There is so much work to do! Who’s with me?
New ideas from creative types tend to get in the way of all the work already on my giant list of “To do’s”!
Things keep breaking, which means the list keeps getting longer all by itself. When the pile of work that needs to get done is so overwhelming, it is easy to lose sight of what we should be doing; in order to become what we want our team, our ministry, or our church to be.
The only way we don’t get caught in a cycle of catching up and digging out from under the pile is to make time for something else. And not just whatever anything else, but strategic something else.
For you to get a future that is worth getting to, you have to have a good idea of what you want the future to look like. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your team to be about? What would a successful year look like?
Without a picture of the future, how do you know what to work on? How will you know what matters and what doesn’t? And without making time for thinking about these things, how will you figure this stuff out? If you don’t make the time, your time will get eaten by the immediate and urgent.
Bill Hybels has a great statement about our schedules that I love:
“If you don’t change your schedule, you’ll be the same person you’ve always been.”
We need to think of our time strategically so that we’re not just running around responding to the emergencies around us. While we are taking care of the urgent, all the things that will help make our teams better and our ministry more effective will get dropped to the side, undone.
Make time, so that you can respond in a way that gets you and your team to the finish line that you’ve determined. Instead of never getting a finish line, since there isn’t one in a hamster wheel.
