This topic is adapted from the HardTruthVideo YouTube channel.
Whether with God, family, or work – it can be difficult to balance and manage your time as a leader. Here are four rules to remember:
Do the Truly Important Things First
Decide on the truly important things according to your values and your mission. Have a vision for what is most important in your life, family, workplace, and church or ministry. These are the things you will want to do first. If you are a follower of Jesus, you will want to prioritize your relationship with Christ. It is too easy to spend our time on whatever comes up. Watch out for interruptions and things that steal your time; doing whatever comes up can break the first rule.
Do the Urgent Things Next
Life seems to bring us an abundance of urgent matters that are time sensitive. Once you have decided the things that you value the most and you are spending time on the important things, you will want to do the urgent things next.
Delegate Whenever Possible
Whether you are at work, home, or involved in a ministry team, there are things you might be able to delegate to others. Delegating is not just for the sake of freeing up one’s schedule but to help others grow, mature, and build skills. Delegating involves training others and spending time teaching someone to do the job properly. Delegating and sharing responsibilities will help people feel connected to one another and part of a team.
At home, make sure others know what your mission is as a family and let them be involved in accomplishing the mission. Don’t do all the work yourself. Helping gives them an opportunity to mature because we mature by serving others. Let them know that they are valued for the help they provide to the family.
Know When to say No
There will be times when you have to kindly and lovingly just say no. If you have decided that this isn’t truly important, it isn’t something that is urgent, and it isn’t something that you really need to do or have time to do, it is best to say no. Saying no takes practice but make sure that you know when to say no in the workplace, your home, and in terms of ministry at church.
Discussion Questions:
- Watch the video together or invite someone to summarize the topic.
- What is your initial reaction to this video? Do you disagree with any of it? What jumped out at you?
- Take some time and talk about your values and mission so that you can decide what is truly important at this stage in your life. Continue to think about this more and consider writing these down in a journal and sharing them with your family, coworkers and ministry team when appropriate.
- What is something that you could delegate to others, either at work, home or church?
- Do you have trouble saying no to others? If so, why do you think that is? What is one step that you could take to gain confidence in saying no?
- If you don’t have trouble saying no to others, how can you be sensitive to those that do have trouble saying no?
- Write a personal action step based on this conversation.
