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7 Practical Tips to Help You Stop Working 7 Days a Week

If your goal is to respond to every human need out there, you will never sleep. Just know that. You are fighting a battle you will lose every time.

And the biggest losers will be your family, whose needs will be ignored in the process.

7 PRACTICAL TIPS TO HELP YOU STOP WORKING 7 DAYS A WEEK

So how do you de-escalate your hours, not make people angry and actually have time to refuel?

Well, this journey has taken me years, but here it is in seven bullet points:

1. PRE-PLAN YOUR CALENDAR WITH ‘SLOTS’ FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO DO

Over a decade ago I moved to a fixed calendar. It’s the only reason I’m still sane today and can do what I’ve been called to do. By a fixed calendar I mean I pre-plan what I’m going to do and not going to do in advance. 

I book no meetings as a rule on Mondays and Wednesdays. Those are message writing/series planning days. I also do much of the administration I need to do.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are meeting days. I meet with our staff and if anyone else is going to meet with me, it will be in the slots available on those days.

The power of this system is that when someone asks if you’re free to meet with them, you can honestly tell them you are not. Your message prep is extremely important, and if it’s in your calendar, you can tell them that unfortunately you’re not free Monday. If all you have is nothing booked yet, you will almost always tell them you’ve got nothing going on and you’ll meet them.

And you’ll do your sermon prep or big project on Saturday when you should be home with your family. And, by the way, your organization will suffer because you didn’t spend the time you needed to on what was most important.

2. BOOK OFF-TIME IN YOUR CALENDAR

Slot in family time, personal time, devotional time, exercise time and time to just be. Write your day off in your calendar.

Then when someone asks you if you are free, you say, “Unfortunately, I’m not.” Again, if you think rest isn’t important, ask the question again once you’re in full-fledged burnout (here are nine signs you’re getting there).

And if you have pre-determined slots available for meeting people in the weeks ahead, you can offer them one of those.

3. LEARN TO ASK YOURSELF, “IS IT TRULY AN EMERGENCY AND CAN ONLY I HELP?”