Work smarter not harder - but how?

I am not getting things done as well as I should. My life and work seem to be spiralling out of control. I realise I need to do things differently, but how?

Sharpening the axe. I’m a great believer in giving time to ‘preparing the tools’. If I commit time to creating a well-ordered work place with a tidily categorised list of tasks, then I feel better in myself, I work better and I get the jobs done in less time overall than if I just pitch into the chaos and thrash around. The trouble is that in recent weeks the influx of email and post have created so much clutter that I am spending many hours sharpening the axe without even getting it really sharp, let alone using it to chop trees.

Focusing on the important rather than the urgent. I know the principle. Those things which are important, but have no clear deadlines – they don’t actually need to be done today, or even this week – ought to have priority. But when it comes to a choice between preparing tonight’s meeting or visiting someone who could be visited another day, it is usually the urgent task that gets the priority. I am already going into meetings, or even services, feeling that I am under-prepared. If I cut down on preparation time in favour of more important (but less urgent) activities, then I will end up winging it in meetings even more than I do now.

Avoiding time-wasting leisure. I know there is a proper place for relaxation and personal refreshment in anybody’s life, and that constant work can be counterproductive if it leads to stress, ill health and early ‘burn out’. But I could easily add an hour or two here and there to my working life if I cut down on certain distractions. This may not be a complete solution to my problems, but it would reduce the sense of guilt. I would avoid the current situation where I feel that one wasted hour is to blame for not fulfilling all my tasks, when actually I would have needed many additional hours to complete them.

Prayer and spiritual nourishment. Again I know the principle – the more one has to accomplish, the more one has to pray. The reality is that I have been ‘too busy’ for some weeks to devote any serious time to prayer – though I have not been too busy for lots of other less important matters.

So what’s the answer? Probably the simplest approach is the best – decide at any given moment what is the most important thing to be doing and then do it. It’s a good principle. I just need the mental discipline to follow it. Which means the most important thing right now is to pray...