The effective pastor: Control your time
Peter Drucker’s first practice of effective executives is to know where your time is going. Time, he points out, is one of the few resources we have that cannot be replaced or expanded and cannot be set aside and saved for use later. It is a scarce and fleeting resource that is necessary for everything we do.
He suggests three steps.
Recording time: Just as it sounds. Keep a live log of everything you do for a couple of weeks. See how you actually spend your time, not just how you think you spend your time. It is crucial to keep this as you go, not rely on memory, which tricks us and lies to us.
Managing time: Eliminate everything on your time log that does not need to be done. The key question: “If I stopped doing this what would happen?” If the answer is “nothing,” then it is a time waster.
Next, hand off everything on your list that could be done just as well or better by someone else. While you are at it, look for ways that you waste the time of people around you.
Finally, pay attention to the ways that poor planning, information sharing, or staffing lead to time wasting. Drucker says one obvious target is the recurrent crisis. If you keep having the same crisis over and over, it means something is poorly managed. Getting that in order will save time.
Consolidating time: To do most things well, you need large chunks of time to do them. Dribs and drabs of time here and there just do not lend themselves to effective work.
If your first reaction to this list is “no kidding,” please remember that Drucker is not spinning theory. He’s talking about his experiences and observations consulting with executives over a number of decades. Effective executives manage their time.
What pastor would not benefit from this?
Sure, it is not easy to do – and there will be lots of times when “the unexpected” must be dealt with. But the bigger challenge is having the resolve to actually take these steps.
Drucker wrote about executives who felt obligated to show up at meetings because people would notice their absence. They felt they had to accept every dinner invitation. They feared saying no to these things, but found that when they determined that these things truly fell in the time waster category and were eliminated, the executives were more effective.
If a business executive often feels there are many ways he or she has to spend time to satisfy the expectations of others, how much more do pastors feel this way? Having the courage to take a hard look and say “no” may be quite a challenge for us in some local church settings.
Reading Drucker’s book, I am reminded of Adam Hamilton’s advice in his book on preaching. He writes that talking to the leadership and convincing them that you must have 10-15 hours a week to work on sermons is crucial to effective preaching. Preaching is one of the few tasks that no one else can do and it is certainly one that requires large chunks of time.
Do you manage your time well?
I agree that time management is key for effective ministry. In fact, we need to schedule in sabbath time each day and each week. We tend to micro-manage every second and we forget that sabbath is also vital for effective ministry.
Not to judge Adam Hamilton, because he has obviously been a successful leader in the UMC, but my guess is that he and pastors like him are probably work-aholics. My grandfather was a pastor in the North and South Indiana conferences and while he pastored the Carmel UMC in the Indy suburbs in the 60s and 70s it grew tremendously (along with the community), but he also worked 70 hour weeks. I bet Hamilton works at least that much on average, or pretty close to it. Does Drucker say anything about how much time a full-time executive should expect to have to work in order to lead a successful company, even with well-managed time? For me personally, I just am not willing to make the sacrifices even as a full-time pastor to work 70 hours a week.