Good vs. Right

Last year I was asked to give a speech to a professional organization on the topic of time management. I think most people in the audience showed up for the free donuts and the chance at a morning away from their offices. The others were hoping that I would give them tips on organizing email and prioritizing "to do lists." Instead, I took a different approach. My position was that time management was more than organizing and prioritizing lists. The true heart of time management means making sure your efforts match your values. This isn't a dictionary definition; this is what I believe in my gut.

The first thing I did was to take my audience through author Stephen Covey's "Big Rocks" illustration. Covey describes a teacher who set a glass beaker on her desk and filled it with 5 big rocks—envision that the rocks were about as big as your fist. The teacher asked the class “Is the beaker full?” The students said it was.

The teacher then pulled out another container and added pea-sized gravel to beaker. She gently shook the beaker and the gravel filled in the spaces between the big rocks. “Now, class,” the teacher said, “is the beaker full?” They agreed it was.

Then, the teacher poured sand into the beaker and the sand filled the spaces between the pieces of gravel. “Is it full now?” she asked? The class said yes. “Class,” she said, “this demonstration has an application to your life. Do you know what it is?”

A student in the front row wildly waved his hand and begged her to call on him. When she did Johnny said: “The message is that, no matter how full your life is, there’s always room for more!” The teacher sighed. “No, Johnny. The point is that, unless you first find room for the important things in your life – the big rocks—you won’t have room for them at all!”

I asked my audience to think about what would have happened if the teacher had first put in the sand or the gravel and then tried to fit in the big rocks last? All of the stones would not have fit in the beaker. I handed out a sheet of paper with a drawing of five big rocks in a a jar. I asked the audience to think about their five big rocks.

I love about this illustration because it really does work for me. It is not just time management theory. In all honesty this is something that I do on a pretty regular basis. Several years ago I got inked with the Chinese symbol for "peace that comes with balance." Well at least I hope that's what it says. I once asked a 10-year-old girl who had recently immigrated from China. She said she couldn't really confirm the message. I'm hoping that's because she didn't understand my question.

For the last 8 years or so I have been focusing on balance in my life. I have recently come to realize that what I did was add things that were different from my professional life. I didn't spend less time on my career I just added volunteer activities. But each time I said yes to another activity, I looked at my big rocks and made sure the activity matched my values.

So when the girls' softball league commissioner asked me to coach Peyton's team, I said yes. Spending quality time with my children is one of my big rocks. It was a match. When I was asked to teach 8th grade youth group, I said yes. Paying back the adults who invested in my youth by paying it forward with the youth in my community is a big rock. I said yes to being an elder in my church. I said yes to serving on the Personnel Committee and yes to being on our Governing Board. When our senior pastor accepted a call at another church, I said yes to serving on the search committee that would call our transitional pastor.

Faith, family, community and career are big rocks for me. I made sure that of my commitments matched my big rocks.

As I look back over the last year, my schedule looked like the flight schedule at O'Hare airport. I had laid out all the time slots in my day and carefully filled them in. I found that if I worked through lunch and ate at my desk I could be sure to leave the office at a reasonable time each evening. I would get home in time to have dinner with my family, help clean up the kitchen, bathe the kids, read them a story, kiss them good night and head off to a meeting. I would get home in time to ask Beth the details of her day and I convinced myself that I was attending to my relationship with her and my children.

When I had softball practice or a game I would often take Bennett with Peyton and me to the field. I could spend quality time teaching both of them. I was sure that Emerson was too young to notice anyway. After the game, Beth would take the kids home and I would eat a snack on the way to my next meeting. I would get up an extra hour early to work on my Sunday school lessons. I would use my train ride each morning to do research and read background materials. I would teach each Sunday morning while my children were attending their own classes. I was convinced that I wasn't sacrificing any time with them. With the precision of a highly-caffeinated air traffic controller, I could land each commitment. Seven days a week.

But as any frequent traveler will tell you, O'Hare is a finely tuned machine until it is not. And usually it is not when a storm of some sort passes through the area.

Last spring I had a storm. I deeply grieved the loss of my beloved pastor. Five years earlier she had welcomed me back to faith after a decade spent in the gay diaspora. She lovingly convinced me that I could be true to myself and also a person of faith. Each Sunday for five years she challenged me to live a life of deeper faith. I found myself re-reading her sermons through the week and meditating about their meaning in my life. She appealed to my intellect in a way that I had never experienced before. She was the conduit to my reconciliation with faith. And she left. I had a lifetime of churches telling me that I had no place, without her presence I feared that my church would become one of those types of places.

At the same time, I discovered people whom I had considered to be among my very closest friends were only my friends when I agreed with them. I made decisions that were counter to what they thought was best and my loyalty and faith was questioned.

My finely honed schedule was intact but I wasn't. I started to crumble. Small conflicts became major issues. I became resentful of requests for my time. I bristled at extra meetings. I had no reserve. I had nothing left. I had a process to be sure my efforts were matching my values and yet, it wasn't enough.

I loved teaching 8th grade youth group. It nourished my soul in a way that other volunteer commitments hadn't. But when there was a conflict I walked away rather than resolve it. Things were flawed but I didn't have the energy to work on making them better. I walked away with a flimsy excuse.

As she has so many other times before, the words of author Barbara Brown Taylor rocked my world. In her book "An Altar in the World" she questions why we think God was less serious about His commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. I breeze through life convinced that I will never break the commandments to abstain from stealing or murdering. I carefully refine my view on money and material possessions so that I have no other god before me. I don't covet. Honesty is the center of my moral compass. Yet somehow I convinced myself that Sabbath day rest was a suggestion rather than an edict.

I have spent the last couple of months saying no to more commitments. I haven't mastered the discipline of resting for an entire day quite yet. I am however more willing to spend an hour watching it snow or 20 minutes doing nothing more than listening to music. I am taking walks without heading toward a specific destination. I am spending entire evenings reading with my children. I am reading more books myself. I still have meetings but they are less frequent. Rather than eating at my desk I am saying yes to more lunch invitations. I'm even initiating some of my own.

My goal is to work toward having a day of rest and renewal each week. I honestly don't know when I'll be able to do that. I don't want my Sabbath to be burdensome. That defeats the purpose. I won't deny myself light because it is work to flip the light switch. I won't deny my children the opportunity to play on the Sabbath because play renews them. Growing up I knew some people who refused to drive or cook or play or read on the Sabbath. They were bitter, miserable people. Sabbath will not become that for me.

I am fairly adept at rationalization. It might be easy for me to convince myself that a day spent completing errands is restful because it erases things from my to do list. A full "to do list" is stressful but errands aren't rest. Just because meetings are for church doesn't make them holy. Sabbath day rest doesn't include meetings.

At my busiest, my life was filled with good and honorable activities. What I must learn is that because something is good doesn't make it right for my life. Time management is more than making sure my efforts match my values. My efforts should enhance who I am as a spouse, a parent, a friend and person of faith. It doesn't matter how often I show up if when I do, it is less than who I was designed to be.