I’ve been borderline obsessed with managing my time of late. I created a time budget to keep all the 15-minute blocks I spend in different places and I analyze at the end of every week.
As soon as I’m done writing this post I’m off to clean up my budget for the last two days, in fact. I love the finality of filling my days with productive tasks — things I’m efficient at.
That’s why this excerpt from a Desiring God post recently crushed me:
There is a process to the production of love, as the apostle Paul counsels his protégé Titus: “Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). Good works don’t just happen. Meeting the needs of others doesn’t appear out of thin air. There is a process — a learning — to devote ourselves to good.
I’m supposed to schedule out laying the groundwork for doing good and not actually doing it? That’s killer for a productivity/efficiency freak like me but the theory of it is actually quite compelling.
There’s more, though:
The greatest joys come not from time squandered, hoarded, or selfishly spent, but from self-sacrificial love for others to the glory of God, when we pour out our time and energy for the good of others, and find our joy in theirs.
Beautiful.
Now I’m off to rearrange my little time budget.