Time Management (Part 1)

It was just over a decade now. April 2008, to be exact.

My wife and I were driving to St. Louis for a weekend getaway. (We live in Kansas City, so it’s just a few hours down the road.)

About halfway there, I got a phone call.

I remember the phone call so well because it was one of those small events that connects to and signifies something much bigger.

Just a few weeks earlier I had been informally offered a job as Creative and Marketing Director for a large church. I jumped at the opportunity. But first I had to go through a vetting process that included lots of meetings and interviews. I had no clue if they would formally offer me the job or not, but I was hoping they would.

Though my new role as Marketing Director would mean more hours, more responsibility, and more unknowns, I knew it would be a ton of fun. I knew it would be a huge opportunity to learn.

Well, they did offer me the job. For the next three years I served in that role as the marketing director.

It turned out to be significantly more challenging than I thought it would be, but I loved it. The job, the team I was privileged to work with, the work we did — I’m so proud of it all.

I learned quite a lot during my years as the Marketing and Creative Director. I learned about managing and leading creatives, building healthy team dynamics, how to budget, marketing strategy, audience building, and more.

Of all those skills, however, there is one in particular that has served me best. And it has to do with time ownership and decision making.
I learned very quickly way how to take ownership of my time and energy. I had to.

In my role as the marketing director, I had complete autonomy of my schedule.

And so I quickly learned that I needed to set the priorities and boundaries of how to spend my time or else I would literally fail at my job.

I’ll say that again:

If I hadn’t been proactive about taking control of my time, then I would have failed at my job. My days would have been overrun by all the other requests on my time, and I never would have been able to focus on the things which were most important; the things that only I could do.

So I started to do some radical things to protect my time.

I got very focused and intentional with how I spent my days.

And even now — working from home and for myself — I continue to be radical with protecting my time.

(I’ll share more about that next week.)

For now, think about this:

Being in control of our time is a lot like keeping a clean house... If things are not organized, you can take a few hours over the weekend to transform things from cluttered to peaceful. But getting it cleaned up is much different than keeping it cleaned up.

A lot of folks live their whole life this way. They go BIG with a new diet; they purge their home of all clutter; they completely revamp their schedule. Whatever it is... But they don’t have the systems or mindsets necessary to maintain their newfound vision.

Just like with cleaning your house, once you get that initial grasp of control and organization, the challenge is to maintain it.

Starting today, I’m beginning a mini-series on Time Management.

Over the coming weeks there are a handful of things I want to share with you. Such as...

* How to take ownership of your time
* How to beat procrastination
* How to get more time for your projects

(To name a few...)

And if you’ve got something in particular you want me to address, just hit reply to this email.

Thanks! Talk again soon.

— Shawn