Where Does Your Time Fly?

Have you ever wished for a thirty-hour day? Surely, this extra time would relieve the relentless pressure under which we live. Our lives leave a trail of unfinished tasks. Unanswered messages, unvisited friends, unread books haunt quiet moments when we stop to evaluate our activities. We desperately need relief.

But would a thirty-hour day really solve our problem? How long would it take before you are as frustrated as you are now? We cannot escape Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the available time.” We would simply find ourselves working more and enjoying it less.

Jumbled Priorities

Our problem is not just a shortage of time or a case where we’re working too hard. We must recognize the difference between fatigue and frustration. The weariness of long hours on a difficult task can be matched by a sense of satisfaction and joy. A feeling that we have failed to do what is really important, and not hard work, produces anxiety.

Many of us have overcome the temptation of impulse spending when it comes to managing money. Yet we often spend our time in an impulsive response to our own desires or those of someone else. The winds of other people’s demands drive us onto a reef of frustration. Why? Because we have failed to set our priorities, plan our time and spend it accordingly.

Many years ago a successful business executive said to me, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” I wondered what he meant. Then I realized that an urgent task, calling for an immediate response, may not really be important in the long run. By the same token, an important activity may not appear urgent. For example, time spent in Bible study and prayer, visiting an elderly relative or reading a significant book isn’t often at the top of a “to do” list. Because those things can wait, they often get lost in the shuffle.

Urgent tasks call for an immediate response. Our home is no longer our castle as the telephone and e-mail breach the walls with imperious demands. The momentary appeals seem irresistible and devour our energy. Yet, in the light of time’s perspective, their apparent value fades; with a sense of loss, we recall how important tasks were crowded out of our activity.

How can we be free from the tyranny of the urgent? The answer lies in the example of our Lord, guidance by the Holy Spirit and then four basic principles.

The example of Christ

On the night before he died, Jesus made an astonishing claim. In the great prayer of John 17, he said, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (verse 4).

How could Jesus possibly say he had finished? His three-year ministry had been all too short. Although many had found physical, emotional and spiritual healing, countless others remained in their illness and sinful ways. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet, the Lord had an inner peace. He had not finished all the things that needed to be done, but he had completed the work his Father gave him to do.

Jesus was able to make this statement because doing the work of his Father had characterized his entire ministry. At the well in Samaria, he told his disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34). Jesus repeated this goal to the religious leaders on several occasions (verses 5:19, 30, 36; 8:28-29).

The Holy Spirit

We need to look carefully at the way Jesus was able, day to day, to speak and do what his Father wanted. Luke makes it abundantly clear that, in his earthly ministry, our Lord, fully human, was empowered by the Holy Spirit for his teaching and healing. Anointed by the Spirit at his baptism (Luke 3:22), “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness . . . Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee” (4:1, 14).

The Spirit’s guidance was not automatic. Jesus regularly took time alone with his Father for guidance as well as fellowship in prayer. Mark records an extremely busy day. It began with teaching and healing in the synagogue, and ended well after sunset, when the people “brought to [Jesus] all who were sick or possessed with demons. . . . he cured many who sick with various diseases” (Mark 1:32, 34).

Nevertheless, very early the next morning, Jesus went off to a solitary place to pray. As a result, he made the incredibly difficult decision to leave the urgent needs of the suffering people already gathering back at the house. “Let us go on to the neighboring towns so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do,” he said. His Father’s purpose, and not urgent need, shaped his service.

Jesus becomes our Lord and Savior, then provides our example for living (1 Peter 2:21). He has also promised us the Holy Spirit to guide and empower our ministry. In this light, we see that our problem is not managing our time, but ourselves. More accurately, our lives need to be managed by the Lord whom we love and serve. So our basic ques­tion is simply this: How can we make our hours and days count for the work God has given us to complete?

Basic Principles

Four steps can take us a long way toward achieving this goal:

1. Decide what’s important. Determine what activities have the highest priorities in your life. There is no one blueprint for all Christians in our use of time, any more than there is one for our money. God has given us differing talents, amounts of energy, opportunities, responsibilities and personal needs.

Who are the most important people in your life and what claim do they have on your time? What are the important activities of worship and service? What time demands are made by your work? Not to be neglected are personal needs, including leisure activities for your “re-creation.” Take time to identify these relationships and activities. But resist the temptation at this point to start scheduling them.

2. Discover where your time goes. Keep an account for a week or two of the way you are now spending your time. Prepare a chart with seven columns, one for each day. Draw lines across for half-hour time intervals. Block out the hours you take classes or are working. Now you are ready to keep track of your so-called “discretionary time,” a misnomer since much of it is not really under your control. Before you go to bed, be sure each time segment (meals, telephone, shopping, reading, household chores, etc.) is accounted for.

Is this effort really necessary? After all, you already know where your time is going, right? Well, people in financial difficulty also think they know how they are spending their money. But a wise counselor will insist that they start keeping a record because the cold figures on paper usually show a different picture. So it is with our time, which seems to fly with enjoyable activities and creep with disagreeable tasks.

At the end of the week, count the hours spent in each activity and compare the total with your list of important items. Brace yourself for the shock. Most of us will discover significant discrepancies between our priority items and the time we are actually giving to them. Next, we need to begin to deal with these gaps.

3. Plan your days. Now you are ready to reschedule some of your activities. But don’t try to reorganize your life on paper. Your pattern of spending time (as well as money) is a picture of your present lifestyle, and includes needs, values and goals. Habits developed over the years are not easily altered. Many time management seminars, with their complicated tables and charts, overlook this crucial reality. No wonder so many people give up after a few days or weeks, more frustrated than ever with an increased sense of failure and guilt.

Our lives are not like speedboats that can veer 90 degrees in a few seconds. They are more like ocean liners which must turn slowly by degrees or come apart at the seams and sink. So focus on one or two activities that are consuming too much time and cut back on those activities. Then allot the available hours to things that are being neglected. Planning, like politics, is the art of the possible. Make one or two tradeoffs and resolve to implement them.

4. Stick to your schedule. Now comes the hard part. Implement your decisions in order to make these changes. Small successes can encourage and motivate us to stay with changes. You may even get through the first few days reasonably well. But then comes an unexpected urgent request for which you haven’t budgeted any time. The tyranny of the telephone looms large when that call comes: “You are the indispensable person. We need you!”

First, resist the temptation to decide on the spot. Ask for time to give the request prayerful consideration. Second, consider the scheduled activity which would have to be curtailed or cancelled. If you accept this new assignment, where will you get the hours for the original one? Remember that every “yes” in one case is a “no” in another. Third, weigh the two opportunities and make the hard decision. At times, an urgent request can also be important, so be flexible.

In all of this, don’t be discouraged when the system fails. The best-trained army sometimes loses a battle. Your plans may be upset or prove unworkable. Regroup, and press forward toward your goal.

Finally, at the end of a month, do some evaluating. To what extent have you narrowed the gap between plans and practice? If you have been reasonably successful in one or two areas, start working on another. Your “ship” will turn by degrees onto a new course more in line with God’s purpose for your life. You’ll then have increasing confidence that, day by day, you are completing the work he has given you to do.

—Reprinted and adapted from Off Campus, fall 1986, © 1986 by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Charles Hummel (1923-2004) was InterVarsity’s director of faculty ministries. He authored several books and booklets, including the popular booklet, Tyranny of the Urgent (IVP®).