As Christians in the marketplace, we must realize that our jobs can be—and should be—our place of service to the Lord. We need to see our jobs as the place where God has put us to be light and salt in a dark and tasteless world. Our work habits can positively or negatively reflect Jesus to those around us in our workplace. It is so easy to allow basic, good work habits to slide such that we not only damage our careers, but worse, we damage our testimony for Jesus Christ.
It is vital that we periodically check up on our work habits to keep them from deteriorating. Let’s look at some common areas where our work habits may need to be reinforced. Good work habits require discipline and commitment, but they produce good work, good reputations, happy managers, career advancement, and good testimonies. It’s really important that we stay on top of these things.
Working with Excellence
As I was teaching Genesis in my Sunday Bible study, I was very impressed with Joseph. I’ve always been impressed with Joseph—he is definitely my kind of man. But did you ever think about how Joseph climbed the ladder in Egypt and achieved such outstanding success? It was because he was a very hard working, very honest, and very dependable person.
It reminded me again of the opportunity we have on our jobs to establish strong testimonies for our Lord Jesus Christ simply by our work habits. I’m certain Joseph also talked about his faith in his God, but his words would have been empty had he not established a flawless reputation for excellence and integrity.
What’s it like with you on your job? Let’s take the simple everyday work habit of being on time. It seems that many people don’t see this as important, but if your company or boss has established a start time for everyone, then it is your responsibility to meet that requirement. I often hear people make excuses like “I make up the time later,” or “All that matters is that I get my job done.” Admittedly, some companies and managers have that attitude. However, if you agreed to a start and stop time when you took your job, and that hasn’t changed, you need to be on time every day.
It’s easy to let ourselves off the hook when we aren’t doing the right thing—finding someone or something to blame it on. Sometimes we excuse our sloppy, half-hearted work because our manager is difficult, or because we just have too much to do.
It’s so important that you remind yourself of the importance of your work habits. They are sending messages about you every day at your job. Any of us can have a strong testimony for Jesus through our good work habits. There are no good excuses for being careless or sloppy, lazy or uncaring.
Remember this verse from Colossians:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. . .since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:23-24)
That whatever includes boring work; it includes work done for a difficult manager; it includes work done in difficult situations. When you work with all your heart for the Lord, you will receive a reward. It won’t go unnoticed.
Being Dependable
Dependability is one of the most important assets you can have on your job or anywhere else. Everybody is capable of being dependable! Are you careful about little things? Do you make sure you do what you promise, and keep others informed when something goes wrong?
Establishing a reputation for professionalism is important—you pay attention to details, you don’t promise what you can’t deliver, and you do everything possible to keep all commitments and promises you make. That’s what dependability is all about. Even if you do good work, you can create a poor reputation if you are not dependable, if you forget things too easily, or you don’t keep track of commitments. It takes a certain amount of organization and structure to keep things from falling between the cracks. This is usually not an attitude problem but simply a problem with work habits.
I want to strongly reinforce the importance of good work habits, especially for those of us who are believers. I would hope that your co-workers know about your faith in Jesus Christ—they should. If they do and they observe some really sloppy work habits on your part, they will have difficulty correlating your performance with your faith. Believe it or not, people are watching you—to see if your words and your life match.
Remember Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians:
Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (1 Corinthians 4:2)
Whatever trust you’ve been given, make sure you are faithful and dependable. It will not only please others but, more importantly, it will please the Lord.
Staying On-Task
One work habit that is probably my biggest challenge is to stay on task and not flit from one thing to another. My mind wanders to other things and before I know it, I’m trying to do two or three things at once instead of completing one task and then going to the next one.
We talk a lot about multi-tasking—keeping lots of balls in the air—but in truth you can only do one thing at a time. When you habitually fail to stay on task, you are wasting lots of time. Every time you stop and start again, you’ve lost time and efficiency. As much as you possibly can, eliminate interruptions and distractions and stay with a task until it is completed. It’s a very good work habit.
Do you ever notice how you often interrupt yourself when you’re trying to get a job done? Sometimes we are our worst enemies when it comes to time management. Paul told the Corinthians that “…everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Corinthians 14:40). I think that would include our work habits. So, check it out and see if you’re wasting time with self-interruptions.
I play little tricks on myself to avoid those self-interruptions. For example, when I’m writing—which seems like always!—I’ll set up a reward for myself, like this: Okay, Mary, as soon as you get this much written, then you can get something to eat—or something like that.
Remember, your work habits matter to God. He cares about every area of your life, and he wants you to be a good steward of your time and energy. Make sure you stick with the job until it’s finished. That will make your job easier and it will be a good testimony to those around you.
Imposing Self-Discipline
Do you believe in gimmicks? I can tell you that I’m a big believer in using gimmicks, reminders and prods to help me keep in place the disciplines that will make me successful. Proverbs 5:23 says a person can die for lack of discipline. I believe that includes emotional, mental and physical death. If discipline is not a part of your work ethic, you may not have much of a work ethic.
I use gimmicks to keep me on task; I have all kinds of reminders around me to help me remember what I have to do and what the priorities are for the day. I simply don’t trust my memory any longer! It has failed me too often. Keeping records, making notes, writing to-do lists, sending yourself a voice mail message as a reminder—these are some of the many ways we can put discipline into our daily routine. We really don’t have a good excuse for not being organized and disciplined, do we?
Can you think of some area in your work habits where you tend to be undisciplined? Let me mention a few possibilities: Tardy too often; waste the last half-hour of the work day; spend too much time in personal telephone calls; stretch your lunch hour beyond its time limits; too much chatty conversation with co-workers; or leaving things to the last minute too often. It may only be one small area where you have refused to be disciplined, but it will come back to bite you and cause you problems.
Proverbs tells us that a person who ignores discipline despises himself and eventually comes to poverty and shame. If you find it hard to be disciplined in some area, ask God to give you a creative gimmick—a way to impose the discipline on yourself that will help you be successful. Remember, a disciplined life brings glory to the Lord.
Refusing to Quit
Sometimes, when you’re really being pushed hard to get a lot of work done, you can get so discouraged that you want to quit. When you have more to do than you can get done and people continue to make unreasonable demands of you, it’s easy to throw up your arms in frustration and say, “Who needs this?!” If that’s where you are today, I want to encourage you to persevere in your good work habits.
Talk to yourself; remind yourself that you’re only one person and you can only do one thing at a time. Focus on what you’re doing, not on what you have yet to do. Many times we waste a lot of energy and time thinking and talking about all we’ve got to do. I find that if I’ll stop thinking and talking about all I’ve got to do, and just do the thing that is at hand, I begin to chip away at the workload and things start to get done. Usually it’s not nearly as bad as I had imagined it to be.
It doesn’t help to keep telling yourself you’re overworked. You’re wasting mental time and energy that can be better used for getting something done. Just do what you can; keep working hard. Don’t waste time worrying or complaining about all that’s left to do. You’ll get much more accomplished in less time.
We’ve touched on a few common areas where our work habits can really make a difference. I strongly encourage you to get serious about this matter and evaluate your own work habits. If you find you’ve let some of them slide too often lately, make it a matter of daily prayer. Ask God to remind you and motivate you, and then set your will to follow through. These little things add up quickly; people notice when you work hard with good discipline and dependability. It will help your career and, more importantly, people will be able to see Jesus in you more clearly.