Be The Fruit

David Powlison on Time Management

by Bill Blair on 20/03/09 at 7:08 am

C. J. Mahaney has been doing a series of interviews on his blog and right now he is interviewing David Powlison.  Powlison is probably the leading mind in biblical counseling today.  Yesterday, Mahaney asked Powlison to give a piece of advice that has helped him to effectively use his time.  His response is very interesting and liberating on many levels.  The post can be read here, but an excerpt can be read below:

David, what single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your effective use of time?

Effective is not the same as efficient. Productive is not the same as mass-production.

I’ll give a bit fuller answer here, as I think my response is likely a bit unusual. I’ve had to learn how I work best, and it’s not the cultural ideal of tightly scheduled efficiency. For me, effective and productive often operate in ways that seem quite “inefficient.” I’m more “third-world” in my use of time: event-oriented and person-oriented, rather than time-conscious and to-do-list-conscious. I operate with an inner gyroscope tuned to whether or not any particular experience or interaction is complete – not to how long it takes or whether it fits the schedule. I’m attuned to whether or not any particular thought is actually finished thinking, rather than whether the product is done on time. So I tend to take the time it takes to get something right—whether that “something” is the close attentiveness of getting fully engaged in this conversation of consequence, or how to craft this sentence and paragraph, or whether I’m stopping and actually noticing the hawk flying overhead right now.

Powlison’s method of time management certainly goes against everything you will read in a leadership book, but I think there is something to be said for his approach.  In the world today, productivity rules, but sometimes life and love takes time and creativity.  Read the rest of the interview here because Powlison gives examples of how his approach might be effective even though it might not be “efficient.”