Working a full-time job, serving as an Assoc. Pastor of Children & Youth, maintaining CommanderBill.net, serving Awana in the region and caring for my home and family keeps me busy. I often find myself saying, if I only had more time, I could do this or that. Do you find yourself saying things like that?
Well this weekend, it’s time to put action to words. In many areas of the United States, daylight savings time ends this weekend and we turn our clocks back an hour to return to standard time. That means that Sunday has 25 hours! Yes, you have an extra hour! But what generally happens? I know that often I will stay up for the extra hour working on ministry or household items I believe need to be done. Thus I still don’t get the sleep I need before ministering on Sunday.
Karl Bastian (the Kidologist) has an excellent blog post that talks about how Work Expands to Fill Time Allowed. If we allow ourselves a certain amount of time, we will fill it with something to do, even though sometimes it is over thinking something, or maybe “spinning wheels”, but we’re busy, we’ve filled the time. Much like all of these conveniences designed to make our life easier, which has had the opposite effect, we are now busier because we now have more time. We’ve allotted more time to do things.
Many have an extra hour this weekend. Use it wisely.
Ha! I think I slept and extra hour that night. Usually I’m pretty sleep deprived, so it was good use of the extra hour. Kids Church can be pretty taxing, so going into Sunday well rested was key.
Jim Wideman wrote a great book on the subject, beat the clock. He’s a master of time management and I really don’t know anyone who gets as much done as this guy. It’s worth the read.