WHY SHOULD YOU PLAN YOUR LIFE? PART 3
(Adapted from a BaseCamp USA seminar on LIfe Planning held December 3, 2022)
Now that you have a vision or a path for life, a mission, and a plan to achieve it, how do you carry out your plan?
First, manage your time.
“So teach us to number our days, that we gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 A biblical instruction: the Lord wants us to use the time He’s given us wisely.
Fine. That makes sense, but what principles should I use to manage my time effectively? There are many books, articles, podcasts on time management. Each can be helpful.
From my experience, three principles stand out:
Plan and execute around priorities. Rank your activities by priority. Which will be most important in achieving your goal? Second most? And so on. Tackle your steps in order–usually this means doing the toughest ones first.
- Plan one week at a time.
- You will certainly do longer-term planning, but weekly works best to carry out your plan.
- Reviewing your goals each week, then laying out action steps for each day, gets you going.
- It also helps you work your “to-do” list, not others.
2. Do Quadrant II action steps as much as possible.
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey introduced a classic chart for time management. It simply divided all activities into four quadrants:
- I Urgent and important
- II Important but not urgent
- III Urgent but not important
- IV Not important, not urgent
Working on the most important steps toward achieving your goals, though they may not be the most urgent–the hallmark of truly effective people.
In addition to using these principles, constantly examine the use of your time and trade time-saving ideas with friends–
- How many hours of TV do you watch a week?
- How many playing video games?
- Hours driving?
- Hours waiting?
When you complain there’s not enough time to do the Lord’s work, look at how you’re spending it.
Second, consider what’s holding you back. An honest review of these obstacles helps your arrange to work around them.
- Are you wasting too much time doing non-productive activities?
- Are you working on urgent, non-important steps driven by people, phone, texts, computer?
- You can add to the list.
If you are passionate about doing those things that will best achieve your goals–if you are willing to rely on the Lord for assistance, you can overcome almost any obstacle.
Third, failures. Along the way toward achieving your plans you will experience failures.
- Look at the life of Joseph–he went from favorite son to being sold into slavery by his brothers. He was taken to Egypt where he built a successful career only to be thrown into jail on false charges. Finally, Joseph resumed his career and leads Egypt.
- What have been the major detours in your life?
- In my case, shortly after retiring from a career at an international public accounting firm, the company went down. I lost all my retirement benefits and had to start a completely new career.
- Have you been able to deal with the detours in your life?
CONCLUSION–
Are there risks of leading a carefully planned life?
- If your schedule of important actions is too tight, you may not have time for spontaneous events.
- “ME” gets crowded out in our zeal to deal with the “must-do’s” for others.
- Enough fun may get squeezed out of life.
- You may not be prepared to deal with life’s detours effectively.
But all these can be managed and are well overcome by the joy of leading a planned life.
- Of following God’s intentions for you and doing the right things.
- Of the satisfaction and peace of achieving great things under God’s will.
- And as you model your life after Jesus, finding you are a role model for others.
Submitted by: Jim Kackley
1 thought on “WHY SHOULD YOU PLAN YOUR LIFE? PART 3”
This life planning blog post is excellent stuff. Thanks!