I was reading an article yesterday in the Harvard Business Review Blog called The Unimportance of Almost Everything. It’s a terrific article which I’d encourage you to check out.
It reminded me of something that so many leaders get caught in – doing what really doesn’t matter.
It might be getting caught up in the details of an event that should be handled by someone else on the team.
It might be immersing yourself in the minutia of curriculum preparation (I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see leaders spending massive amounts of time on this!).
It might be giving away time re-organizing the resource room.
It might be getting distracted by social media.
It might be worrying about whether your ministry is up with the latest trends.
It might be trying to create the perfect flyer for your program.
It might be _____________________________________ (fill in the blank with any of the endless ways we give away our time).
All of these can be important at times, requiring some of our attention. But the truth is, many of give give up time on things when, in the big picture, it really doesn’t matter. We tend to focus on what’s easy, comfortable or enjoyable instead of what’s important (which, in my opinion, should almost always center on this.)
The article in HBR is written with business people in mind. How much more important is the eternal investment we are seeking than the temporal ones in the business world? How much more important that we invest our time instead of spending it?
The article concludes with a suggestion on how to stay focused on what’s important. The author says this:
To get started, I recommend a simple action list.
- Before you leave the office today, write down your top six priorities for tomorrow on a Post-it note.
- Cross off the bottom five.
- Write down your top priority on a Post-it note and put it on your computer.
- Schedule a 90-minute window to work on your top priority — preferably the first thing of the day.
- Every time you are about to check email, Facebook, Twitter etc., write down what you are about to do.
I would encourage you to give this a try. I know I have to constantly remind myself to do things like this to stay focused on what’s really important. Here’s the bottom line: we, as leaders, must identify what is most important & productive in our ministry, and then we must remain ruthlessly focused on doing those things that matter most.
The rest? Well, it really doesn’t matter!
