Learning to manage time
27/05/14 05:09
Years ago when I imagined what life would be like at this age, I was fairly confident that I would have achieved balance ini the critical areas of my life. I don’t think I imagined that I would continue to struggle to keep all of the different elements of life coordinated and balanced. Now, as I approach the years that some would call senior, I find that I am no more balanced with my priorities than I was twenty years ago. From this point of view, it seems that I had my act together in my twenties better than I do these days.
I do not have an unpleasant life. I have a wonderful marriage and family. Our children are healthy and engaged in meaningful lives. We have a grandson and a granddaughter who will be born soon. I have a meaningful career and a wonderful job. We have a lovely home and enough security to feel stable in our living. There is nothing in my life to complain about, really.
Yet I still struggle with setting priorities of time. I still wrestle with too much accumulated clutter. I still have work to do to achieve balance in my life.
Yesterday I went rowing at the lake. It took about two hours by the time I drove to the lake, rowed an hour and then drove back home. The exercise made me feel good. I topped that off with mowing our lawn. We have a large lawn and a walk-behind mower, so that was a bit more exercise. I cut off a couple of stumps, worked on a furniture refinishing project, put a coat of varnish on a wooden kayak and cooked a healthy supper on our outdoor grill.
I didn’t check my e-mail all day long. I didn’t check in at the office. It was a holiday and the office was closed. I didn’t make any hospital calls. I didn’t do anything that was work-related, really.
I can do a pretty good job of keeping up on a day off. But there isn’t enough of that balance. In general, I find it hard to take a day off. If we have a funeral scheduled for a day off, I usually can’t figure out how to take off a different day that week. When I rearrange my work schedule, it seems like there is just too much to do.
I don’t mind the long days or even the infrequent days off. But I can’t seem to build into my working life the amount of physical exercise that I need to remain healthy and maintain optimal endurance. I understand that two hours for exercise is a bit excessive. I usually can get in a few minutes. Parking at the distant edge of a parking lot, using stairs instead of elevators, and taking a short walk during my lunch break all help, but don’t give me the workout that I really need.
I’m beginning to understand why people join health clubs.
But I’m just not a health club kind of person. The forms of exercise I enjoy, and therefore am able to maintain, all take place outdoors. I like to ride a bike on a trail, but I am so quickly bored riding a stationary bike that I would never keep a discipline. I love to paddle and row at the lake, but the rowing machine, while a discipline that I can maintain at times, seems to become a chore when I am tired and going full steam ahead.
Summer gives me the gift of mowing the lawn, but frankly, that is a chore and I too often don’t recognize the gift that it is.
I’m quite sure that I would be more efficient in my work if I worked a little bit less and exercised a bit more. It is a matter of balance and nuance. I’m not talking about a major lifestyle change, just a minor course correction.
I know I think more clearly when I have had enough time outdoors. I know that exercising helps me focus my attention when I am doing important work. I also know that just putting in more hours at the office doesn’t mean that I will accomplish more work.
I guess I thought somehow, that I would have this all figured out by now.
The clutter in my office serves as a good analogy for the clutter in my life. I’ve been working in the past few weeks to reduce the clutter. I’ve cleaned off the bookshelves, removed items from the office and cleared and sorted files that I hadn’t looked at in years. I still have a long way to go, but I’m making progress. The problem was that I had accumulated too much stuff. I collected books and devotional items and resources for teaching. I collected reports and files and forms for weddings and funerals and worship planning and much more. When I was just getting started in the ministry, collecting the resources and tools to do the job was important. Somewhere along the way I over collected. Now I am discovering that less is more. Too many resources means that I am unable to use the resources I have. It is time to get rid of some of the things I have collected.
My schedule is as cluttered as my office once was. I have collected volunteer assignments and community involvements and a host of other responsibilities. I have collected projects and consultancies with other congregations and other areas of the church.
The developmental psychologist Erik Erikson spoke of the stages of life and named the task of older adulthood as integration. It is the time in life when we draw together the various different experiences and fashion them into a meaningful whole. I suspect that he left out an important stage for someone like me. I can’t begin the task of integration until I do some preliminary sifting and sorting. I need to declutter my life of some of the things and also declutter my schedule of some of the obligations.
I’m quite certain that we never get things fully figured out in this life. That is a joy as well as a challenge. I just wish I could find a slightly more balanced approach to the tasks of this phase of my life.
I do not have an unpleasant life. I have a wonderful marriage and family. Our children are healthy and engaged in meaningful lives. We have a grandson and a granddaughter who will be born soon. I have a meaningful career and a wonderful job. We have a lovely home and enough security to feel stable in our living. There is nothing in my life to complain about, really.
Yet I still struggle with setting priorities of time. I still wrestle with too much accumulated clutter. I still have work to do to achieve balance in my life.
Yesterday I went rowing at the lake. It took about two hours by the time I drove to the lake, rowed an hour and then drove back home. The exercise made me feel good. I topped that off with mowing our lawn. We have a large lawn and a walk-behind mower, so that was a bit more exercise. I cut off a couple of stumps, worked on a furniture refinishing project, put a coat of varnish on a wooden kayak and cooked a healthy supper on our outdoor grill.
I didn’t check my e-mail all day long. I didn’t check in at the office. It was a holiday and the office was closed. I didn’t make any hospital calls. I didn’t do anything that was work-related, really.
I can do a pretty good job of keeping up on a day off. But there isn’t enough of that balance. In general, I find it hard to take a day off. If we have a funeral scheduled for a day off, I usually can’t figure out how to take off a different day that week. When I rearrange my work schedule, it seems like there is just too much to do.
I don’t mind the long days or even the infrequent days off. But I can’t seem to build into my working life the amount of physical exercise that I need to remain healthy and maintain optimal endurance. I understand that two hours for exercise is a bit excessive. I usually can get in a few minutes. Parking at the distant edge of a parking lot, using stairs instead of elevators, and taking a short walk during my lunch break all help, but don’t give me the workout that I really need.
I’m beginning to understand why people join health clubs.
But I’m just not a health club kind of person. The forms of exercise I enjoy, and therefore am able to maintain, all take place outdoors. I like to ride a bike on a trail, but I am so quickly bored riding a stationary bike that I would never keep a discipline. I love to paddle and row at the lake, but the rowing machine, while a discipline that I can maintain at times, seems to become a chore when I am tired and going full steam ahead.
Summer gives me the gift of mowing the lawn, but frankly, that is a chore and I too often don’t recognize the gift that it is.
I’m quite sure that I would be more efficient in my work if I worked a little bit less and exercised a bit more. It is a matter of balance and nuance. I’m not talking about a major lifestyle change, just a minor course correction.
I know I think more clearly when I have had enough time outdoors. I know that exercising helps me focus my attention when I am doing important work. I also know that just putting in more hours at the office doesn’t mean that I will accomplish more work.
I guess I thought somehow, that I would have this all figured out by now.
The clutter in my office serves as a good analogy for the clutter in my life. I’ve been working in the past few weeks to reduce the clutter. I’ve cleaned off the bookshelves, removed items from the office and cleared and sorted files that I hadn’t looked at in years. I still have a long way to go, but I’m making progress. The problem was that I had accumulated too much stuff. I collected books and devotional items and resources for teaching. I collected reports and files and forms for weddings and funerals and worship planning and much more. When I was just getting started in the ministry, collecting the resources and tools to do the job was important. Somewhere along the way I over collected. Now I am discovering that less is more. Too many resources means that I am unable to use the resources I have. It is time to get rid of some of the things I have collected.
My schedule is as cluttered as my office once was. I have collected volunteer assignments and community involvements and a host of other responsibilities. I have collected projects and consultancies with other congregations and other areas of the church.
The developmental psychologist Erik Erikson spoke of the stages of life and named the task of older adulthood as integration. It is the time in life when we draw together the various different experiences and fashion them into a meaningful whole. I suspect that he left out an important stage for someone like me. I can’t begin the task of integration until I do some preliminary sifting and sorting. I need to declutter my life of some of the things and also declutter my schedule of some of the obligations.
I’m quite certain that we never get things fully figured out in this life. That is a joy as well as a challenge. I just wish I could find a slightly more balanced approach to the tasks of this phase of my life.