11Feb 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 7 – Paper or Electronic?

Administrative Skills, Equipping, General, Good Practice, Planning, Time Management
What is a diary? Traditionally diaries have been for recording history. Many books have been written as a result of people keeping diaries of their daily events and these have given us fascinating insights into life and culture in different eras and nations. Elizabeth Fry I have just been reading a biography of the great prison reformer in the UK, Elizabeth Fry, who lived at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Without her diaries we would know far less about her. She was clearly a formidable woman – perhaps I should not admit that she was my great great great grandmother! But diaries have changed and now tend to be looking forward. They are the most common vehicle for making appointments, planning holiday dates and…
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04Feb 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 6 – Prioritising Discretionary Time

Administrative Skills, Christian ministry, Equipping, Good Practice, Planning, Time Management
Its as easy as ABC! How did you get on with a ‘Do it’ list? I now want to help you complete the prioritising but first we need to unpack ‘Important’ in a bit more detail. Last time we saw how the definition of Important in this context was a matter of values and had a particular focus on your unique gifting and responsibility. However, there are other considerations and these typically relate to how you interact with others. Let’s consider an example. Suppose you have to write some ‘copy’ for a piece of publicity. This may not seem very important or urgent to you for today. You know it is not going to be printed for another month. However, when you have written that copy it has to be…
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28Jan 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 5 – Discretionary Time

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Equipping, Good Practice, Time Management
Hopefully you have a grasp of appointment time. Now let’s look at discretionary time. As the term implies this is time over which you have discretion. Appointments are often determined by someone else; discretionary time is always for you to determine and use at your discretion. In any day this is the time where the battle of fulfilment and achievement tends to be won or lost (although, believe it or not, even meetings can be fulfilling and satisfying, though many see them as wasting hours to keep minutes!). Are you a list keeper? As one who lives by lists I am often amazed to find that about 50% of people do not use them to plan their time. Recently I was in Africa and my friend told me that typically…
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22Jan 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 4 – Appointments

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Christian ministry, Equipping, Good Practice, Planning, Time Management
A promise The techniques of Time Management I am going to share with you give you a water-tight system. There is no reason for you ever to miss an appointment or activity that is important to you again! Can that be true? Yes! But first, it is important to have an understanding of time. Types of Time Broadly, there are two categories of time that comprise your day - Appointments and Discretionary. Appointments Activities that come under the category of ‘appointments’ carry the implication of being predetermined. They have a start time attached to them. Sadly, they do not always have a finish time - and this may be one of the things that occurred on your list of challenges from the last blog – interminable meetings. Tip: In order to…
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15Jan 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 3 – Using time intentionally

Administration in the Church, Administrative Skills, Christian ministry, Equipping, Good Practice, Time Management
Pursuing Goals What are your goals in life? Over the next ten years? Five years? This year? Are you intentional about planning steps to fulfill these goals? If you are going to use time effectively – to help you do so is the purpose of this series – it is important to have some sense of direction and destiny. Clearly some have this much more precisely defined than others. The young swimmer aspiring for gold at the Olympics has a passion that will cause her to practice swimming at 5 am each morning before school for many years, a discipline that requires intentional planning and sacrifice. But not many of us are budding Olympians! But what about life? Marriage, Career, or other ambitions? Where do you picture yourself in 5,…
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07Jan 2010 by Nigel Ring

Time Management pt 2 – God’s perspective and cultural differences

Administrative Skills, Christian ministry, Equipping, General, Time Management
What does God think? Before we discuss specifics about Time Management I want to take just one posting to consider briefly what God’s view of time is. In Ps 90 the psalmist tells us to ‘number our days’ (v12) having already told us in verse 10 that ‘the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty’. I once spoke to a Godly ‘elder statesman’ who took verse 12 literally, telling me the exact number of days since he started praying for revival, which coincided with the number of days since he became a Christian! 70 years is 25,567 days. How many of those have you had? Use the diagram to work it out. Verse 12 continues ‘…that we may get a heart of wisdom’. The…
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