Time management in ministry is an essential skill for everyone, whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or a stay at home parent. The most effective leaders will tell you that being intentional with your time will allow you to be more productive and keep balance in your life. Too many youth ministers unnecessarily wear themselves out and desperately need regular Sabbath in their weeks. This article is all about helping you develop a system to help you manage your time as you seek to balance work, school, and your personal Sabbath time. The system that we will focus on is called the rhythmic week.
Great time managers and the most productive people set boundaries. They determine what they are going to do, when they are going to do it, and they stick to it. A rhythmic week system will help you set boundaries for each area of your life. A rhythmic week will help you pace yourself and accomplish the many tasks ahead without feeling as if you have just entered a marathon without even running a mile.
The first step to developing a rhythmic week is to determine your weekly schedule. Your rhythmic week should include everything you need to get done during a REGULAR week, otherwise… it won’t get done. So make a list of everything you must do and WANT to do in a regular week: office hours, staff meetings, youth group, Bible study, church time, down time, study time, hang time with youth, hang with family, and any extracurricular stuff that you have going on.
You will learn to work in blocks of time. Many jobs have time management challenges, but ministry jobs are near the top of jobs that have irregular work flows. We recommend breaking your day into three four-hour blocks of time (morning, afternoon, and evening). Each block of time will be dedicated to a specific task area. We recommend color coding your rhythmic week so that you can better visualize how your time will be used.
-Green for work
-Red for personal and Sabbath time
-Blue for personal growth and study
-Yellow for flexible work time (filled with meetings, school activities, or whatever else needs to be done).
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