One of the great truths in time management–one that Ray and I have continually reminded ourselves of–is that when you say yes to something, you say no to something else. There is not enough time for everything. So, in saying yes to something, you are using up some of the limited amount of time that you have. You are filling a time slot with that activity, instead of some other activity. So, you are saying yes to one thing in that time slot–and no to something else that could go in that same time slot. Seldom does a person feel that he or she has time for everything; thus, when we say yes to one thing, we are saying no to something else.
Now, obviously, we could get all hung up on this and never do anything relaxing because that recreational activity is replacing something more noble or more productive. We could become so consumed with doing and accomplishing that we squeeze other people out of our lives. That is not desired either. Time with others, relaxation, and fun are all important aspects of our lives, too.
However, a thorough understanding of the fact that time is consumable–there is only so much of it–is necessary. It is so much harder to say no to outsiders (to say no to coaching baseball, leading speech and debate, working on a Christmas play, etc.) than it is to say no to those who are closest to us. If we learn to prioritize well, we can say yes to those things that we have determined ahead of time are priorities and no to those things that are not current priorities.
We learned about prioritizing early in our marriage, and I am forever grateful that we did. Twenty-five years ago, Ray and I (at ages twenty-four and twenty) had a two year old little boy. We were active in our church and with our extended families. We wanted to “do it all” for the Lord and for others. However, we found ourselves, even with only one child and at our young ages, so busy that we could not keep up.
One evening we sat down with the calendar and wrote on it everything we felt that we should do or participate in during that month: men’s Bible study, ladies’ Bible study, Ray’s extended family, my extended family, Ray’s master’s degree, church three times a week, home care groups, hospitality, family night, nursing home visitation, church outreach, etc.
This full calendar page has become known to us through the years as “the list.” When we were finished, we discovered that if we did everything we thought we should do, everything we wanted to do, and everything we had to do, we would need sixty evenings that month!
Life was controlling us, rather than us controlling life. How many of us feel this way today? We find ourselves doing things that are not really our priorities (or things that we do not desire as our priorities) and not doing the things that we really want as our priorities.
This is not a new concept. Paul said this very thing in the Bible: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15 RSV).1 This is an age-old problem that even one of Christ’s strongest early followers felt.
At that point, we decided that something had to go. We obviously did not have sixty evenings a month to do that list. We decided to take action. We had our first “priority purge.”
Prioritizing takes action! It is something you do–or else it is done for you. Ray and I had to take good things off of our calendar in order to make room for the best things. We had to say no to average things in order to say yes to excellent things.
That is another important concept in prioritizing: each person’s priorities are his own. We do not need to have identical priorities to our friends. We do not need to do everything someone else does. Our priorities are personal; they are the God-ordained objectives in our own lives for that time period.
If you want to have solid, consistently-kept priorities, you must take action. You must determine, with your spouse and with God’s guidance, what your priorities are. And you must say yes to the things that you truly want in your life (and that are reflective of your priorities) and no to the things that are not as important to you.
