Using Time Wisely

In 2004, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a significant change in its missionary program.  For decades, missionaries memorized six “discussions” that covered the basic principles and doctrines of our church, and when missionaries were invited into homes, they were expected to repeat these discussions verbatim.

I do believe that this organization was inspired and helped the missionaries greatly during that time, but after many years of relying on the same system, it was time for a change.  So the church published a new missionary manual called Preach My Gospel, and has been the basic handbook for Latter-day Saint missionaries since.

One of the significant changes was how missionaries were expected to teach.  They were no longer required to memorize lessons (of which they’d now brought down to five.) In fact, in my mission we were encouraged not to memorize the lessons.  Instead, we were expected to study the concepts, the scriptures, and how the doctrines were organized, and then teach the lessons in our own words, from our own experience, and as otherwise prompted by the Spirit.

The thing about Preach My Gospel lessons is that they were all combined into one chapter.  The manual has twelve other chapters focused on different subjects; some are for personal use, like how to study scriptures effectively, recognizing the Spirit, and (for foreign speaking missionaries) how best to learn to speak a new language; and others are for working with others, like teaching methods, encouraging people keep commitments (like helping someone recover from addictions) and how to best work and cooperate with local church leaders and other auxiliary organizations.

This is all a long preamble to an experience that changed the way I conduct my life.

I’d been on my mission about eight months when Elder M. Russell Ballard (an apostle) came to visit us.  My companion was asked to play the organ at the meeting he spoke, so I got to sit in the rostrum where I got a lovely view of the back of Elder Ballard’s head.

Elder Ballard was very engaging as a speaker and was more open about the actual work we were involved in than some other leaders I’d listened to before.  Sometime around the Q&A portion of his talk, he mentioned Preach My Gospel, and specifically the one titled “Using Time Well,” which he had had a heavy hand in writing.

Honestly, up to then, “Using Time Well” was the most boring chapter in the world.  The majority of it covers the paperwork, the planners, goals, reporting your progress, and all the other humdrum activities that you do on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

As he talked about it, though, he made an emphatic point that the concepts in that chapter were not meant to end with our missionary service, but if we applied the principles of using time wisely for the rest of our lives, greater productivity and success would follow.

I went home that day and for months afterward I looked over and thought about that chapter until I realized that using time well is distilled into three basic points: set goals, make plans, and be accountable.

Considering this is a new year, resolutions are being made, kept for a month, and given up on by citizens all around.  This starts an endless cycle of frustration and depression, and it really doesn’t have to be like that.  I’m hoping a brief examination of these three points can help your resolve, not just for your New Year’s dreams, but in whatever big or small things you wish to accomplish at any time.

Set Goals

This is the easiest step, and yet a lot of us do it wrong.  The most common New Year’s resolution is to exercise more and live healthier.  Thus the sudden rise of gym memberships each January.

Trouble is, exercising more and living healthier are good things to want, but as a goal, it’s too vague.  Effective goals shouldn’t just be specific, they ought to be measureable.  A common example would be a weight goal, like in my case, maybe lose 30 pounds (I’m not setting this goal, by the way, despite how much it needs to happen.)

Or if not weight, maybe you want to be fit for an upcoming marathon, hike a particular mountain, lift so many pounds, or perform an activity for an increased amount of time without fatigue.  Whatever it be, be specific, manageable, and make it stretch.

The second part to setting goals, though, is the breaking it down to smaller goals.  Say you have your overall goal for the year.  Next step, create a monthly goal.  Ask yourself, What can I accomplish this month that will help me reach my goal for the year?  Once you have your monthly goal, then set a weekly goal, with the thought in mind, What goal this week can I accomplish that will make me reach my goal for this month?  Then do a daily goal to accomplish the weekly goal.  I’ve known a couple people who then make hourly goals.  I think they’re fanatics, but they feel a sense of accomplishment.

The thing is, each small goal builds on each other to help you reach the overall dream.

Important thing to keep in mind: if you don’t accomplish your goal, at least not in the time you set for yourself, you are not a failure.  When you don’t reach your goal and start to feel bad about it, take a step and look at what you achieved just by trying.  Would you have done as much as you did if you had never set the goal and worked for it?

Successful goal setting isn’t always about achieving the goal (however awesome that would have been.)  Goal setting is a success if you really worked at it and really did improve yourself between the time you set it and the end date.

Make Plans

I’m good at setting goals.  I am terrible at making plans to achieve them, because they involve planners, which involves scheduling, which involves dedication to keep scheduling, which takes up time and... and... and I’m lazy.

Making plans to achieve your goals is about maximizing optimal use of all your available resources, and of all your resources, your most precious is time.  Thus, when making plans, your first priority is figuring out how you’re going to make the best use of the time you have.

Planners are a great tool for organizing your time, especially in achieving your daily goals.  They put things in perspective and are a great reality check.

I like planners and I feel at my most productive when I use one.  I’m not diligent enough to use them for more than two months at a time, though, and there are two reasons for that.

First, in order to schedule time, you need to schedule a planning time.  Once a week, you ought to take 15 to 30 minutes to plan out the next week in order to set your goals and figure out how you want to accomplish them.  And then every day, take at least five minutes to go over your plans for what’s coming up.

The daily and weekly planning times are crucial, but they are not exciting.  My mind constantly wanders while I’m doing it, so it takes even more time than it should, and there’s this really cool thing on YouTube that I have got to check out right now.  I can get to the planning later.  That’s when the $20 I spent on the new planner pages goes to waste.

The second trouble with planning is that, at least twice a week, something comes up and throws my plans completely out of whack.  A smart thing to do is to have backup plans on hand (if Plan A doesn’t work out, Plan B is a good option, and if you’re that farsighted, you’ll have a Plan C as well), but that takes up more time, and honestly, there are days when all your backups fly out the window.

On days when none of your plans work out, you ask yourself, What was it all for?  This is stupid.

It is stupid, but the thing is, when these crises and emergencies come up, I’ve found that in planning my days, I was still more productive and achieved more than if I hadn’t planned it out and see where it led.

Making plans are crucial and I will attest to it.  Even though I’m not diligent about it, I do recognize the difference in how I behave and how I feel when I have made plans and the times when I haven’t.

Be Accountable

Most.  Important.  Step.

Fact: You are lazy.  Somewhere out there is a person who is accountable only to themselves and they can and do keep themselves on track.  You are not that person.  How do I know?  Because you’re reading this blog instead of accomplishing something real.

By yourself, you will not achieve anything.  Your goals will turn into wishes and your plans will lie forgotten by the wayside.

The cure to your laziness is to have somebody hold you accountable to your goals.

In athletics, you have coaches and trainers holding you accountable to your improvement.  In education, teachers and professors are holding their students accountable in their knowledge and comprehension.  In the workplace, bosses hold their employees accountable for the work that they do.

Without someone to keep you in check, you’re not going to do the work.  That’s why in goal setting, you should know who is keeping you accountable for the work.

And here’s the secret of accountability: everybody you tell your goals to holds you accountable to them.  The more people you tell your goals to, the more pressure you’ll feel to achieve them, and thus, the more likely you’ll be to work at it.

Sometimes it’s not the quantity of people you share your goals with that makes the difference.  Sometimes it’s the quality.  Your spouse is more likely to hold you accountable to your goals than coworker you only see five days a week.

Accountability makes all the difference though.  This blog is proof for me.

See, I like to write.  I really do.  I’m not the greatest in the world; I’m not even half as good as I think I am, but I like it.  I’ve always wanted to write a novel (and I’ve made three noteworthy efforts to achieve that) but none of my attempts ever paid off, mostly because I never had enough people holding me accountable to produce a novel at a certain date.  No matter how I talk about writing it or setting goals for it, it never happens because of my lack of accountability.

When I started this blog, though, I made darn sure that every reader would hold me accountable to updating this on a regular basis.  I’ve changed my schedule multiple times.  A few months back, I said that I would update four days a week for six weeks straight.  Because I have regular readers (and know several of them, even the ones who don’t comment) I feel compelled/accountable to be sure that I published when I said I would.  Not only did I publish four days a week for that six-week period, I over-achieved and was publishing five days a week.

Even though that’s now done, I’m still being held accountable to publish these obscenely long posts once a week, It’s not a lot of readers that keep me in check, but it’s enough so that I’ve felt obligated to keep going.  You, the readers of this paltry blog, have kept me doing this almost two years and 201 posts later.

Thank you.