Summary Post: Time Management for Intentional Living
When I first thought about doing this series, I did not know that my son would be getting married at the end of it—and right in the midst of the already-busy holiday season! This gave these posts a very different spin, but also gave me the opportunity to put things into practice.
Before I jump into a new series, I thought I’d summarize these posts for your reference:
Identity and Destiny Meet Time Management: Who we are as God’s children (my identity) and where God is taking us, His Story (my destiny) shapes how we live our days, not what is urgent or fun or culturally determined.
Spoiler Alert!: How Knowing the Ending Can Change Your Life: Glorifying God (our vertical end) and loving others as ambassadors, priests, and disciple makers (our horizontal end) become our agenda as we live God’s Story.
Saved by Grace: How It Makes a Different Past, Present, and Future: The Gospel not only saves us by grace but helps us to live in that same grace. It is our operating system that allows us to do good works now, with our eyes focused on future hope.
Regular Rest: A Sign of Growth: Rest as part of our rhythms.
To Plan or Not to Plan: We plan, but entrust those plans to God’s sovereign wisdom. In this post, I introduce Matt Perman’s idea of Gospel-Driven Productivity (GDP).
Five Levels of Planning to Consider: Story, God’s vision for us as humans, our personal mission to fulfill in God’s vision, our roles in the lives of others, and the routines we create to carry out those roles all help direct our days.
Do a Time Audit: Know Where You Are: How to take a snapshot of where you are now by doing a time audit. This helps us give a baseline with which to work and change.
Learning From Our Time Audit: Take your raw data and assess how you use your time and celebrate what God is already doing in you.
How to Make Changes: 3 Steps to Take: Changes take planning and time. First, we pick the changes we want to make. Second, we define what that change looks like. And third, we then we sequence the change by reverse-engineering it.
Two Paths to Change (Part 1): Habits: Though God ultimately changes us, we have a role to play. This post gives concrete steps we can take to participate in this change by thinking concretely, namely through training habits that help us grow.
Two Paths to Change (Part 2): Projects: While habits are ongoing, projects are one-time goals with a start and end date. This post helps us define the goal and the steps to accomplish them.
Working Out Your Salvation: 8 Ideas to Plan Your Days: Create a time map that blocks out time for self-stewardship, regular commitments, and planning through routines, work blocks that take your energy levels into account.
Planning to Plan: 5 Habits to Consider: Five key planning sessions to incorporate into your time map—1) annual, 2) quarterly, 3) monthly, 4) weekly, and 5) daily.
Throughout the quarter, I put these things into practice in my own life. On December 30, 2023, we celebrated the union of my son and his new wife—even amidst the holiday season.
Through applying these ideas, what could have been a difficult season was a very special and memorable one. We were able to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Christmas meaningfully, enjoy birthdays for my daughter, husband, and son, entertain family in town for the wedding, and do so with joy. Though we are exhausted (hence this summary post), I praise God for the good He has done.
With the new quarter—which also is a new year—I am starting this process all over. I am a little behind, but because I plan in shorter time increments, I can take this into account and be flexible.
I hope this peek into how I plan intentionally for growth, for relationships, and for God’s purposes helps you to start doing likewise. It takes perseverance and practice to find your own rhythm, but these have helped me to start seeing change in my own life. I hope it will help you too.
