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I’m sure we could all relate stories about stuff we have spent hours doing which turned out to be a complete waste of time. Wasting time has to be one of the biggest problems in anyone’s life. The problem is that too many of us have no idea what is important and so we waste time on what other people think is important.

Remember also that just because something is urgent doesn’t mean it is important. This is a big mistake that we all make from time to time. We assume that a sense of urgency means that something must be important.

Throughout today ask yourself the question of everything you do: Is this important?

Ask it about everything you do. Ask it about the things that are urgent as well as the things that are unimportant.

It will be tough to decide what is important but I will provide more help on this in my next post. For now though simply use your intuition to decide.

One of those things that Jesus once said and I’ve always found quite a challenge in his advice about time management:

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matt 6:34

It’s not that I’m prone to worrying but that it would be easy to believe Jesus was saying that planning ahead was a bad thing to do. I don’t think that this is what Jesus meant us to believe. Why would Jesus expect us not to make plans or have dreams about the future? Surely this is part of being human and something that is impossible to achieve. What business would every survive without a plan for the future? What family would ever manage without a calender and forward planning?

What I think Jesus meant was for us not to WORRY (e.g. get stressed about for no good reason) about tomorrow because if we take care of today tomorrow is already taken care of. If we do what is right today – if we make our plans and get ourselves organised and give ourselves time for what is important today then there will be no need to worry about tomorrow.

However working out what is right to do today is a big topic that can’t be addressed in just a few words – other than Jesus summation of the task of course – “Love God, Love your neighbour as yourself” (my paraphrase).

So if Jesus were leading a time management seminar He would point out the importance of getting the right things done today while planning for tomorrow so tomorrow takes care of itself.