Wrestling with Time

If you often find yourself wrestling with time, I like you. You remind me of me. Although I’ve authored a book on time management, I often struggle to manage my minutes and days, trying overcome the tyranny of too-much-to-do. 

And now that we're two weeks into 2018 and New Year's resolutions have probably been tossed out with the trash, we all need some cheer leading. 

Here are the three tips that help me most when I'm wrestling with time: 

Tune in to the Lord early in the day. The longer our to-do list, the more we need God’s input. When we make time to read the Bible and talk to our Heavenly Father, He supernaturally helps us manage the rest of our day.

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Try saying “no” without apologizing. “NO” is not a four-letter word. If we’re stressed and worn out, it’s likely we’re overcommitted. When we say “no” to a new TV show or a project that won’t bear fruit, we are saying “Yes” to God’s plan for our lives—and more time!

     Tackle clutter. Most of us—myself included—have too much stuff.  Clutter control steals from our callings, our careers, our families, and our churches. The simpler our environment, the more time we have to do what matters most.

I believe we can win the wrestling match with time. After all, we have the finest coach in history: Jesus!

What are your biggest time challenges? Please write them in the comments and I'll make a special note to pray for you. 

What is Your Clutter Tolerance Level?

This is not me!

 

I can tolerate an unmade bed or dishes in the sink. But piles of papers, books, and clothes muddy my thoughts and inhibit my creativity. I'm not OCD, but I do like a fairly neat environment, or I become distracted and find it hard to concentrate.

Plus, taking thirty minutes to find a bill or a set of keys distracts me from what I consider my true purpose: to love God an others.

Not everyone is wired like that. My husband likes his piano cluttered with music and books, so that people will see he's a working musician and that our piano is not simply a showpiece. Another genius worked at the desk below:


Wanna guess who's this is?

How much clutter can you tolerate? Does it distract you, make you crazy, or do you operate just fine with a desk like the one above? If you guessed it was Einstein's, you were right!

De-junking

One of my goal's this year is to de-junk my house, basement, and garage. We have way too much stuff!

I first heard the term de-junk from cleaning expert Don Aslett, in his book Clutter's Last Stand. That's when I became convinced that clutter was an enemy of my sanity, and I've been at war with it ever since. But lately it seems to have crept back in, especially in my closet and my emotions.



So, I cleaned out my clothes--about 25 pieces of them--and am working on managing my emotions, with the help of Joyce Meyer's book, Living Beyond Your Feelings.

Sometimes good can crowd out best. If I own so much I can't find anything, I waste time. If I let my emotions rule my life, I'm out of control. I need to get back to my first love, Jesus, and the realization that I am His princess.

That's enough. That fills my heart, so I can get rid of the clutter.

And you?

The Cleaning Lady

Please don’t hate me when I tell you that I have a cleaning lady.


Because I find cleaning uncreative, boring, and well… dirty, it’s worth my hard-earned money to pay someone to dust my coffee table and mop my kitchen floor. And if I didn’t have a job, it’d be worth my husband’s hard-earned money to pay someone.

Recently I was de-cluttering the dining room, pulling sweaters off the backs of chairs and hanging them in the closet. “What are you doing?” asked my husband. ”I thought Wendy was coming tonight.”

“She is, but I don’t want her to see what a mess we live in.”

He chuckled and shook his head. I think he quit trying to figure me out about thirty years ago.

“It’s pretty bad that I only clean house right before the cleaning lady comes, huh? But I guess it’s good I have her, or I’d never clean.”

He left the room at this point, so I talked to myself as I threw away old mail and wiped the table. “Cleaning is like editing. If I want to write for only God and myself, I don’t worry about cleaning it up. I end sentences with prepositions, tell instead of show, and use tons of passive verbs (I feel sorry for passive verbs, since writers have gone on strike against them. But that’s another article).

“Now, if I want to share my writing, I need to clean it up, so my readers won’t be appalled at how messy I am. I edit my fingers to a frazzle, making my writing as perfect as I’m capable of, so an editor—the cleaning lady, if you like—will fall in love with it and buy it. Then I can make more money to pay my housecleaning lady. See how tidily that works?”

I pretended he heard me, and that the sounds coming from his den were chuckles of agreement. I rather think he was enjoying the John Wayne movie he was watching, while creating more clutter for me to pick up before Wendy came.

Do you ever write for yourself and God alone, as well as for others? For the writings you clean up, how long do you spend editing vs. writing?