Because I’m a Wonder Woman, I have a lot going on. Maybe you can relate. On a regular basis, I wonder what’s most important in my life, my week, and my day. Should I be spending more time:
Unfortunately, the answer always seems to be YES. They all seem to be important, worthwhile activities. And although I have written about the JOY method for prioritizing my time, the truth is I still struggle on a daily basis with what’s important.
The Bible records the question of a man who was an expert in the law who wanted to test Jesus, but it’s a question I am asking in all sincerity. What’s most important?
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a]38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35-39)
I have discovered the power of asking a simple question of my bickering children. I don’t tell them what they said was wrong, against the rules, or punishable. I simply ask, “Was what you said loving?” The question has never failed to elicit an honest response. No matter how upset the guilty party is, there is a hanging of the head and a repentant, “No.”
What’s Most Important?
As I’ve struggled lately to determine which to-do’s are most important on my long list, I find that asking myself, “What’s the loving thing to do?” gives me clarity and peace. I look at my husband who’s wondering what’s for dinner while I try to improve my blog design and I know the loving thing to do. As I wonder how to increase my blog readership while quickly scanning others’ posts, I know the loving thing to do. I see my children playing ball outside while I fret about me, me, me, and I know the loving thing to do.
I’m finishing this blog post as I hear my husband and children making plans for active fun. I know the loving thing to do.
A blogger who ministers to busy women asked me to write a guest post on over-commitment. When I got her email, I laughed out loud. I think God was trying to tell me something and He needed to be blunt.
The resulting post on the high cost of over-commitment ministered to me and I pray it will minister to you. While you’re visiting beautiful Daphne’s blog (I mean, she’s model beautiful!), please subscribe and be blessed by her beautiful spirit as well.
One of my hobbies is trying new applications to make life easier, more productive, or just more fun. These ten applications have been added to by productivity arsenal in recent weeks.
ActiveInbox You may recall my love affair with Goodtodo. The Goodtodo website and accompanying iPhone app helped me get to inbox zero and stay there. There was only one thing I didn’t like about it and that is that it isn’t fully integrated with Gmail, my email client of choice. In other words, while I could forward emails into Goodtodo (and that’s the point), I often had to go back into Gmail to access emails with lots of links, as these aren’t clickable in Goodtodo. I had heard of ActiveInbox before, but was put off by the Getting Things Done moniker. I don’t use every aspect of the GTD approach. What I didn’t realize is that ActiveInbox does everything that Goodtodo does and more. While it’s not meant to be your primary task manager, that’s exactly how I’m using it and I love it. I have the paid version and feel it’s worth every penny.
2. Springpad Everyone knows Evernote and lots of people love it. I liked it, too, but had a particular frustration. I didn’t like that I couldn’t make a checklist that I could easily rearrange or easily make a note that was a task to complete. Springpad does that and more. The user interface is much more appealing to me as well.
3. SmartPad Even though I have my tasks neatly organized in ActiveInbox, I have days when I don’t know how I’m going to fit it all in. One app I love to use in that situation is SmartPad. This iPad app tells you how much you can get done given your schedule and time you have to work. If you dawdle, you can watch the tasks you hoped to accomplish fade from possibility. SmartPad will soon integrate with a SmartDay website which will make the app even more user friendly.
4. Final Version – Wunderlist The man pictured above is not an app, but Mark Forster, who comes up with a new productivity approach every few months. As long as you don’t think of the “Final Version” as the be-all-end-all, but rather as a fun way to gamify your task list, you might enjoy it. I like to use it when I am feeling unmotivated and then Wunderlist is the iPhone app I use. As you tap the stars to indicate that this is a task you prefer to do before the last starred task, the items are put in order at the top of the list for you to begin working on.
5. Clear This is another iPhone app that works for doing the Final Version or just as a great list app. The beauty of it is its simple, clean interface. To make an item a priority, move it up on the list and it’s in the red zone. To add an item between items, simply spread your fingers apart to make room for the new one. If you just want a simple means of organizing tasks in terms or priority, Clear is a great option.
6. Schedule Planner Pro Research shows that we accomplish more of the tasks we schedule. This iPhone app not only allows you to schedule your tasks, but compare what you actually did with what you planned. It’s not perfect, but I love the concept and will use the app when I am working on schedule discipline.
7. Task Current I think of the Task Current iPhone app as a Fun To Do list that I can use to inspire me or even as a reward for doing less-than-fun to do’s.
8. Fitocracy Fitocracy is a seriously addictive website/iPhone app for people like me who thrive on compliments. This diverse community will make you feel like a million bucks for completing your workout, whether you’re a seasoned exerciser or just getting started. There are groups for Christians, but I’ve found the whole community to be very supportive. I was doing squat thrusts at 11:00 p.m. just to finish a “quest” and earn the approval of my fellow fitocrats. What on earth?
9. Daily Feats In case you were wishing there was a pat-on-the-back app for things like housework and parenting, I have good news. Daily Feats gives you points, social approval, and even tangible rewards for doing tasks related to your goals. While company reps are often giving out what are called “props” and sharing links to their products, I’ve found it to be welcome as the products are appropriate to my goals.
10. 750 words Are you a writer who wishes there was a social gaming app to help you get writing done? There is! Earn points for logging 750 words into this writers’ website and compare yourself to others with writing muscle.
What new apps have you found for getting things done?
Do you spend more time singin’ in the rain or singin’ the blues when it comes to time?
We know we have the same 24 hours that everyone else does, but many of us aren’t content with our time. I know, because of the innumerable books, articles, and tools sold on the basis that they can give us more time.
Our discontent with time is obvious when:
We procrastinate. We wish we had more time to do the things we enjoy, rather than those we don’t.
We complain about how busy we are.
We are annoyed by people who slow us down.
We arrive late. We wanted more time to do something else.
We cut our sleep time short. We wish we had more active hours each day.
We multi-task, giving nothing our full attention.
We live in fear of not getting everything done.
We spend our time looking for ways to save time.
Discontentment with time has become socially acceptable, even among Christians. While there is wisdom in some time management and productivity teaching, we can use the information to feed our discontentment and find ourselves in a vicious cycle. The following parable came to me as I sought the Lord’s wisdom for my discontentment with time:
There was once a very competent woman who was hired by a brilliant man in a company that was destined for success. He took his time interviewing her so he could put her in a position that would make the best use of her abilities, but would also enable her to grow. He gave her a simple job description and invited her to come to him each morning to ask what he would like her to do. He also made it clear that he might call upon her unexpectedly as well, but that he would be sure to provide her with everything she needed to do a good job for him.
At first the woman was delighted with her boss. He was the nicest boss she could imagine having. He gave her meaningful work that made the days fly by and she felt great! But after she grew accustomed to the job, she figured it really wasn’t necessary to meet with him each morning. She pretty much knew what needed doing. In fact, she even recognized some things that needed doing that her boss hadn’t mentioned. She was quite excited about her new projects, but also surprised and even a little irritated when her boss interrupted them to give her work she wasn’t expecting.
At about the same time, she noticed that some of her co-workers could really use some training. They weren’t doing their jobs well at all. She meant to just train them, but before she knew it, she was doing some of her co-workers’ tasks, too. As a result, she had to keep longer hours. She stayed later and came in earlier. She even had to take work home! She lost sleep as she worried about how she would get it all done. Finally, she was so stressed that she decided to talk to her boss about the impossible workload he’d given her. Things were so bad and he hadn’t done anything to help her. Didn’t he care about her at all?
Our Awesome Boss
What’s missing from the analogy is that God isn’t just a boss, but the one who created us to do good works (see Ephesians 2:10). We don’t really know our loving God if we think He would give us more tasks than time to do them in. I feel so terrible for being the woman in the parable.
While I believe we are to be content with the time the Lord has given us, I also believe that God can supernaturally expand our time when necessary to do His work. I have had times when I was overbooked and stressed, but I met with my Boss and asked for help. Commitments I had suddenly disappeared or I felt like Wonder Woman doing things in hyper speed.
When we are discontent with our time, let’s meet every morning with our awesome Boss. Let’s ask Him what He would like us to do, what He would like us to let go of, and for the grace to accept the time we have as more than enough.
If you love to read blogs like I do, you have probably subscribed to a lot of them. I have my family’s and friends’ blogs in my Google reader as well as blogs in areas of interest to me. Subscribing is easy; reading them all is hard! But I’ve found a solution that works for me. Maybe it will work for you, too, regardless of which reader you use.
Purge all blog posts from your reader. Yep, you read that right. The only reason I wouldn’t suggest you do this is if you haven’t subscribed to many blogs and you’re keeping up with what you have. But if that’s the case, why are you reading this post? Start fresh. I know some of those posts may be life-changing, but be strong and click “mark all as read.”
Set up folders based on day of the week, subject, or both. You can keep up with your blog reading by dividing and conquering. Using your reader, create folders labeled for days of the week that you know you have time to read. If Mondays are never a good day to read, don’t create a Monday folder. Alternately, you can simply create subject folders that you will then assign to days of the week. I suggest using subjects that correspond to the first letter of the week day to help you remember (Money – Monday; Teaching – Tuesday; Food – Friday). That way you don’t have to include the day in the folder label. I use both day folders and subject folders because sometimes I have a hankering to read more on a given subject, even if it’s not the day for it. I’m like that.
Assign each blog to a day and/or subject folder(s). I assign most of my family and closest friends’ blogs to every day folder. Why? Because then I won’t feel guilty when they ask, “Did you see my post on…?” Ree Drummond will never ask me that so I don’t assign Pioneer Woman to every day. Her food blog posts get assigned to Recipes and to Wednesday which is when I do my meal planning. Not sure a blog is for you? I assign those to a Try It folder.
Schedule a time to read your daily blog folder. If you don’t think about when you can and will read, you just won’t. Of course, if you’ve decided that this is all too much bother, and you don’t want to read blog posts, I’ve just done you a favor. Unsubscribe from blogs and do something more productive, like pin pictures to Pinterest. If you do want to read, then make a habit of it. The best time for me is at lunch on my iPad. I love Flipboard.
If you haven’t added Wonder Women to your reader, I’d be honored if you did! Do you have any other suggestions for keeping up with blogs?
I'm on a USTA tennis league and have been for the past 2.5 years. There are many aspects of playing that I enjoy, but the one that has been a particular blessing lately is the opportunity to work on my thinking.
You wouldn't think that I would be nervous on the tennis court, being a speaker who's comfortable with any size crowd. But when I first started the league, my anxiety was crippling. The second I thought about losing the point or double faulting, that's exactly what happened.
I've been reading a variety of books on the mental game of tennis, but this one really convinced me that no matter how far behind I am, I can still win. The author gives many examples of pros who just gave up and lost matches that were theirs for the taking and other examples of players who seemed to come back and win against impossible odds. The key to winning? Believing that you can.
A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I handily won the first set of a match, then fell apart in the second, and finally lost the tie break. Yesterday, we seemed to be repeating that disappointing pattern. We won the first set without much trouble, then soon found ourselves down 5-2! If you know anything about tennis, you know that the other team just needed one more game to win the set.
I could see the discouragement and frustration in my partner and I could feel it developing in me. Then I told her, "We're going to pull a David Freese and win this set." She smiled. When either of us made an error from that point forward, I made a point of saying, "That's okay. We can still win." Many times we were in a David Freese, World Series kind of way by being one point away from losing the set (though not the match). I felt the pressure, but refused to give in. Neither did my partner. We came back to win the set and match 7-5.
The truth of Allen Fox's words became very clear to me on the tennis court, but they've become clear to me in life, too. Maybe you're against impossible odds like:
You're getting older and you still haven't met "the one."
You've filled out dozens of job applications and you're still unemployed
You have a hundred pounds or more to lose
You've been trying to conceive for months to no avail
Your house is such a mess that it seems it would take a team months to clean it out
You've been unhappily married for years and nothing you've tried has worked
You have an addiction you just can't beat
You're tens of thousands of dollars in debt
Your loved one is elderly and still hasn't received Christ
While it's true that the right attitude doesn't guarantee victory, I believe it's also true that no matter how far behind you are, you can still win. I could give you examples of people I know personally who've experienced an unexpected victory in these situations. The key? Believe that you can.
Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:27)
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
