Work & Vocation
My working days disappear and I reach five o'clock having finished nothing that mattered. How do I take back control of my time?
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
Psalm 90 is attributed to Moses and takes the long view: human life measured against God's permanence, seventy or eighty years that pass like a sigh. The request is not for more time but for the wisdom to count what there is. That is a very different prayer from the one most of us pray when the calendar is full.
“And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Martha is not doing anything wrong. She is hosting, which was serious work, and she is doing it while her sister sits still. Jesus does not criticise her effort but her distraction, the being pulled in several directions at once. The problem he names is not a full day but a scattered one, a distinction most busy people never stop to make.
A path forward
Write the three things that must be done tomorrow before you leave today, and do them first. A list written in the morning always loses to the inbox.
Turn off notifications for two hours a day and tell your team plainly that this is when you are heads down.
Give the first ten minutes of the day to prayer and a few verses before you open anything work-related. Whatever gets your first attention tends to set the shape of the rest.
Closing verse
“The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but of every one that is hasty only to want.”
- Proverbs 21:5
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