As my current set of graduate classes come to a close, the burden of stress begins to creep up from its place of hiding. I must say, my time management skills have greatly improved since the last time I was in school, but there is still much to be learned.
I received an email of encouragement sent to all of my classmates from our professor. His insight into time management and stress was profound. Here is what he said:
As you may be aware, I did my PhD at Westminster Theological Seminary while
teaching full time at Nyack College and pastoring full time. The church was a
new plant and I had to do everything by myself. My job as senior pastor
involved leading daily early morning prayer service (7 days a week at 5 am),
Wed, Fri, Sunday services (leading and preaching) and leading a Youth service
on Saturday. I had to drive over six hours to WTS twice a week to attend the
classes. The weekly reading assignments for my PhD coursework exceeded 3,000
pages in addition to preparing for Preliminary comprehensive exams for five
disciplines and five foreign languages within the first two years. Did I
survive them? Yes, I did. How did I do it? Let me give a tip.The key word is “FOCUS.” You must not be distracted by other matters
while doing one thing. Distraction causes you unnecessary stress and loss of
effectiveness. Think you are doing nothing else than one thing. This takes
disciplining your mind so that you focus all your thoughts and energy on one
thing. One thing at a time, one step at a time…. That will take you to the top
of the mountain. Prayer will certainly help.-Dr. Rev. Jintae Kim.
You must not be distracted by other matters while doing one thing. Sound easy on paper but it can be really difficult to focus on the task at hand rather than thinking about all the other things that need to be done. Could you imagine my professor stressing over every detail of every week. He would have never finished anything! Obviously, we can’t do everything at once. A large building project doesn’t happen overnight. Rather, it comes together slowly by the work crew completing small assignments day in and day out. Our busy schedules and agendas are no different. Sometimes we need the peace of God to calm our stress, but sometimes we need to focus on what we can do rather than things that are in the future that can’t be dealt with at the present time.
A few questions to ask:
Are you focusing on what is in front of you or what is far ahead?
Are you focusing on what you can control rather than what is out of your hands?
Are you trying to fill God’s shoes?
Have a productive week!
-SHF
