Category: Life Skills

We began this series with godly time management tips to manage our time effectively by studying the story of Creation from Genesis 1. If you missed that article you can read it here. Today we will finish off this series with two more tips that at first, might seem counter-intuitive, but are actually essential to effectively manage our time.

4. Rest Well

This might sound counterproductive, but it is actually an excellent way to manage time. We all know how tired we feel when we have a particularly long day. When we wake the next morning we are groggy, tired and lazy. We then might proceed to chug down many cups of coffee to get us up and running again. On days like these, it will be extremely difficult to be able to make much good use of our time. We will be pushing tasks aside and checking them off for ‘some other day’ or ‘when we feel better’.

God, however, doesn’t need rest nor does He get tired. (Isa. 40:28-31) He neither sleeps nor slumbers. (Psa. 121:3-4) Then why does He stop creating in the evenings? It’s to give us an example to follow. We all need the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep to let our body rest well and perform routine maintenance tasks on itself. That way, we will wake up fresh and energized to tackle the new day. If you manage to get to bed early, you will have a better chance at rising up early too.

Use your evenings to wind down from a busy day. Spend some of it with family, use some to analyze your day. Remember to also spend some time with God in prayer and in His Word then eventually go to sleep for much-needed rest.

At the end of each day of creation, God would analyze what He had done that day and see if it was good (Gen. 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25). Finally, He stepped back to take a look at all He had done in six days and declared that it was “very good!” (Gen. 1:31).

In the same fashion, we should analyze how we spent our time and see what was “good” use of our time and what was “bad” use of our time or just wasted time. That way we will get better at planning our days and using our time more effectively. Don’t forget, doing a lot does not necessarily mean that we have managed our time effectively. It is doing what is important that is the best use of time.

5. Spend Time with God

Spending time with God also looks like a weird way to manage time. But believe me, time spent with the Author of Time is well managed time. It is an investment that will pay dividends both in this life and in the life to come.

On the seventh day of Creation, God rested from all His work and set the day apart from the other days in which He worked by Blessing it. (Gen. 2:1-3). He gave this day to man so that man could enjoy it with Him. So that we could rest from the busy life schedules we have and spend it with family. So that we can worship God, the Creator of the Heavens and of the Earth, and get to know Him through His Holy Word and through the teachings of Jesus, to bask in His presence and to hear Him speak to you. This is the best use of time that I can think of!

During this time we can lay all our plans out before Him and he will show us which ones are the best use of our times, which ones should be carried out at a later stage and which ones should be dropped of the list. Wouldn’t it be better to actually travel a road with a guide that knows every nuance in the road? I firmly believe so. Nothing would make us happier than to spend time with God.

By spending time with God, we will get to know the perfect plans He has for our lives and then be able to focus our efforts accordingly. Isn’t that wonderful?

Conclusion

If we were to achieve to only save 10 minutes every day, at the end of the year, we would have an extra two and a half days. If we saved an hour every day, we would have 2 weeks at the end of the year! Imagine what good use you can put that to!

We must learn to manage our time or else, whether we like it or not, someone else will control it for us. Then we will quickly resent the fact that we are living according to someone else’s schedule, but will be unable to do anything about it. Making wise decisions today will save us from a lot of heartaches tomorrow.

Remember, time is linear. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. My high school director used to say, “Don’t waste time, or time will waste you.” How true!

I hope you enjoyed this article on time management. If you haven’t read part one of this article please click here.

I read somewhere that we lose minutes before we lose hours, and we lose days before we lose weeks. Unless we learn time management principles early, we will struggle later in life.

In life, we budget and manage our money wisely because it is a limited resource. Then it should be logical that we should also manage our time, as it is even more scarce than money. Once time is gone, it’s gone. Period.

Every single person in this world has the same 24 hour period within which they can do all the duties and activities that they want to or must perform, and then the next day the slate is wiped clean and a new 24 hour period is given to them. There’s absolutely no going back to see if they can make better use of their time. Time traveling is a thing of Sci-Fi movies and useless fantasies.

Then how is it that we can manage our time effectively?

We’ve all read the story of creation in the Book of Genesis. Today we’ll be looking at 5 lessons on time management we can learn from God’s work in Genesis Chapter 1.

1. Plan Ahead

God’s end goal was to create man in the likeness and image of the Godhead. But before that, he created all the rest of creation in order for Earth to be ready to accommodate man. Man was to have dominion on Earth and be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:27-28). Yet we see God preparing all that is necessary before creating man. It is obvious that God has a plan.

Likewise, in our lives, it is always good to have goals and a plan that details how we will achieve those goals. Otherwise, we will not make good use of the time that we have allotted to us every day. What do you want to accomplish in the next 5 years? 10 years? or maybe just the next year? Write your goal (or goals) down on paper and then break your goal (or goals) into days, weeks, months, quarters, etc… so that you can see how best to use your time in order to achieve your goal.

Make a To-Do list and fill it with activities that you want to accomplish. Take your To-Do list before the Lord in prayer and ask for wisdom to know which items on the list are important. The Bible says that there are many plans in a man’s heart, but it is the will of the Lord that will be accomplished (Pro. 16:1). We need to work smarter, not harder in order to use our time more effectively.

2. Take it One Day at a Time

You might have set out to accomplish a lot of goals, but quite frankly, we are limited human beings and we cannot accomplish everything we wish to accomplish all the time. Besides, trying to accomplish too much will just stress us out and then we might have health issues to deal with. This, in turn, will rob us of the time we have in which we could have been productive. If your burden goes beyond your limit, you will crash and burn. There is no joy in that, for sure.

God divided His work into six days. Now mind you, He could have just snapped His fingers and waved His hands and everything would have come into existence, but He chose to take it one day at a time (Gen 1:5, 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31). We can accomplish a lot more just by chunking our tasks than by trying to accomplish everything in one big lump.

For instance, let us assume that you want to write a blog post of five paragraphs. If you cannot write it all down in one sitting, then break it down into just a paragraph a day or maybe even a couple of sentences now and then until you eventually have all five paragraphs written down. Then you will have both achieved your goal and managed your time effectively.

3. Start Early

There are twelve hours in the day. What? Only 12 hours? I thought you said there are 24 hours? Well yes, day and night total 24 hours. We usually have only twelve hours in which we can effectively work in (Gen. 1:3-5). After that it starts to get dark, we get tired, we lose focus, and so on. You get the picture. Jesus Himself said, “Are there not twelve hours in the day?” (John 11:9-10)

This means that we should get up early and get a head start on the day. Christ rose up early and He had a very successful ministry (Mark 1:35). The Proverbs 31 woman was an early riser (Pro. 31:15). There are also numerous studies that correlate waking up early with success (Forbes.com/benefits-of-early-risers).

The benefits of having an early morning devotion cannot be stressed enough. Just being able to get out of bed and begin with prayer and praise and handing your day over to God will have a positive impact on how your day will go. The Psalmist David says, ‘Early will I seek You‘. (Psa. 63, Psa. 5:3)

Besides, wouldn’t it be great to actually see the sun rising instead of opening our eyes to realize that the sun had sneaked high up into the sky unnoticed?

Since there are only 12 hours in the day, plan your day accordingly. If you have to decline certain events and activities, do so. Focus on what is important. You will not arrive at your destination by taking every detour on your path.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Tomorrow we will finish this article with tips number 4 and 5.

What other time management tips have you learned from God’s Holy Word or from life? Leave a comment in the comment section to share with us. Thank you!