Practicing Peace

Ministers tend to be in debt to their work.  Many of us live with piles of undifferentiated stuff around our offices, overflowing email inboxes, and unanswered voicemail.  Our overdue or unfinished work screams at us like bill collectors, each item demanding immediate attention.  No wonder so many of us decide workaholism is the only way to keep up.  No wonder others of us develop workaphobia and habitually tune it out.

To get out of debt to our work, that is, to get to a place where our work is no longer screaming at us, we need to distinguish between maintenance work, due work, and “important work.”  These are steps three, four, and five in the…

Five Steps to a Peaceful Ministry Day
Schedule:

• Rest first
• Driving second
• Maintenance third
• Due dates fourth
• “Important” things last

In my last post, I highlighted a few differences between what I am doing here at Practicing Peace and what Stephen Covey does in his First Things First.  Since ministry days are so volatile, and since they rarely follow a 9-5 schedule, it is important to spend a few minutes every day to define your day by scheduling time for driving and rest.  These are the hard edges of the day, and into this container we pour our work.  Covey uses the language of rocks, sand, and water to represent the things that are of first, second, and third importance.  I would like to set aside these categories for now and suggest that it is better to order our work day by putting maintenance first, followed by due dates, and only then giving our attention to the “important” things that are screaming at us.

Maintenance work is the stuff you have to get done to keep your soul, your sanity and your salary.  To find what your maintenance work includes, divide a sheet of paper into three columns under those headings and start brainstorming.

Mine would look something like this:

Yours will probably look very different.  I expect pastors will include things like pastoral visitation and sermon preparation.  Please be sure to share it in the comments!

Schedule maintenance third

Schedule maintenance third by adding a maintenance bloc to your daily schedule.  Make a list of the maintenance you want to do daily. Then, around the hard edges of rest and driving, add the time to your day to do it.  I keep my list in an MS Office note, but a text file or a loose leaf notebook would work just as well.  The important thing is that you have your maintenance work out of your head and in a format you can use easily.

Here is my list:

Daily Maintenance

1. Take your multivitamin
2. Schedule your day
   a. Rest First
   b. Driving second
   c. Maintenance third
   MWF - Daily Maintenance, Empty @Reply, German
   TR - Daily Maintenance, Blog, German
   d. Due dates fourth
   e. “Important” things last
3. Send Daily Update email to my wife
4. Read a chapter of Proverbs
5. Prayed for my prayer list
6. Process email
7. Process inbox
8. Balance checking and savings
9. Mindsweep
10. Schedule any remaining time in my day
11. Brush my teeth

It takes me about an hour to get through this list, which is down from about two hours when I first started it.  The remarkable thing about having a maintenance bloc is that it reduces the yelling voices in my day.  It tricks me into being faithful, and I can keep my promises better without a ton of stress or worry.

You will notice that I have more maintenance than goes in my bloc.  I need to test out of German when I get to Toronto in September, so German prep is part of my daily maintenance.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I set aside time to answer email that’s going to take more than a passing amount of thought (Empty @Reply), and on Tuesday and Thursday, I set aside a little bit of time for blog maintenance.  The maintenance bloc prompts me to set aside more time for maintenance during the day.

And, yes, I have to remind myself to brush my teeth.  If I don’t, then I won’t remember.  And, that’s the point of these five steps.  It’s not about remembering more – it’s about giving yourself permission to remember less.  Then your brain will be free to focus on your ministry.