Productivity - Blocking your Time
As I creep through my 5th year of pastoral ministry, I continue to have a fascination with time and how we all choose to use it. Why is it that some people can thrive in their career, develop meaningful hobbies, exercise regularly, eat healthy, and still have time for their family, and other people drown in 9–5 monotony, looking back 10 years from now and realizing they’re no further along in life than they were then? We are all given the same amount of time each day. What we choose to do with it varies wildly. I’ve been trying to better use the time I’ve been given to accomplish more, so I can look back 10 years from now and see that I have come a long way, in both my personal life and in my ministry life.
As I began writing this, I realized I have way too many resources/ideas on time management for this to be one blog post! So here is part one of how to get more productive!
I first learned about blocking my calendar from my good friend and mentor (Jon), and after that heard Mark DeVries talk about it at CYWC in 2014. Here’s the gist of it:
Every week we have 21 blocks: a morning, afternoon, and evening, for 7 days. Each block is 4 hours long (9–1, 1–5, and 6–10). How many blocks do you need for your full work week? If you work 40 hours a week, that’s 10 blocks. In ministry Mark suggested you have to build in “flex time” — time that you may be working over-time. When Jon explained flex time to me, he said he wanted to be his ministry’s best volunteer. If we’re asking people with full-time jobs to volunteer in our ministry, we best be doing the same! Therefore I typically work 44–48 hours a week (using some of those flex blocks, but not all). Mark’s suggestion at CYWC was to have 5 flex blocks, leaving 6 that are OFF. (Your family will be grateful to know about 6 blocks a week that you are always notworking!)
Another thing Mark talked about at CYWC was taking 1 of your 10 work blocks to mark as “balcony time”, where you will work on your ministry instead of in your ministry. So often we get caught up in the day-to-day grind of e-mail, volunteer management, printing curriculum, writing sermons… that we forget to go 100,000 feet and look at what it is we’re actually doing. So for one block a week, I don’t do anything related to that week. I look at things like “what are my top 5 priorities in this position?” “how can we be better encouraging and equipping volunteers?” “what is missing in our discipleship plan for youth?” “what should we do as a family outreach event over Easter?” I also take time to read a chapter from a book I’ve been “meaning to read” forever but haven’t gotten to (books and conferences both provide fuel for “balcony times”!). I find this one block a week so refreshing,and it helps me to remember why I’m doing what I’m doing!
I’ve come to realize that I can’t have balcony time at the office — between the phone, impromptu stop-ins, and the tyranny of the urgent, it’s hard to stay focussed. I like going to Starbucks, but I know others who do their balcony time at home. You need to figure out where and when works for you, but put it somewhere. I believe it’s critical for moving forward, so you’re not stuck in the same daily grind forever without evolving and improving.
Here’s my week. I took a screenshot and added it to my photos so I can access it easily. You’ll notice I have 4 flex times instead of 5… that’s because Thursday & Saturday nights really only equate to 2 hours a piece. The arrow on Thursday afternoon means that on the weeks Serving Saturday happens, that block moves to Sat afternoon, and the off block moves to Thursday afternoon.
OK, confession. I am somewhat obsessed with this vlogger on YouTube. His videos are so stinking good! He also loves talking about productivity and making time count. Now, he is not a Christian, so I would absolutely NOT recommend adhering to the daily schedule he outlines in this video. But, I was curious to see what I do with my hours, so I made my own chart for a typical week (since my days vary quite a bit from one another). Since doing this I’ve been a lot more conscious of how much free/wasted time I have in a day. It has caused me to turn off the TV after an episode or two, and read a book instead, or do some chores. Sometimes just knowing what you’re actually doing with your time is enough to enable change.
OK, that’s all I got for now. I was going to keep going but this is getting too long! :) Another time I’ll talk about some other ideas I’ve gathered that have helped me take back my time and make it count for more. Hope this was helpful!
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