Take Two

A few months ago, I wrote a post about cleaning up some of the extraneous things that were bogging down my life and sucking my time away.  In the words of Dr. Phil, how’s that workin’ for you?  Answer: not too well.  As I look at the timing of that post, it was just before I headed off to New York and my work life blew up.  The subsequent changes were all good but the time commitment has been enormous.  Over the weekend, I took some time off (and actually did not work) to reflect on some things that have been bouncing around in my brain.  Allow me to share with you but first, a story.  Human Resources professionals tell us that to find your ideal career, you simply picture what you would do if money was not an object.  Specifically, if you didn’t have to worry about making sure there was enough income to pay the mortgage, car payment, college payments (coming way too soon for me) and all of that other stuff, what exactly would you do?  I actually had this conversation with one of my fellow ministers last Wednesday at church (he has a very successful business of his own) and we came to the same conclusion.  What you are really asking is what is the most important thing to you.  The answer was our ministries.  Even though we’ve both had a degree of success in business this is largely seen as a means to an end (ie, making sure the lights stay on).  If I didn’t need the money, I would not do what I do (at least full time).  I would, after a significant vacation, spend my life in pursuit of the ministry.

When you write it down it seems crystal clear but until you get to that point, there seems to be a lot of fog and confusion.  So, I took some time to prioritize my schedule.  Specifically, I did some trimming.  I was reading over 100 blogs a day.  These were trimmed significantly (especially if they weren’t directly related to my day to day business).  Also, took a number of news web sites out of my feeder.  I made an effort to make sure I didn’t spend time reading everything else and not make it to the Bible.  It has become a priority.  I stepped up my work with Sunday School and with my local church and breathed some life into plans that had been placed on a very dusty shelf.  In short, I took out some trash.

The true test will be to see if these changes have any staying power.  I am thinking (and hoping) they will.  Like all plans, they are best executed on a daily basis.  I still have significant irons in the fire after all, we do need to eat.  But along with my day job my most important priority is to keep first things first.

Just another turn in the journey.