveable St. Bernard. This post has been updated to reflect my current life situation.
Living Our Days 
“Come empty-handed and open-hearted to receive grace for doing the everyday, mundane work of faithfulness.” Empty-handed and open-hearted is the best plan for time management. God will guide us so that we use our time wisely. You made me realize it is also the way He will “fully” use our days 🙂
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Oooh! Love that WOTY reference! I think we’re going to learn a lot together in 2024!
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Oh this is so very excellent, Michele.
‘One regret from my days of parenting small children is my failure to stop my work and lock my eyes on theirs sooner and more often.’ This makes me incredibly grateful that my own season of parenting came long before our phones were permanently attached to our hands. How challenging to be a mom in this season and be fully present for your kids.
And your list spoke to me – writing it down is a lifeline I need to survive and taking care of business in a timely manner keeps my brain from getting overloaded.
You’re speaking my language, girl, and I am thankful …
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I’ve said before that I’m so grateful the internet wasn’t available when my kids were small. It’s influence was slow here, and the way I read parenting books and magazines, I’d have driven myself crazy if I’d had access to all the resources of the WWW.
Thankful for you, too!
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It’s that “doing the next thing, without complaint” that I struggle with!
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I hear you! Sometimes my complaints are silent, but they still get in the way of my obedience!
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Thank you for teaching me more about the meaning of time management with a Gospel focus. I can lean toward procrastination at times so the item, “Do it now” speaks to me.
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Michele: Thank you for this important information. I need to truly learn to manage my time better.
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I’m so pleased to share the thoughts that are serving me well!
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I used to think that time management and organization were destinations, and that someday I’d have them all done. It helped to realize they were continual processes, constantly in need of adaptation. I like Elisabeth’s quote that if we truly have too much to do, something is on our list that isn’t from God. It’s just hard to determine what that is sometimes.
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That’s certainly true! And I have a way of clinging to my list as if my life depended on it, so I have to work hard at the discipline of letting go.
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I tend to procrastinate certain chores and responsibilities too. Even in retirement I’m finding it just as easy to do. For awhile I aimed at accomplishing six needful things–some quick, some that took longer–each day. An ongoing list helped keep me on task. I need to get back to that habit so I’ll use my time more wisely! Thank you for the prompting! / Love that Elisabeth Elliot quote–so glad you shared it, Michele!
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6 needful things sounds like a good rule of life to me. And the wording reminds me of Pooh! 🤣
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Michele, my husband helped me see that taking on more than what God had intended for me impacted the whole family. Ouch. If I could fit it on my calendar I thought I could do it. (love how you bought a smaller one!) I too regret some of my busyness when our children were young. Now I’m at the age where I have new limits, energy limits. I try to see these as divine boundaries to keep me in His will.
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I love that: “divine boundaries.”
My grandchildren are another one. I choose to stay flexible and available to them as much as I can, and I’m grateful not only that I have the option, but also that it keeps me from becoming over-focused on my own little world of writing and speaking.
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Wise words for a life-giving balanced life, Michele! I appreciate the downsizing of your planner to help set healthy boundaries for yourself.
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It’s an ongoing struggle. Little victories…!
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These 4 Habits for Managing Moments When Time Is Scarce are going to come in handy. And I agree that sometimes the things you spoke about can become idols.
I appreciate you sharing this with Sweet Tea & Friends this month my friend.
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