ByGrace

"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." ~ Richard Baxter Photo Source: http://flic.kr/ps/21CUr3

Photo by iampeas I do a lot of reading about time management. So much reading, in fact, that I sometimes don't manage my time very well. Ahem. I've finally realized that for any time management advice to work, I . . . umm . . I have to work. And one way I've learned to work is The Miracle of 15 Minutes . I call it a miracle because it doesn't seem like you could get much of anything done in only 15 minutes. That's how I thought before I discovered FlyLady way back in 2000. She is a huge advocate of The Miracle of 15 Minutes . Have you ever timed yourself to see just what you can get done in 15 minutes? I'd see my dishes in the sink and think, "That will take too long; I'll wait till tomorrow morning when I have more energy." Or I'd put off mopping the floor, thinking it would take SO long to move the chairs, sweep, fill the bucket, get out the mop, mop the floor, rinse out the bucket and mop and put them away.  Clean o...

photo credit: RLHyde via photopin cc Several years ago, I came across an item on Lifehacker , a web site that brings you all sorts of technological finds each day. It featured an article written for real estate agents concerning the top time-management tricks of realtors. The original article is no longer to be found, but I gleaned a few tips then from which I drafted this entry. These tips were written with career women in mind, but quite a few of them can be applied to us as homemakers, and I wanted to share with you the ones I found most helpful. 1. Turn off the tube. What excellent advice! The lady who sent in this tip mentioned that she had become "increasingly aware of how useless and inane most of the programs are." If we, as Christian homemakers, want to redeem the time the Lord has given us, we should reconsider the time we give to the tube. How much prime time (and I'm not talking about the 8-10 p.m. time slot here) do we give to this time-...

I wasn't born with that gene. You know. The time management one. The one that seems to come naturally to so many people. Instead, I fight a daily battle with how to spend my time wisely and productively. So I've been reading quite a bit the past few months about time management and productivity. Over time (no pun intended), and with much reading, I've found five time-management principles that work well for me. Choose your 3 Most Important Tasks . I've used this quite often and it's made a difference in how I plan my days. I had made lists and I had prioritized my lists, but I rarely marked things off my lists. But when I found Simple Mom and her Daily Docket , it was like the light came on. I tried it, and I often use this method when there are lots of things to do and the day seems overwhelming. I write my list and highlight the 3 things that must get done. When those 3 are done, I know I've done what had to be done, and the rest of the things...

Last month I began rising early . Like earlier than I ever have in my life. And I love it. Photo by wakingphotolife The only problem is, many days I hit the dreaded Afternoon Slump. You know Afternoon Slump: you've had a productive day, things are going well. You have lunch and start back to work, and a couple of hours later it hits. You can't hold your eyes open. Your mouth is open plenty, though, because you can't stop yawning. You can't think clearly. All you want to do is go. to. sleep. Yep, it happens to me all the time. I asked my Facebook readers if it ever happens to them, and guess what? It does! For some of us, there are actual physical reasons, such as illness, and we learn to deal with those situations. But for those of us who just hit that slump, I have a few suggestions to help. :: Eat a high-protein lunch. This was the first suggestion from one of my Facebook readers. When we eat lots of carbs - say a sandwich and chips with a couple of ...

Stewardship is the ordering of one's life so that time, ability, possessions, and all of one's personality are administered as belonging to God. Unknown

Here's another article that came across my reader this week. I need to get these all in one place, but I just haven't been that organized. Maybe someday. In the meantime, enjoy this interview with Crystal Paine of Biblical Womanhood and Money-Saving Mom . Balancing Computer Time and Family Life , with links to an interview Crystal did recently on this topic.

I've run into quite a few articles and book chapters lately about seasons in life. Just as the year has seasons, so do our lives. Right now, my season is mothering teens. I can well remember the season of my own teenage years, then my seasons of working, newly married, mother of small children, and mother of elementary-aged children. There are seasons within seasons; for example, we traveled for 2 1/2 years raising support to come to Canada and start a church. That was a season of my life - it only lasted a certain amount of time, and it's now over (hopefully not to be repeated in the near future!). Right now our season is pastoring a small church; a lot of the work falls to us. It's tiring and sometimes discouraging, but this is our season of life. We'll enter a new season eventually, and we'll look back on this one with fond memories of our little church. Several years ago, I had a friend who would IM me occasionally. She lived far away from me; we didn...