The MITs, 11/20/11

Priorities: what comes before what? This question can refer to the quantity of time we're willing to expend on an activity, the sequence in which we're willing to perform actions, or the rank we assign to them.

Priorities are similar to values, which are an important component of mission. But mission determines goals, which determine priorities. Since one is continually informing the other, begin the process and spend time praying and thinking so that your accuracy will gradually improve.

A time log reveals what your priorities are. For some people, their highest priority is to do as they please, like a pet dog wandering around in its back yard.

To rank a list, ask "If I could do only one of these things, what would it be?" That becomes item one on a new list. Then look at the remaining items and ask the same question. That becomes item two on the new list. And so on.

Urgency means that an item is "pressing," but we usually define that by how we feel, when a better rule would be to define it by results: does it involve the possibility of significant material loss? Does it involve the trust of others? Dependability (faithfulness) is a feature of God most emphasized in scripture, and it is therefore a most important character trait for a godly person. (Deu.7:6-9; Prov. 20:6).

When you agree to do something, write it down and review it regularly lest you become undependable. If you run into problems, renegotiate the agreement but never just let the task fall. If you have a complete inventory of the things you've agreed to do, you may in good conscience decline someone's new request. But if you don't know what you've agreed to already, you may feel obligated to accede to someone's new request -- further encumbering yourself with more responsibilities than you can fulfil, resulting in failure and disappointment to others.

The MITS, 11/06/11

Your mission in life is who you are and who you're meant to be, the summation of your values, priorities, and roles. Writing it out would be a good exercise that would probably take days or weeks as the ideas became clearer. One method to get the process going is to imagine what you'd want people to say at your funeral. This is analogous to the judgment seat of Christ.

Your present priorities are revealed by how you spend your time, not by what you say or what you believe. Keeping a time log for a week can be startling, especially when compared to the imaginary funeral orations.

Thinking about mission and priorities helps to discern a vision of what God is willing to do through you. Nehemiah's goal was something that God had put in his heart (Neh. 2:12). Heb. 11:13 tells of those who had faith and saw things (a visual term) and embraced them before they actually received them. Their lives were dominated by a vision.

When you can visualize the end, it becomes possible to identify the necessary steps to get there.

The MITs, 10/30/11

In Ro. 12:1-2, Paul does not tell the Roman Christians what the will of God is. Instead, he tells them to prove it, which means to learn it by testing, that is, living. In order to learn and do the perfect will of God, they were to consecrate themselves, renew their minds, and become transformed inwardly.

The will of God might also be called your mission in life. It is unique to you. Nobody is going to fulfill it for you. Your life cannot be repeated. You get one chance to live it.

Your mission is discovered rather than developed. As it is discovered it gives meaning and purpose to daily decisions and enables you to discern the MITs.

Your mission is something that should be true right now, but goals are statements about the future. "I am a teacher; I intend to be hired at some college within eighteen months."

College Students and Smartphones

An interesting article, but it doesn't describe anybody in CBCC&C Class, does it?

The MITs, 10/23/11

Why are you here? There are pleny of other people in the world already; why did God bother to make you? That is your mission. Ecc. 12:13 says that the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep his commandments. How will this work out in life?

Law may be understood as particular rules, but ethics deals with the concepts behind the rules. Through ethics we learn what to do about things that the law doesn't mention.

In addition to ethics, though, we have to develop values, that is, the ability to rank various good things and to hold them in their proper balance. Helping someone in an emergency is more important than being on time for prayer meeting. However, values may sometimes differ from person to person: one person may value studying while another believes it to be pointless.

To understand your specific mission in life, it will be necessary to follow God's rules, learn biblical ethics, and develop mature values. Additionally, God's particular purpose for your life will emerge in response to the practice of biblical spirituality. Eph. 5:8, 10 tells us to walk as children of light, learning and doing what is acceptable to the Lord.

The MITs, 10/09/11

This class seeks to address a problem: the scarcity of time. The solution is (1) to identify the most important things in life and (2) to organize our lives so as to obtain them. As I wrote on the chalkboard on Sept. 11th, the course title is "The MITs: How to Know Them, How to Get Them."

Considering the second point first, we've pointed out that life is a big and complex project, but it is made up of individual decisions. To organize our lives, it is important to grasp (1) the power of volition and (2) the power of a "capture tool." (I.e., writing stuff down is the first step in gaining control of our responsibilities.)

Although many things can fall into the category of MITs, surely one of the most basic is "happiness." Practically every choice that we make proceeds at some level from the desire to be happy. Despite the claims of some preachers, there is no real difference between the words happy, glad, and joyful. The biblical idea of happiness, however, can be quite different from the world's idea. Happiness is a very major idea in the Bible. See here.

The MITs, 10/02/11

Things are truly important as they relate to godly obedience and/or long term results. A helpful question is "What will happen if I don't do this thing?" If the answer is "nothing," then the activity must not be important.

Q2 activity, overall, is more important than Q1 because of its long term effect on things in general and its effect on Q1 specifically. Q1 tends to shrink as Q2 gains power in your life.

Having the right priorities can be approached top->down or bottom->up.

In the top->down approach, you identify your purpose in life, then devise 5-year goals, then decide on some 1-2 year goals that will be your top priorities as you reach for those 5-year goals, then identify your roles in your family, church, career, community, and personal development, which will help you rank the importance of the 20-30 projects you're currently working on, which gives you your actions list for the day and week. *whew!*

In the bottom->up approach, you focus immediately on getting your life in order so that your mind can be free to rise to higher levels and hear God's leading *genuinely.* This is a part of walking carefully, not as those who don't know the meaning of life, but as those who do (Eph 5:15).

The MITs, 9/25/11

Re: last week's matrix, know that the top quadrants are numbered 1 and 2, the lower two are numbered 3 and 4. This matrix appears often in the literature of personal productivity and writers commonly refer to "Quadrant 2 activities" or similar expressions.

"Big Rocks" illustration: if you make sure to do the big things (the MITs) first, the smaller stuff will find its way in and you'll be able to "get it all done." Starting with the little stuff doesn't work; there won't be enough room in your life left over for the MITs.

Solving big problems ultimately is a matter of individual persons making decisions (macroeconomics vs. microeconomics). Although life's responsibilities can be a big and complicated problem, it comes down to the individual decisions that you make. To be a human person (normally) means that you have the ability to decide and the responsibility for those decisions. Deciding what you do with your time, then, is a moral decision.

The MITs, 09/18/11

God has commanded us to "redeem the time" (Eph. 5:16), which means to identify and take advantage of opportunities. However, we tend to focus on things that create pressure ("urgent" things) and to neglect the MITs. We drew this diagram (adapted from author Stephen Covey) on the board:

Focusing on the "important and urgent" things makes for a harried and frustrating life that is determined and shaped by things outside of you. The "important but not urgent" things are the MITs. Some people focus on the "urgent but not important" quadrant while thinking that their actions are important, but they seldom amount to anything significant, even though there is "pressure" to do them.

Spending time on the MITs tends to make the crises in life shrink. You become proactive rather than reactive, you happen to life rather than life happening to you, and you become opportunity minded rather than problem minded -- and that's necessary if you are to redeem the time.

The MITs, 09/11/11

"Time" is a scarce resource, but there is always enough time to do the perfect will of God. When you come to the end of a day, a week, or your life, you want to be able to look back and say "Even if I didn't do everything, I did do the most important things."

Just to get the topic rolling, we made a list of things that someone might think it important to be, do, or have:

When it is laid out like this, it shows more clearly how things in one column can cause things in another, and considering one thing important will automatically make another thing important. (Example: bathing!)

If you ask why any particular thing is important, eventually you will have to ground it in the will or nature of God. For example, health is important because it affects our productivity, and God has ordained that we be productive.

What do you think? Add your comments.