*Choice 7 of 10 in the Take Back Your Life blog series

In the last blog post, we learned that life is designed by God to be lived as a “team sport.” If it is a team sport, it only makes sense that you should focus the majority of your time doing what you do best. God wants you to maximize your personal gifts and abilities for the good of the team.

Every believer has special and unique gifts he or she can contribute in service of others. None of us is meant to be a “do it all” generalist. Rather, each one of us has special functions that are designed to complement one another. Great lives are not built by improving weaknesses, but by maximizing strengths.

You might be thinking, I’m not really sure what my gifts and passions are.

Email can bury you faster than quicksand. Before your day and energy are consumed at the computer, answer these questions:

1.     What part of the day am I most creative and sharp? When do I do my best work? Morning or afternoon?

2.     Do I usually process my email during my prime part of the day?

3.     Does God want me to use my best time of day answering email? Or is there some calling more crucial that needs my best effort?

Even if you develop and implement a perfect plan to organize your schedule around Rest Time, Results Time and Response Time, the plan will not work forever. Your plan will fail at some point.

Life and leadership are always changing, our responsibilities and priorities, inevitably, are going to shift. Even our unique abilities are under constant refinement, still being discovered and developed as we lead. This is why we need the 4th “R,” Refocus Time.

Refocus Time is dedicated to working on the mission, not just in the mission. This time is used to assess, adjust, and innovate for the future; to make the necessary tweaks to your plan so that it continues to work for you.

The main questions you want to ask yourself during Refocus Time are:

Response time is a block of time dedicated to cleanup and follow-up and this time should only occur if you already have your results and rest time scheduled and protected because these are vital to the long-term health of the entire organization.

As a servant-leader you’ll need to realize that the people you serve have their own agendas and needs. One of their greatest needs is simply to know that you care – that you are there for them. As a result, response time is highly reactive.

The difference between a street fighter and a boxer is not power, but control. The boxer measures his punches and conserves his power. He thinks strategically about each and every hit. A street fighter flails and throws as many punches with as much power as he can exert at once.

When you focus on your main thing and protect time to accomplish your main thing, you act more like a boxer than a street fighter. You will end up accomplishing more with less and still have energy for life at the end of the day.

Last week I gave you some advice on protecting results time in your weekly schedule; half day or full day increments set aside to work on your main thing(s). But in order to do this, you need to define your main thing. Here is a definition and some questions to get you started:

The secret to increasing my efficiency and effectiveness comes in the jealous protection of my results time. I set aside several half-day or full-day blocks of time to focus on my “main things.” Results time is driven by the mission, and my unique role in moving it forward. To some it might look selfish, but if I do not guard this time, I am not contributing my full potential to my ministry and I am not being a wise steward of the gifts God gave me.

In Mark 1:35-37, right after Jesus slipped away to rest and reconnect with His heavenly Father, His leadership team tracked Him down and expressed with apparent disgust, “Everyone is looking for you” (verse 37). Or as it might sound to you, “Boss, the people are lining up, the phones are lighting up, and the inbox is piling up with emails from hurting people wanting your touch. Let’s hurry up and get back to work.” But Jesus took another approach, refusing to let other people set His agenda. He walked away from the people who were pursuing Him. He calmly redirected the team, “Let us go somewhere else…that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for” (Mark 1:38).

Jesus’ mission took priority, even over the real needs of some real people who really wanted His touch.