Does Effective Time Management
Mean Being Available 24/7?

Effective time management is one of the supporting pillars of success in life...whether you're a minister or some other kind of CEO.

Do you feel like you're struggling to keep your head above water? Just to get the minimum done each day.

Are demands on your time coming from every direction? Or just from a few very persistent people.

Do you find yourself avoiding situations and people? If so then that's your way of dealing with demands on your time.

Have you ever seen someone in a store or on the street and said something like "uh oh...there's that Bucket woman...she'll keep talking for an hour if I say hello to her. She told me all about her knee operation last week. I don't need an update."

And then you head down a different aisle in the store.

• Do squabbles among lay ministers take up too much time. Like when the children's choir director and the adult's choir director can't agree on the Easter music?


• Do different program directors want you to micromanage them because they ask your input on everything?


• Do some lay minister's disagree with you publicly so that you have to spend time doing damage control?

Effective time management is definitely up to the minister. Very few people in a parish are going to say "let's not bother father with that?

To the contrary...everyone who puts a demand on a minister's time feels that his or her issue is the most important.

The trouble is most ministers want to be perceived as nice guys. Soooo...

they allow themselves to feel that everybody's case is equally important and this...

paralyzes them.

The minister then begins to feel something else...

that people...with their problems...questions...or need to just chat...are breaking up the morning or the day.

Now some ministers are happy to have demands put on them...they have no goals...or very few goals...of their own for the day.

These are the ministers who love to feel needed.

But that ain't ministry. No sir. It's a recipe for management by crisis

You can go from this effective time management page to our homepage ...where you learn why defining terms like "ministry" is important...you can

just click on Aristotle's image below and read his short quote about how defining terms prevents chaos...

Then hit your browser's back button. I'll wait right here for you.

After that little detour you can probably see that being needed is not a ministry. Neither is trying to meet everyone's needs...as people pleasers try to do.

And people pleasers have difficulty with effective time mangement.

Ministry is made up of religious actions with the specific purpose of bringing people closer to God.

The rest is not ministry! It's administration...something even non-ministers have to do.

We all have some sense that effective time management is about getting things done...but exactly what is required for time management to be effective...that is to produce what you want?

Effective means bringing something about...causing something to happen.

Time management is...

What's important here is the hierarchy. And that's vertical...top to bottom. There will be no effectiveness without a hierarchy.

The person who needs to be needed or the person who is heading for burnout because everything is equally pressing...have arranged their tasks horizontally...that is

you attend to everything and little of importance gets done. There's no way to distinguish "most important" from "least important".

The minister who loves to be needed falls happily exhausted into bed at night after a day of being constantly needed. He or she feels central to the lives of the lay folks.

The minister who feels burdened and avoidant on the other hand falls wearily into bed and does not look forward to tomorrow.

The first minister is on stage as star and director.

The second minister starts avoiding people.

This page does not deal with the minister who loves to be needed. That minister is happy enough and the people are probably happy too.

But what can the burdened avoidant minister actually do to start using effective time management?

It's easy as 1-2-3...

The first three steps toward effective time management are...

• Write a list from top to bottom


• have a very clear definition of what an emergency actually is


• master the embedded command

A vertical list...rank ordered for importance from top to bottom...is necessary to decide what must happen before other things.

An emergency is something...anything...someone feels anxious about. But for the minister...a definition of emergency must meet the criteria on the Defining Words page. So here is an emergency...