The Effective Faith Podcast

It's my view that effective time management is all about serving others.  There are so many angles that I could explain this from and argue my case from but I will pick out just a few in order to build out my position on this for you. This is episode 35 of the Effective Faith Podcast - Effective Time Management is all about serving others.  My name is Chris Wood and I run Effective Faith - helping you to be more than just productive.  At Effective Faith our aim is to intentionally focus on what matters most, to resist the ‘productivity’ idol and to help Christians live effectively for Christ in their everyday work

Consider your focus for a moment.  Where will you set your focus?  What will you consider to be important in life such that given you cannot do everything, this will be what you pursue?  That was the question we asked. Godliness picks up that question, pops the hood on it and asks - what will determine your answer to that question? Many people will tell that answering the question of what matters to you and what will be important in your life is THE single most important question you can ever answer. It’s not.  It’s the one behind it.  What will govern your answer to that question?

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.   You've made some intentional plans. You've made hard choices to determine what is actually important in your life. You've said no to good things, things you want, in order to preserve your focus for the things that really matter. But, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. So we come to the next aspect of saying no to ourselves.  The issue of discipline.

There is a lot of talk these days about the important of saying no.  The clear message tends to be along the lines of - your time is precious and so protect it.  Learn to say no.  I believe that there is truth in this but I cannot help but feel like a lot of this misses the point and it misses the one single biggest threat to all of this.  The biggest threat to your time is yourself.  The point therefore is not to say no to everyone else so we can say yes to ourselves.  The point is to learn to say no to ourselves.

Every solution needs a problem... Here’s the point - we cannot begin to propose a better way, until we have effectively diagnosed the problem. The presenting issues - the manifestations - are merely symptoms and they are not the problem. What is needed is a shift in our mindset and our thinking. This is the only way to solve the problem of Toxic Productivity...