As the elementum staff works with ministry leaders across the country we’ve discovered several consistent areas where many leaders struggle. One of the most common things leaders struggle with is time management. The challenge of managing time well comes up in conversations with leaders across the entire range of age, level of experience and education, and size of ministry.

 

Most leaders feel constantly busy and overwhelmed, as if they’re on a treadmill racing to keep up and getting nowhere. The pressure of juggling events, seemingly endless crisis situations, family, finances, and more results in many leaders falling into bed and night utterly drained, only to wake up feeling as if they haven’t gotten nearly enough rest. Which they probably haven’t.

 

A few weeks ago Andy and I had a conversation on Facebook live where we shared some of our best time management tips. For those who aren’t a part of the elementum Community or Partner groups on Facebook, here are a couple of the top tips we shared to help you manage your time and establish the healthy rhythms that will sustain you in leadership.

 

Set time-bound goals

You can’t start managing your time well if you don’t know what your priorities are. Set aside time regularly to step back and ask yourself what your top priorities are for the next period. The period could be a week, a month, a quarter, or longer – the length isn’t as important as the intentionality of regularly stepping back, setting your goals, and having a target time to accomplish them within. Write those goals down and put them somewhere that you’ll see them frequently.

 

Our team and our partners do this on a 12  week rhythm. Every twelve weeks we step back, review what we’ve done, and set 2-3 big goals for the next 12 weeks. Personally, both Andy and I also drill down and use those big-picture goals for the next 12 weeks to set our weekly and daily priorities, ensuring that we’re consistently making progress.

Worth noting – these priorities don’t always need to be “work” related! It may be that you need to prioritize rest or time with your family or personal time with Jesus. Whatever God’s calling you to prioritize, write it down and be intentional in working toward it!

 

Schedule your priorities first

The reason that Andy and I drill down to the weekly and daily level with our goals is that big goals don’t get accomplished if you don’t schedule them first. What you give time to will grow, and it’s far easier to give time to frivolous things than it is to give it to tackling big, challenging goals.  That means we need to actually schedule in our highest priorities so they don’t get lost in the rush.

Some of our staff spends the end of their work day on Friday planning out the following week. Others take twenty minutes on Sunday night reviewing their priorities and plans for the week. Regardless of when you do it, schedule your priorities.

 

If you use a calendar and are someone with a lot of meetings, it’s best to literally mark off blocks of time on your calendar. If you’re a to-do list person, put your priorities in bold at the top of your list for the day or week. If you’re not doing one of those, it’s probably time to start.

 

Do the most important stuff for today first.

When you’re considering how and when to schedule your priorities into your day, we’ve found that it’s generally best to do your most important work first. Even if you’re not a morning person, odds are that you’ll do your best work before lunch.

 

If you have some critical tasks you need to tackle, do them first. When you tackle your most important  tasks immediately they get the best of your energy. Your success at accomplishing those challenging tasks makes it all the easier to tackle the more mundane things on your to-do list later in the day when you’re energy and motivation are at low ebb.

 

Set times to disconnect

Disconnect in two ways; disconnect from distractions when working on high-priority tasks that require significant focus and, second, consistently disconnect completely from your work.

 

Disconnect from distractions when tackling high priority work such as writing, planning a sermon series, or brainstorming for an upcoming event by muting your phone (or, better yet, leaving it in another room), disconnecting from the internet, turning on instrumental music, or any other of the myriad of means by which we can tune out distractions. For me, when I sit down to write a blog post like this I have my phone muted and on the table behind me (out of sight, out of mind), headphones in with instrumental music on.

 

Disconnect from work completely by taking breaks every couple hours and by actually taking (at least) a few nights completely off a week. Go on a walk. Read a book for fun. Spend time with your kids. Cook a good dinner. Go out to eat. However you do it, completely disconnecting will actually make you significantly more productive and help you manage your time well.

Use your time intentionally

Do you manage your time well? The Apostle Paul admonishes the Ephesian church to “redeem the time” and “make the most use of the time because the days are evil.” Don’t let wasted time be a blocker that prevents you from fulfilling the ministry that God has given you.

 

There are a massive number of resources out there to help you leverage the time that God has given you to its fullest. If you want to dig deeper into this topic here are a few resources that our team has benefited from

 

• Book: The Twelve Week Year by Brian Moran
• Book: Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt
• Book: Smarter, Better, Faster by Charles Duhigg
• Article: The Beginner’s Guide to goal setting
• Video: Start with Stop (How to be more Productive)
• Video: How to prioritize your time

 

PS: If you need some outside input into how you can grow as a leader and make a greater impact, shoot us an email. We’d love to hop on a video call with you and help you think strategy and disciple-making.