Over-leveraged Time

As society works down its overload of financial leverage, I am amazed by various experts advising a "back to basics" approach to life: saving (a little at a time); investing (cash first, then riskier markets); career (focus on doing your best at the job you have now); dressing (more formal business attire is coming back). I will be interested to see if a simpler approach to time management becomes similarly faddish.

I believe our time has become as overextended as our finances. For too long, busy-ness has been a badge of importance; leisure has been equated with lazy. As a result, we don't sleep enough, we degrade our work through multitasking, and we stress ourselves out trying to lots of things competently rather than focusing on a few things and doing them well. The result: life feels like a 24-hour race. The rat race.

I don't know how a time deleveraging might look. Will people begin working fewer hours? Seems doubtful when one is trying to avoid a layoff. Will volunteer hours suffer? Perhaps, though people may substitute time for cash donations to causes they really care about. Will TV watching decline? One can only hope.

For me, I've vowed to identify and try to stop the time wasters that eat out chunks of my day, often without me realizing it. Blog reading on esoteric subjects; long conversations about non-business matters with co-workers; endless trying of new productivity tools instead of actually being productive. None of these things is bad in and of itself, or as an occacional diversion. But I sometimes find that they become the point of my day, not a sideline to it.

Control them, and I'll have more time for the things I really want to do: talk with Sylvia, play with the kids, read, improve my golf game. I shouldn't feel I have to "borrow" time to do these things I love; by breaking my bad habits, I can make them the focus of how I spend my time. I will be the richer for it.

Time Management

I went to Amazon.com today and in the Books section did a search for "time management." There were over 75,000 results!! Meanwhile, a search for "money management" yields just under 27,000 results. Amazing, when you consider that while there are many different levels of monetary wealth, we all have exactly the same amount of time each day. But the pressure to make the most of that time is relentless--hence the need for 75,000 books.

Living in the Present Tense, of course, isn't exactly about time management. You can use any of those 75,000 methods you want to manage your daily affairs. What present tense living is about is how we view time. We are trying to remove the pressure to maximize every minute, both today and forevermore, and instead live in the present tense: enjoy each moment, each day, one day at a time. Yes, some of those days will be filled with activities; hopefully some of them will be less crowded with appointments; but all of them are opportunities to serve God and others with our activities and presence.

I hope in learning to live in the present tense you'll discover ways to identify and relish those opportunities.

Four Hour Work Week

Present Tense living is about more than just time management, of course, but very often, as one considers new priorities and begins to think about how to get control of one's time, it is impossible not to think about being more efficient in our day-to-day tasks.

The Four Hour Work Week, a recent book by Tim Ferriss, offers some radical thoughts and bold suggestions for getting control of your time. Even if you can't adopt all of his suggestions in your daily life, they offer food for serious thought about how you manage email, what activities you spend your time on, and how you might be able to cut back on what you do. It's good stuff.

Here's an interview with Tim in today's Daily Telegraph in which he summarizes his ideas. This article from last fall gives a good overview of his principles.

(Class preview: In session 3, I'll give some homework taken from this book!)

Welcome Journeys Class!

For the next four weeks I'll be teaching the Present Tense lessons to the Journeys Sunday School class, so welcome to the blog if you're in that class. Feel free to use the archive at right to look around--you can see the handouts for each class session filled in in case you missed something.

The purpose of the blog is to continue the Sunday conversation throughout the week by highlighting time issues that appear in the media. Feel free to comment on any post you find interesting, and I hope you find this blog helps solidify in your mind the ideas we discuss in class.

Hope you find it "worth" your time!

Slow Parenting

In an earlier post, I mentioned Carl Honore's book In Search of Slowness. Carl has a new book coming out soon on the topic of hyper-active parenting, and how parents today push their kids to to more, earlier, than ever before. It will be published later this year; meanwhile, you can read an interview with the author here which gives a nice preview. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Class Notes and Follow-Up--Week 4

In addition to the class notes posted before, several of you asked for a link to the Peggy Noonan article that I mentioned on Sunday. You'll find it here.

Thanks to everyone for your participation in the class. I sincerely hope you took away both new thinking and some practical suggestions for living life in the present tense.

Because we may offer the class again in future months, I would welcome your suggestions/comments/ideas for how I can make it better next time. Email me anytime at dlcorts@gmail.com.

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CLASS NOTES

The Principles of Present Tense Living

1. God CREATED time.

2. God exists OUTSIDE of time. (Exodus 3:14; 2 Timothy 1:9)

3. When time doesn’t MATTER , then TODAY is all you have.

The River Raft Trip

Whitewater vs. Float

The difference: WHAT I FOCUS ON

How are you traveling down the stream of life???

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HOW TO LIVE LIFE IN THE PRESENT TENSE

1. CONTAIN your field of vision.

This is the DAY .

Take up your cross DAILY .

Give us this DAY our DAILY bread.

Ecclesiastes 6:3-6: ENJOY WHAT YOU HAVE NOW--TODAY

HOW: practice an ATTITUDE of _ GRATITUDE .

2. Be DELIBERATE .

Phillipians 4:8: Choose what you FOCUS on. Slow down!

Ephesians 5:14-16: Make the _ MOST of every _ OPPORTUNITY .

HOW: Live in the PRESENT --start for just five minutes at a time.

a. PICK AN ACTIVITY YOU LIKE TO DO AND UPGRADE IT

b. PICK AN ACTIVITY YOU DON’T LIKE AND UPGRADE IT

c. DO AN ACTIVITY THAT YOU NORMALLY DO WITH TECHNOLOGY AND DO IT WITHOUT THE TECHNOLOGY

3. Pursue REM

R ELATIONSHIPS E XPERIENCES M EMORIES

­­ LOVE is the one thing we have that has no limits!

Class Notes--Session 3

“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” -Albert Einstein

How do we think about the future?

1. FEAR IT

2. ANALYZE IT

3. IGNORE IT

4. WISH FOR IT

HOPE vs. WORRY

Both are a form of _____TREND___ analysis.

Based on what has come before, we __PROJECT_______ into the future.

Can you transform __WORRY_____ into ___HOPE______?

What does the Bible say about the future?

1. Jeremiah 29:11: I know the ___PLANS______ I have for you.....

2. Eccl. 7:14: A man cannot _DISCOVER____ anything about his __FUTURE____.

3. James 4:13-15: You do not know what will happen __TOMORROW_________.

4. Matthew 6: 25-34: __THESE_____ ___THINGS______ will be given to you.

Radical application: God has given us __MORE____ than we need. What are you doing with it?

Deal with the Future: ___PREPARE but don’t ___PREDICT___________.

Christian hope: God has been there for me in the past, He is here now, and He will take care of me in the future.

HOMEWORK:

Think about a decision you face that will affect your future; a decision that you’ve been putting off because the outcome is uncertain or difficult and you’re afraid to make the decision and move forward.

Now, think about that issue, then ask yourself these questions, and write down the answers. Spend a few minutes on each question, and write everything that comes to mind:

1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.

2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?

3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios?

4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?

5. What are you putting off out of fear?

6. What is it costing you—financially, emotionally, and physically—to postpone action?

7. What are you waiting for?

Questions taken from The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris, ©2007, published by Crown Publishing.

See more at www.fourhourworkweek.com