Time Management and the Gospel

I recently went to a Relief Society activity at my church. I thought it was going to be a waste of time for me but I ended up learning a lot. I took two classes, one of which I will speak about today. It was about time management. I went to this class only because my mom wanted to, not because I thought I had anything I needed to learn on the subject. But the teacher took an approach that I had never thought of before. She intertwined the gospel and time management together in such a way that time management was given a much more meaningful approach.

She said that you should begin every morning with a prayer and sometime during the day you should do your scripture study. Mind you, prayer and scripture study also go hand in hand so the best time to read your scriptures may be after your morning prayers. You should do these things for two reasons. If allows you to feel the spirit and opens up communication with the Lord in which he can give you promptings about what you should be doing that day. If you follow this method and only get 3 things done from you 20 item list, don't feel bad as those are obviously the things the Lord felt you needed to do. If you feel a prompting to go do service for someone, forget about your to do list and go and do it as that is where you are needed.

She said her mom used to make a long and detailed list of all the things she wanted to get done during the year. One year she was called as a Relief Society president and often received many calls during the day in addition to the meetings and other activites that needed to be attended. She began to feel bitter towards her calling and the fact that it was taking up so much time that could have been used to get her to do list done. Finally, she realized that she needed to stop being selfish so she threw her to do list away and began to focus on her calling. She began to notice that though the burden of the calling never lightened she was able to find more time throughout the day to do those things that were on her now nonexistant to do list.

If you feel a heavy time burden in your life, feel that you are not getting done the things you should, and/or can not seem to find any time for yourself to do necessary "me" things, focus on the Lord. Tell him your problem and let him help you carry the burden. Perhaps you will begin to notice ways in which you can find more time throughtout your day.

Which brings me to the last thing. A good step in time managment is going to bed early and waking up early. It helps you from sleeping in during valuable hours of your morning in which you can get a lot done. And not too many people do their best thinking at night.

Oh and don't forget to take a few moments of quite time each day away from all the distractions of the world.