Today’s post will be more practical. We all know the precious value of our God-given time. So today I’m going to give a few ideas on how to use our time well in the world we live in.
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another #shorts post.
Not long ago I wrote about how waste is sinful. I wrote about my earthly father and one of his favorite sayings: ‘To waste food is a sin.’ He was always saying that. I wrote about this in the post, The Sin of Waste.
In that post I said we need to be good stewards of whatever God has given us. We need to use and spend these things with Wisdom. Well, What resource could possibly be more precious to us than our time??
Our time is basically our life, since our life here on earth is ticking away, one second at a time. Our time is the one resource that once we spend it we can never get back. We can create more money; no one can create more time. We are always running our time down, every day, second by second. And one day, we will run out of time on this earth and come face to face with our Creator.
In Do Not Fear the End Times Part 114 I wrote about the precious value of our God-given time. I won’t go into that discussion again today. I’ll only say that if we misuse our time which we can never get back, we both harm ourselves and disrespect God at the same time.
Today’s post will be more practical. We all know the precious value of our God-given time. So today I’m going to give a few ideas on how to use our time well in the world we live in.
Time Tips
My earthly father always said “to waste food is a sin.” I will continue saying that phrase, plus my own variation: “to waste time is a sin.” That will be my addition.
So let’s consider some specific, practical ways we can save time in our world today. These brief suggestions are only the start to using our time more effectively. There’s much more to it than this. But I hope these ideas will get someone out there off to a good start. Other ideas are welcome down in the comments below.
Organize the Day
To use our time well, we must know our general plan for the day (at least an outline). There’s no way around this. We need some kind of daily goal system to structure our day. This daily plan will determine how we spend our time.
I loosely to moderately organize my day, every day. I have a word processor doc called ‘the daily objectives.’ I keep track of what I want to achieve each day, with goals for reading, writing, music, and exercise. Other things like errands and doctor’s appointments also go on this ‘daily objectives’ list.
I don’t plan the exact times for when to do these things (except appointments). I only write down the goals I want to achieve that day, and check them off as I go. I’ve been using this system for a few years now and it works well, keeping me on-task for the day. I’ve now written over 200 blog posts for my blog, and I’ve read almost 100 books. Besides that, I play guitar for an hour a day.
I wouldn’t do such a good job of this without my “daily objectives” checklist.
You don’t need to copy my system if you have your own. But we all need some way to organize our day and stay on-task. This empowers us to achieve goals.
But beware not to let the list become an idol. Sometimes unexpected things will pop up and we can’t get our list for the day finished. That’s OK!! It happens. Do not let the list become an idol—we have every right to ‘go off script’ as needed.
Remove Distractions
Our world today is full of distractions. These things delay our progress to our goals by absorbing us in things that don’t matter. The smartphone is the worst of these distractions, by far (YouTube being a close second for me). Smartphones and YouTube are great at distracting us from what we actually want to be doing.
It’s Wise to remove every distraction from our environment that we can. This helps to stay on-task by compensating for our natural human weakness of being “distractable.” The smartphone is easy to remove. When I write these blog posts I leave it on the charger in another room. If it’s out of sight it’s out of mind, and I won’t pick it up to read news or anything else.
We can all examine our environment where we do our daily work. Chances are good there are things we can remove to be better at staying on-task.
Choose Worthwhile Activities
Not all activities are created equal. Some take lots of our time but add nothing to our lives, while others add to our life for every minute we put into them.
For me, reading books and practicing guitar are always good uses of time. Both these activities add to my life and my skills. Both are useful, productive, enjoyable, and make me a more knowledgeable and well-rounded person. No time spent reading or practicing music is ever wasted; this time is always justified.
Video games are my nemesis though, because I can spend hours on them without realizing it. And when I’m done, I think about what I gained in my life for that time I spent. And the answer is: Not much, besides some temporary distraction and amusement.
We all need to take note of the things we do each day, and spend more time on the worthwhile things that build us up and add to our lives. Not that there’s never any time for those lower-value activities, like video games. We all need to relax sometimes.
Make Time for Relaxation
“Wait a minute … what?!?! I thought 99:9 was writing about how to use our time better, and he’s talking about relaxation?!?!”
Because relaxation is such a waste of time, right?? We should never relax, ever, because God wants us to always be working, working, working and productive all the time, right??
No, that’s not right. Not at all.
I’ve written about the vital importance of rest and relaxation in other posts. It’s an essential part of a balanced and healthy life. We can’t skip it or overlook it. For more on this, check out “Balance Is Divine” and “Balance or Burnout.”
We all have a need for rest, and we all have some need for entertainment and amusement too, actually. Video games are valid uses of our time, sometimes.
We should plan some time in our day to relax, and reserve some time in our week for entertainment, amusement, socializing, and so on. If we don’t make time for pleasure and deny ourselves any fun, chances are good we’ll binge on pleasure and overdo it when we finally crack and need to blow off steam.
We weren’t built or designed to always be working with no time for pleasure. Relaxation, entertainment, and so on are things we need. If we plan for spending time on these things each week, we can lower the amount of time wasted binging on them after denying ourselves for too long. Because a binge is almost bound to happen if we deny ourselves too much.
Honor the LORD every Hour
I hope some of these suggestions will be helpful to people out there. Comments with other ideas are more than welcome down below.
To waste time is a sin. Our time is precious and God-given. We honor the LORD when we use our time in better ways. So anything we can do to use our time well is great. Let’s each consider our own situation, pray to God for Wisdom, and plan how we can best use our time.
That’s it for #shorts Part 38.
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Your new best friend in Christ,
99:9
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