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Would you agree that time is your most valuable asset? We all have twenty-four hours in a day; we are all given the same amount of time each day. How we spend that time makes all the difference in our lives, doesn’t it?
The first time management principle was: time management is about balance and prioritization.
Here’s the next one:
2. Time Management is about getting the right stuff done.
You can be very busy, do lots of stuff, look very efficient, but wasting a lot of time because you are busy getting the wrong stuff done. In fact, sometimes I’ve noticed that I purposely stay busy doing the less important things just to avoid or postpone getting to the stuff that really needs to be done.
I remember in the first corporate job I had many years ago, there were certain people who stayed late almost everyday, looking very busy and important. And I was a bit intimidated by them, because every morning they would tell me how late they worked the night before. But gradually I began to realize that they were stretching eight hours of work into ten! They stayed busy doing stuff because it made them feel effective and important, when in reality what they were doing wasn’t adding any value to their work product.
It is better to complete one very important task than one-hundred unimportant tasks. You remember when Jesus was in a crowd of people, when a woman with an issue of blood just touched his garment, hoping to be healed. Jesus stopped right in the midst of that crowd, interrupting this journey to the home of an important man, to heal this one woman—a woman who was an outcast in her society because of her physical condition. It was that important to Jesus—that one person in the midst of all the demands on him.
When you take time for that one person—that one act of kindness that comes your way, it may be the most important thing you do all day. That one thing could be reading a Bible story to your children. Or it could be taking a nap to recharge your batteries. Or spending time listening to someone who needs a friend. Don’t forget that God often has those divine interruptions for us that may appear to be wasting our time, when in reality, they are truly important and effective uses of our time.