September 11 Meeting: Shopping for Time

So many homeschooling moms are questioning, "How can I be more organized?"  I have asked that question repeatedly over the years as I sought ways to get everything done in the limited amount of time that I seemed to have each day.

As I read Carolyn Mahaney's book, Shopping for Time, however, I realized there was a better question to be asking.  It is, "What is the best way I can be spending my time right now?"  Mahaney encourages us to consider the limited resource of our time similarly to how we consider the limited resource of our money.  Being thoughtful and prayerful, we consider the "prime deals" for the current season of our lives.

First, we need to do some strategic planning.  We thoughtfully and prayerfully think about one or two things we can do to grow in godliness.  Then one or two things we can do to love our families better.  Add a couple of prime ways to serve in our churches, fellowship with other Christian ladies, evangelize, attend to our work (homeschool), and care for our physical bodies.  With Bible in hand, evaluate how we are doing in each of these categories.  What is going well and what needs to change?  

Of all these things that we have listed, we choose just a couple that we are going to truly focus on, and develop  action items for each.  For example, if you have toddlers, top of your list might be attending to your work (child training) and caring for your physical body -- because those are two areas in which the time spent now will pay off the greatest benefits in coming years.  So you develop an action item or two for those two areas and let the others go until you reevaluate the seven categories again next year.

Another area on which we need to focus is relationships.  First, it is important not to thoughtlessly allow others to drift into and out of our lives.  Mahaney urges us to be mindful of our relationships.  She encourages us to evaluate if we are spending too much time on relationships that should not be receiving so much of our energy (For me, these are the people on Facebook), and also to evaluate if there are some relationships that should be receiving more of our time and attention.  She encourages us to consider our friendships.  Are we friends with someone who tempts us to sin through gossip or idleness?  Perhaps the time with that person should be cut back.  Are we friends with someone to stirs us up to good deeds and to deeper faith?  Perhaps we should make an effort to spend more time with that person.  (Maybe she can meet us for regular walks and we can work on both our physical health and our friendship simultaneously!)

Beginning the day with fifteen minutes of setting priorities can be very helpful.  Since reading this book, I have realized how much happier I am with my accomplishments at the end of the day if I have taken those brief minutes to prioritize at the beginning of the day.

Also, while this was not mentioned in Mahaney's book, we also briefly touched on limiting our "technology" time.  One way to do this is to keep technology use to the periphery of the day (at morning or night).  Limiting both the amount of time that you are on it and the number of times you check it throughout the day is crucial to keeping technology use from becoming a hindrance to accomplishing your goals.  We have a limited amount of time and attention to give to events during our day, so let's choose wisely how we will spend them.