Too many meetings?

Too few meetings is not always a good thing for my temperament. If I have an empty diary for a day, whether as an interlude in busy schedule or as part of a generally quiet patch, I tend not to work very efficiently and sometimes wind up achieving nothing other than a sense of guilt.

But too many meetings is not good either. I manage to keep my head above water by doing all the essential preparation at the last minute, but I don't find time to assimilate what has happened in the meetings or to do the things I agreed to do, let alone to reflect theologically on them as we ministers are supposed to do.

Yesterday, for example, I began with a coffee morning (a good bit of social networking), continued with a joint staff and stewards meeting (more social networking though we became rather bogged down in the issue of staffing for the new circuit, an amalgamation of two neighbouring circuits - Methodist jargon which I will leave readers to work out for themselves), and ended with a weekly prayer meeting (small but important) and the first of our monthly Street Pastors team meetings (yet more social networking plus some administrative matters). There were breathing spaces between, but not enough for meaningful ministerial duties.

Today, for another example, I only have an evening Emmaus course in my diary - a Christian nurture course which is proving helpful to those who attend - but I will need to spend the morning preparing for that, plus planning my Sunday evening service. A visit to a colleague in hospital (an hour's journey away) will take up most of the afternoon. Again, where is the time to reflect, or to tackle anything on my 'important but not urgent' list?

What's the solution? Perhaps I should schedule in quality 'important but not urgent' time each day or each week. I tried that once, and it worked for a while. Maybe it's time to try it again. Meanwhile, my writing of this blog is a similar kind of discipline. It forces me to stop and think for a while in the morning, before I get on to the urgent matters of the day.

The only snag is that it delays the start of the 'real' work to the extent that (today, for example) it is past ten o'clock and I still haven't eaten my breakfast.