This is a great article talking about doing a few things right. I love the concept of simple church and simple leadership. This article is about how what you spend your time on as a leader reflects what you value. If you spend lots of time on many different things you value many different things right? Wrong. If you spend your time on many things you value nothing. Simple leadership is finding what you value the most and then spending your time on what is most effective in achieving this goal.
“I can’t be involved in 50 or 75 things. That’s a Noah’s Ark way of investing – you end up with a zoo that way. I like to put meaningful amounts of money in a few things." – Warren Buffett
This takes some serious planning and some serious vision for your life. If you simplify you get some very interesting benefits. You can measure more what you are doing and you can say really what you do with clarity. If you value preaching as a leader but spend 4 hours out of your 55-60 hour work week you probably value preaching as much as reading emails. Here is an interesting statistic according to Nielson, that average person spends 10% of their time on email during a week not to mention other online activity. So you are saying basically that emailing is more important than preaching. I understand that you have to spend time on email but what else can you get rid of to communicate preaching as a priority.
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ReplyDeletePriorities, priorities, priorities! After I read this, I thought about where my time was spent today. I spent most of the day planning for various events, including a staff meeting for a large all-church service event. So this tells me that I’m committed to the general mission of the church, not just my own area. I also spent time with a student who dropped by to discuss life and what is beginning to feel like a call to ministry. I value my kids and spending time with them. I spent some time chatting with colleagues about an issue and looking for ways to resolve it. I value commitment to the “team” and dealing with issues. I had no lesson or sermon to prepare this week, so none of my time was spent there.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read how Collins monitors his time with a stopwatch—literally counting the minutes of each activity. Honestly, I think I’d go a bit crazy with such an approach. It seems that there is no value to multi-tasking for him. I understand that when you multi-task, your focus is split between activities; however, there are some things that do not require so much focus.