Do you ever feel that you are living that old saying, “Jack of all things, master of none?” Today I was taking a shower and was mentally making a list of all that I need to do:
- Grade 1,000 papers (no joke, I teach 8th grade and have 120 students, and I’m about 9 behind)
- Buy life insurance
- Draft a will
- Plan a meeting
- Fix my wife’s van
- Make calendar for youth group (I’m a youth pastor too)
- Pay my bills (this always seems to get left off my list and then I pay the price for a late payment)
- Return 7 phone calls
- Wash all my cars, I have five. Before you think I am rich, all of them have over 100,000 miles an two are driven by kids and one doesn’t shift into high gear, which makes driving over 40 difficult
- Fix the above-mentioned van
- Fix my O2 sensor in my truck
- Work on my business idea
- Update my own blog
- Finish creating a website for our youth group
- Check out business I went to see last week
- Plan golf tournament
- Start lawn business with my sons
- Get “really” good at playing golf
- Read – a lot more than I do. I am reading a book every three weeks, but would sure like that to be one a week.
And the list goes on and on. I am currently working three jobs: teaching 8th grade, youth pastoring a small church and umpiring college baseball. All of which demand a tremendous amount of dedication to be truly good at any one of them. However, I find myself doing just enough to get by. I wonder what I could do if I truly focused on one thing at a time? But is that possible to do with the way my schedule works? I don’t think so, but there has to be a way to be good at all of them at ONE TIME.
So I am going to try to come up with a way to do all these things well, without doing any one of them poorly. I think it must be in the systems. I am on a quest to find how to be better at what I am doing and what I want to do without sacrificing myself on the altar of the American pursuit of crazy.
I would love any systems you might use or suggestions. My sanity depends on it!