Today we’re going to talk about margin in the area of time. If I could have a “do over” in area of my life to this point, it would be in this area. Time is a precious gift from God and once we have invested it or spent it that particular moment is gone. We don’t get to live yesterday, or last week, or a particular situation over again, no matter how much we wish we did. When I think of all the times I have let time slip away unredeemed, I am reminded again of how important it is to make the most of this moment.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to creating margin in our lives when it comes to time is that we assume we have both more control over our lives than we do AND less. Let me explain. I regularly sit down and plan my time. In fact, thanks to Michael Hyatt’s book Living Forward, I sat down for an entire day several months ago and planned out the entire coming year. I included mission trips, vacations, conferences, and the regular daily and weekly commitments. I scheduled time to reflect on the week, and to plan the next. I even scheduled margin. On paper it seemed perfect. That’s the part where we assume we have more control than we do. We CAN schedule or plan our lives and if we’re ever going to have margin in the area of time we must, just as we must create a spending plan if we’re ever going to have margin in the area of money. The challenge is life doesn’t go the way we plan or schedule it.
For example, on Monday morning, I received a phone call that a dear friend of ours from the days we served a church in Cincinnati decades ago had died. Her family asked whether I “had time” to come out and officiate at the funeral. The short answer was, “No, I did not have time.” This is one of the fullest weeks I’ve had for a long time from a schedule standpoint, because of the 15th anniversary celebration of New Life. Saying, “Yes,” would mean a 5-6 hour drive each way, an overnight stay in Cincinnati, and a morning devoted to the funeral. I didn’t have anything specific planned on my calendar for Thursday, since I typically keep it open for big picture planning and writing. I knew the right thing to do: say yes. Doris, the woman who died, wasn’t just a friend, she and her husband had adopted us into their family for the five and a half years we served in Cincinnati. I said, “Yes.” That commitment took up all the margin in my week–but I had margin in my week. I had already completed my message for the weekend. I had already completed my daily blog on the church website for the week. Everything I “had” to get done was already done. That’s what planning does in our lives. It lets us get to the important matters first, and then when life happens-which is where we have less control over time than we think we do–we have margin to address it. Without margin, when the unexpected situations of life come up, are best planned schedules go by the way side.
Yesterday I gave you some specific ideas about what has worked for Nancy and me when it comes to creating and living by a budget or spending plan when it comes to money. When it comes to creating a budget for our time, I commend Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward model. I’ve tried most of the time management planners on the market over the years. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. For me, the most helpful has been the Living Forward model, because it starts with the true end in mind. It has you write your obituary–yes, your obituary. You consider how you want to be remembered in the various areas of your life, and then write that as the beginning of your “Life Plan.” Then you add specific areas that are vital to you. I started with “Quadrant II” areas, things that are important, but not urgent, and wrote a plan for each of them. For example, two of my areas of focus are Spiritual and Physical Growth and Development; and Intellectual and Emotional Growth and Development. In each area I wrote a preferred future, the current reality, and then the steps I’ll need to take to get where I want to go. The process was challenging, but also encouraging, because it has shown me how having a plan–and implementing it can move me toward being who I believe God created me to be.
The key in whatever planning method you use when it comes to time is to SCHEDULE margin for those times that will come up when our schedule is disrupted. We need to have at least an hour each day of scheduled margin, and it’s always best to schedule more time to do tasks around the house, and time with our family than we think we need. That last statement may strike you as strange–schedule time for our family? Yes, because unless we schedule it any block of time is open to the whim of someone else. If we don’t schedule our lives, someone else will. We must schedule family, and reflection, and margin into our lives, so when someone calls or texts and says, “Do you have time to go out for breakfast on Friday,” we can say, “I’m sorry but I have an appointment.” That appointment may be with a spouse, or with yourself. It’s easy in such a moment to say, “I can forego that and make up the time later. Don’t fall for that. We don’t make up time later. Time is a finite “commodity.”
I urge you to invest the time to schedule your time, and to create a spending plan for your money, so that margin may become a reality in your life if it isn’t yet. That way you will be available in those moments when you’re needed for those unexpected opportunities that make life fuller, and you’ll have the money to do those things without having to use credit. Margin is a great blessing that comes to us when we live our lives intentionally.
Here’s to leading better by pausing to make room in our lives to be available for the important and urgent moments we didn’t expect–today!