Life Balance

3 Simple Ways to Beat Procrastination

4 Comments / Life Balance, Overcoming /

Nearly everyone including myself battles procrastination. Researchers have found that at least 95 percent of people admit to falling prey to procrastination. And of those, approximately 20 percent would actually consider themselves chronic procrastinators. At one time I would have placed myself in that chronic procrastination category.

But I can honestly say that a combination of faith, bible knowledge, personal experience and age have turned me into a procrastination overcomer. I’ll admit that like most people I still have the occasional battle with procrastination, when it comes to doing things I do not want to do; but I have discovered some simple principles that have helped me immensely.

Procrastination when practiced regularly can develop into an art form. Like many people I was first captivated by the art of procrastination when I was in college. It was there I discovered two things about procrastination. If it were not for the last minute, I would not get anything done. And when it came to doing things I didn’t want to do, especially studying, someday tended to be every day of the week.

There has been voluminous research done on procrastination, hundreds of books written on the topic and countless principles posited for overcoming it. So it is with a due sense of humility that I offer my condensation of all that and everything I have learned into three simple principles that work for me. Here therefore are three ways I have discovered to beat procrastination.

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8 Ways to Be Present

22 Comments / Life Balance, Overcoming /

“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Be Present! What does it mean? There are different ways to be present. Being physically present and accounted for is obviously important. Just ask a child about that regarding their parents or ask a supervisor about that regarding their subordinate. But everyone knows, especially children and bosses, that truly being present entails much more than that. Being present also means to be focused and engaged in the person and/or task at hand. Being present requires a focused engagement of every aspect of our being including the physical, mental, emotional and even the spiritual.

We live in a world that militates against that. We are bombarded 24/7 with distractions and demands for our presence, primarily through media, social networking websites, and e communication. We delude ourselves into thinking that with the sophistication of technology we can now be omni-present because we can multitask. But the stark reality is that a person cannot multitask and be fully present at the same time! It is a conceit to think that way and may actually border on idolatry because we make ourselves to be like God, who alone is omnipresent. How ridiculous it is when you stop to think about it.

So having established that, here is my take on what it means to be present from a Biblical perspective. The verse “Be still and know that I am God” says it like no other. The Hebrew word for “be still” literally means to “cease” or “cease striving”. It means to push the pause button on and forsake everything else in our lives to focus on Him.

To be present means to first and foremost ask God to be present in our lives and to focus on His presence. To fully be present in any situation or relationship we must begin there.

With that as a foundation for our understanding of what it means to “be present” I want to share with you what I am calling the 8 BE PRESENT Attitudes. I have discovered these from a study of the Scriptures and they provide eight simple ways to improve our ability to truly be present in any and every circumstance. In fact in six out of eight, the scripture used as an illustration literally tells us that these respective attitudes are to be done at all times and in every circumstance.

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Time & Relationship Management

Life Balance /

“All the king’s officials and even the people in the provinces know that anyone who appears before the king in his inner court without being invited is doomed to die unless the king holds out his gold scepter.” Esther4:11 (NLT)

The Persian king Xerxes (or Ahasuerus depending on your translation) was a world ruler and likely the busiest men in his day. That coupled with his infatuation with his own sense of self importance apparently drove him to becoming a time management freak.

His ruthlessness in managing his priorities, to the point of killing anyone who dared to interrupt him, was known throughout the realm. Anyone wanting to do business with him or even any family member wanting to spend time with him risked their very lives in taking initiative to see him.

Imagine the fear of having to deal with, or worse yet having to live, with someone so task oriented and self-protective of his time? Watch out, if the old man is preoccupied, feeling overloaded or in a grumpy mood he could lop off your head for bothering him!

We would all be quick to agree that this is time management run amuck. It is a caricature of how detrimental it is when task management becomes exclusive of relationship management.

Wise time management is first and foremost relationship management.

The book of Esther, documenting the salvation of the Jews through the efforts of Mordecai and Queen Esther, is a great study in the priority of relationship management.

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The To Don’t List

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Our lives are built around “to do lists.” Like most people I keep ongoing and always growing to do lists. There is my work to do list, my home to do list, my call/write to do list, my reading to do list, my prayer to do list, my bucket to do list, and on and on the to do lists grow. These to do lists guide and inform my life of the ways in which I should and/or want to spend my time. But my recent study for a sermon I gave on the subject of the Sabbath, entitled “Faith to Rest” has sensitized me to the equal if not more important idea of keeping a “to don’t list.”

We live in a culture where “to don’t lists” are lost in the flood of to do lists. Our modern world is driven by a busyness that is a by product of the high value we place on accomplishment and accumulation. Consequently the idea of taking time to stop or cease things is anathema to our drive to keep the graphs of life moving up and to the right.

The Bible however confirms our real-life experience that the graph does move down as frequently and readily as it moves up. The passage of Ecclesiastes popularized by The Byrds’ song “Turn, Turn, Turn” in the mid 1960’s says it plainly and painfully. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) It might be summed up like this. There is a time to continue and a time to stop, a time to do and a time to don’t!

The word for Sabbath, derives from the Hebrew word shavat which is frequently translated rest, but more accurately means to cease or to stop (work/doing). The idea of the weekly observance of a Sabbath is a good place to begin when thinking about a “to don’t list.” Although there may be many bad or sinful things that should naturally go right to the top of our “to don’t lists,” the things we often overlook are the good things. Sabbaths were created by God as seasons to suspend even the productive and beneficial things in our lives for the higher purpose of renewed consecration to Him.

A proper “to don’t list” then should include bad things, good things that are simply not the best things and even the best things that need a rest.

Here is a list of clarifying questions that I am finding helpful in determining what things need to be priorities in creating a “to don’t list.”

1. What things in my life am I doing that I need

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5 Antidotes for Hurry Sickness

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Hurry sickness like most undetected diseases is a silent killer. The sobering fact is that hurry sickness could be wrecking havoc in our lives without us even knowing it. Make no mistake about it; hurry sickness is a killer disease. It kills relationships, it kills productivity, it kills perspective and priorities, it kills spontaneity and the joy of the moment and worst of all it kills spirituality. How can that be?

More often than not, hurry sickness forces us to sacrifice the important things in life for those things which seem urgent, but are not as important. Years ago Charles Hummel, in a little booklet by the same title, identified this tendency as the “Tyranny of the Urgent.” Urgency, although a life saver when it is an appropriate response, becomes a tyrant when everyday life suffers from its inflated and incessant demands.

Hurry sickness is therefore defined as “a behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness; an overwhelming and continual sense of urgency.” (Dictionary.com)

How do you know if you have hurry sickness? Simply measure your life against the definition. If you frequently feel rushed, anxious, overwhelmed and/or are always battling a sense of urgency, then you have it. Ouch! I’ve got it! Do you?

The bigger question then becomes, what do we do about it? Having battled this disease most of my life I’ve realized there are no easy answers. I have discovered however that getting older helps. One of the benefits of aging is that a person begins to gain some perspective that everything isn’t as urgent as it once seemed. And the really important things in life have a way of coming into to focus more readily. For this I am thankful.

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