Scheduling the Important

Simplified living requires purposeful stewardship of each day.

You cannot become someone fundamentally different from the person you are now until you begin to make commitments –in writing–on a calendar and then live them out.  Bill Hybels- Simplify

Earlier this year I started scheduling monthly dates with a couple of my closest friends. While the nature of our friendship has been consistent over the years, our ability to make time to connect had been sporadic. Life often got in the way of making plans. We all had kids, husbands, work, etc. While we valued our relationships it didn’t translate to our time.

After multiple haphazard attempts at finding times to “get together”, we decided to be proactive and put standing monthly dates on the calendar. The second Tuesday of the month with one; the last Thursday with another and so on. We don’t keep our dates perfectly but because they are on the calendar if we have to miss a date we are quick to reschedule for another time or day.

The investment in my friendships has been totally worth the intentional scheduling.

I value my friendships; I value the people in my life. I value my work, my family, my kids, etc.

I value this project/workbook I’m working on; my “elephant”. Sadly, it’s not going to write itself. (Though I really wish it would) 🙂

So just like with my friendships, I need to schedule the time I’m going to work on it. I talked a while ago about fringe hours and my Wednesday evening hour has become a work hour. I had a deadline set for my book so I knew I was going to have to schedule some work time over the weekend so I asked my husband to watch the kids so I could get some hours of work in.

I need to schedule my “importants” or else they become optional.

Counting the cost

Now maybe your elephant is not relational but is important to you for some reason.

Whatever IT, it’s important to you and you must consider the cost of not making time to work on it.

• It can be a cost to a relationship if you’re trying to build community or be more intentional about friendships or family relationships.
• The cost can also be stress or anxiety if your “elephant” involves de-cluttering or finishing a home project.
• It could be a health related cost if you’re wanting to eat better or exercise.
• It could be a financial cost if you’re putting off starting a new business or implementing strategies that could create growth.

Procrastination costs mental and emotional energy. Intentionally scheduling “bites” will lead to progress. If we schedule enough pockets of time to work on our projects, they will get done.

We need to walk the talk. We need to be intentional stewards of our time.

If it’s important enough that we decided to put on our plate; it needs to have scheduled time allocated.

Otherwise it’s not that important and it won’t get done.

Even if you work from home, maybe especially if you do; it’s important to make time and set our own “office hours” to work on projects that need to get done.

Consider your own “fringe hours”; are there times you can find to intentionally work on you elephant?

Can you pull out your calendar now and start with one time slot where you can commit to working on it?

*Get caught up on our 31 Days of Eating Elephants here

 

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