Fourth, if you follow the recommendations above, that leaves 51 hours to be allocated for “the rest of life.”
The other parts of life should feel “holy” (set apart by God) before the week begins. In the first 117 hours of the week you are merely looking for the most situationally-wise and enjoyable way to accomplish rest, family time and productivity.
It is only in these last 51 hours that we should feel an additional degree of freedom about how to use them.
For many people, this mindset will be uncomfortable, but when we call ourselves “God’s servant” and claim to live “under the Lordship of Christ,” this necessarily places a limit upon our freedom.
Within the first 117 hours, we are free within the God-given role of finite creature, spouse-parent and productive worker. Within these last 51 hours, we are called to do maintenance, service and recreation.
Maintenance: This involves cleaning one’s home, mowing the yard, going to the grocery, paying bills and the other mundane activities necessary for life. In this area, a grandmother’s advice on home cleanliness provides sound guidance for all areas of life maintenance: “A home should be clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be happy.”
Recreation: This involves the kind of activities that you find rewarding and replenishing that place you in the mental, physical and spiritual condition to serve God and others. Life requires more than 50 hours of sleep in order to be healthily sustained. Here the advice is to know yourself—what restores you, gives you energy or relaxes you? Whatever these things are should be a regular part of your schedule.
Service: This involves service through your church to the congregation and community for the purpose of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth and deeper into the lives of those around you. The discussion that follows will focus primarily upon this area since that is the particular area of life that this document is designed to prevent from becoming a contributor to burnout.
No recommended percentages or time allotments can be given for these three areas. But it should be noted that all three are essential to healthy living and should be given time.
Healthy relationships are those that actively help you guard and honor balance in all three of these areas of involvement.
Here is a time budget tool to help you implement these concepts: Burnout Time Budget
You can order my booklet on burnout here.
