Pastor Joe works at First Baptipresbycostal Church. He arrives in the office at 8:00am after having had breakfast with a congregant. Opening his calendar for the day, he sees that he has a meeting at 3:00pm with one of his elders, but, remarkably, the rest of his day is free. At the top of his calendar is the note, “30 min on speech for denominational meeting.” He gave himself 10 hours to prepare for this upcoming speech and divided it out over the weeks leading up to it. He also has several notices about email that he needs to respond to.
Schedule rest first. Joe adds fifteen minute blocks of rest every hour and a half. He wants to read some articles and blog posts in Google Reader, so he decides he’ll do it during that time.
Schedule driving second. Joe knows it usually takes 5 minutes to get the place where he is meeting his elder, so he adds 15 minutes on either side of his appointment for driving.
Schedule maintenance third. With the hard edges of his day established, Joe starts filling it with his regular maintenance work. He adds an hour for his maintenance bloc, fifteen minutes for Greek review, two hours for sermon preparation, and thirty minutes for his weekly bulletin piece.
Schedule due dates fourth. The major due date that Joe has hanging over his head is the speech he is giving at his denomination’s annual meeting. Since there is already a reminder on his calendar, he simply schedules a block of time to work on it after his maintenance is over.
Schedule important things last. Joe keeps a complete task list of the things that neither fit into maintenance or due dates. He decides to mark the rest of his work time for “important” things and to work off that list when the time comes.
After he has spent the ten minutes scheduling his day, he has this on his calendar or on a sheet of paper that he’ll carry around with him for the day:
8:00-9:00 Maintenance Bloc
9:00-9:15 Greek Review (Keep an eye out for a post on this!)
9:15-9:30 Sermon prep
9:30-9:45 Rest
9:45-10:15 Sermon prep
10:15-10:30 Rest
10:30-45 Sermon prep
10:45-11:15 Bulletin piece
11:15-45 Denominational Meeting Prep
11:45-12:00 Important things
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30 Important things
2:30-45 Rest
2:45-3:00 Drive/Work
3:00-4:30 Appointment with Elder
4:30-4:45 Drive/Rest
4:45-6:00 Important Work/Work shutdown
This ministry day starts out peacefully– Joe is getting everything he needs to do and more done. IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE that things rarely work according to plan. What happens when a distraught parishioner comes knocking on his office door? Something will have to give.
The question is, what component of Joe’s day needs to move first?
I would suggest that Joe moves in reverse order. In Joe’s day, he has almost three hours of “wiggle room” in which he has planned to work on “important” things. If an upset parishioner comes in, and Joe needs to spend thirty minutes with him or her, then he should take the thirty minutes out of the important work in the afternoon and move everything back. Remember, “important” work, while significant, should never be more important than due dates, and due dates, especially if you’re working on them like I suggest, will never be as important as your maintenance. If you are faithful in the little things, you will be given opportunity to be faithful in the big ones. Taking care of a parishioner is much more important than most of the “important” work we set ourselves. By reversing the order in which you scheduled your day, you can know what work needs to give way first.
