2,000 Percent Living Lesson Four: Put First Things First

Increase by at least a factor of twenty
the time you spend on your most important
goals in serving the Lord.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added to you.”

— Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)

Appropriate written goals only become valuable when
you start turning those goals into reality. Otherwise,
writing goals is a waste of time.

Having written their goals, most people become
concerned about how to achieve them. Their lives are
already busy. How can they make room for spending a
lot of time on their most important goals?

When combined, seven simple activities can help you to
shift your time and attention in favor of your goals:

1. Measure how you spend your time now.
2. Determine when you are most productive.
3. Notice when you are least productive.
4. Eliminate harmful activities.
5. Reduce activities with little value.
6. Combine activities that work well together.
7. Reschedule your days to put first things first.

In the rest of this lesson, I’ll describe how to do each of
these seven activities so you’ll gain the most benefit.

Measure How You Spend Your Time Now

“For with the same measure that you use,
it will be measured back to you.”

— Luke 6:38 (NKJV)

Understanding how you spend your time can be the first
step in a major life-improvement program. Start by
jotting down the time and what your new activity is
whenever you start something different and keep track in
a diary twenty-four hours a day for at least two weeks:
what time you awake, what time you get out of bed, what
time you brush your teeth, and so forth until you fall
asleep at night (you’ll have to estimate that time the next
morning). If you have a paying job, it’s important to
separate commuting time from working time as well as
the various aspects of what you do during the work day
(preparing for meetings, attending different kinds of
meetings, writing reports, reviewing materials, business
telephone calls, traveling to other sites, etc.).

Here are some of the categories of activities you may
find useful for recording your time (describing the work-
day sequence of activities for someone who is a parent of
young children and has a job outside the home):

• Sleep
• Lay in bed after waking up
• Prayer
• Bible study
• Personal hygiene (shower, brush teeth, brush or comb
hair, and so forth)

• Awaken other family members
• Help family members get ready for the day
• Prepare breakfast
• Eat breakfast
• Clean up after breakfast

• Take children to the bus stop, or drive them to day
care or school
• Drop off cleaning
• Commute to work
• Prepare for business meetings
• Attend business meetings (described by subject such as
sales, administration, human resources, etc.)

• Process business paperwork
• Make business telephone calls
• Review business materials prepared by others
• Business travel
• Lunch

• Commute from work
• Pick up children
• Take children to activities and watch what they are doing
• Shop
• Help children with homework

• Prepare dinner
• Eat dinner
• Clean up after dinner
• Make personal telephone calls
• Watch television

• Read for entertainment
• Prayer
• Bible study
• Time alone with spouse
• Exercise

• Visit friends
• Home chores
• Hobbies
• Perform work brought home
• Personal hygiene

• Plan the next day’s activities
• Inactive in bed at night, but not asleep
• Asleep

Pick a period of time to measure that is typical of your
entire year (you won’t learn as much if you just measure
what you do on vacation or when not very busy). While
you are recording what you do, don’t try to reform
yourself. Just do what comes naturally.

Once you have completed the diary entries, summarize
the total length of time for each activity. This means
you’ll know how many hours you slept, how long you
spent in bed awake but otherwise inactive, your
commuting hours, the time spent preparing meals, how
much time shopping took, and so on.

I find it helpful to look at such summaries translated
into weekly averages (divide the totals for each activity
category by the number of weeks you measured). If
your Monday through Friday schedule is a lot different
from your Saturday and Sunday schedule, you should
prepare weekly subtotals for your Monday-through-
Friday and Saturday-and-Sunday schedules as well as
weekly averages.

You may also find that it helps you to understand better
by seeing daily averages of these activities. To create
daily averages, just divide the totals by activity for the
measurement period by the number of days involved.

Before making any time-allocation choices, you should
first reflect on what the most and least productive
aspects of that period of time were like. I discuss how to
do that in the next two sections.

Determine When You Are Most Productive

“The land of a rich man was very productive.”

— Luke 12:16 (NAS)

As the next activity, go over your diary entries to make a
note of those times and activities when you were most
productive at whatever you were doing. I suggest that
you use a different color of pen, marker, or printer ink to
asterisk or highlight those occasions when a lot was
accomplished.

After you have noted the occasions, go back to each
productive activity and think about what happened then
that contributed to you being highly productive. There
are many potential factors that can contribute. Let me
list a few of them for you to start your thinking:

• Time of day (Some people work best early in the
morning and others, late at night.)
• Day of the week (Friday can be a more productive day
at work because you have fewer interruptions while
others seek to finish their work and start the weekend.)
• How quiet it was (It’s harder to do difficult tasks when
noises distract you.)
• Whether you had planned your work ahead of time
• Whether you had any help

• Who helped you
• When you were clear about what the task was
• When you were experienced in doing the task
• When others showed their appreciation before or while
you were doing the task
• When you were at home

• When you were at work
• When certain people were asleep or away
• When you were rested
• When you were feeling energetic
• After exercising

• While exercising
• While praying
• While reading the Bible
• While taking a shower
• While brushing your teeth

As you think about those productive occasions and their
times, locations, circumstances, and influences, consider
where you might be able to lump several narrow factors
together as a more general influence. In my case, a
general influence is that I’m most productive when I’m
undisturbed (which includes the factors of no noise, not
being interrupted, having enough time to complete a task,
and a lack of any visual stimuli that attract my attention).
As a result, I can get a lot more done by ensuring that I
have long periods during which I can focus my
undisturbed attention. A distraction-free hour might
yield four times the results (in writing articles or books,
for example) of an hour punctuated by four telephone
calls, even if the four are quite brief and uneventful.

Summarize what you learn by identifying the factors and
general influences that seemed to improve your
performance the most. In doing so, it may be that some
factors only help for certain kinds of work. Make note of
that, as well.

Notice When You Are Least Productive

If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand,
I am not a part of the body,”
it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.

— 1 Corinthians 12:15 (NAS)

You can also learn a lot more by repeating the process
that helped you to locate when you were most
productive, but this time you should look instead for
those occasions when you were least productive. I
recommend you use a third color of pen, marker, or
printer ink to note these occasions. As with the
productive occasions, notice what occasions and the
associated times, locations, circumstances, and
influences that were problems for you. Again, look for
common factors and general influences that were
present when you were less productive.

To help you notice factors that harm productivity, I’ve
listed some of the times and circumstances when I’m
least productive:

• Time of day (right after a big lunch, early evening when
I’m hungry, after midnight when I’m tired)
• Day of the week (Mondays are a mess for me because
students have sent a week’s worth of “urgent” requests
for help that have piled up over the weekend.)
• How noisy it was (such as when there is construction
nearby)
• Whether the work was planned ahead of time (With no
advance planning I can spin uselessly in circles for hours.)
• Whether I had any help (I can’t write an article very
well with someone trying to help me at the same time.)

• Who helped me (Some “helpers” can be worse than
having no help.)
• When I was not clear about what the task was (To my
chagrin, I’ve sometimes produced work that I thought
was great but that turned out not to be what was
requested … and I had to go back and start over again.)
• When I was inexperienced in the task (Give me a new
task involving lots of unaccustomed software, and I’ll be
very slow.)
• When others showed their disapproval (When people
sneer at what I’m doing while I’m working, I may focus
on feeling steamed rather than on doing the work.)
• When I was at home (When my wife or children need
me, I’m going to be easily distracted.)

• When I was at work (If my boss is pacing around
waiting for something I’m working on, that presence
will slow me down.)
• When others were present (There are a few people in
my life who create mayhem just by being in the vicinity.)
• While being continually interrupted (It takes me a long
time to remember where I was in my thought process.)
• When I was tired or ill (Headaches and sleepiness
combined slow me down to below a snail’s pace.)
• After exercising (If I exercise too much so that I
become lightheaded, it takes me a long time to recover
and to become productive again.)

Summarize what you learn by finding the general
influences and individual factors that seemed to reduce
your performance the most. In doing so, it may be that
some factors only affect certain kinds of work. Make
note of that, as well.

Eliminate Harmful Activities

Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying,
“Oh that You would bless me indeed
and enlarge my border,
and that Your hand might be with me,
and that You would keep me from harm
that it may not pain me!”
And God granted him what he requested.

— 1 Chronicles 4:10 (NAS)

Everyone has made mistakes so harmful that their
negative consequences continued to be a problem for
many years to come. Hopefully, no such occurrences
happened while you were logging how you spent your
time over two weeks.

Chances are that you won’t have any difficulty
remembering what harmful activities you’ve done in
the past. List even those harmful activities that you
haven’t done in many years.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. One of my
worst business moments was being awakened early one
Monday morning by a telephone call from a colleague
asking me why I wasn’t in Phoenix to take my boss
around to see our company’s operations there. I was
still in Boston! It’s about a six-hour plane flight to
Phoenix so I wasn’t going to be able to fix this. I asked
my colleague to take my boss around, hopped on the
first plane, met my boss at the airport as he prepared to
return home, and spent the flight back discussing what he
had seen that day without me. He forgave me. Thank
God! Otherwise, that mistake could have been a severe
dent in my career. People have been fired for less. This
trip occurred during the middle of a severe recession and
finding another job then would have been difficult.

Okay, now think about how you would avoid each of the
mistakes if the situation arose again today. In my case,
I had forgotten to check my next week’s schedule on
Friday night. When a friend called that night to invite me
to a party on Sunday, I accepted and went to the party
instead of flying to Phoenix (which had totally slipped my
mind). Since then, I’ve made it a practice to check my
schedule every night for the next seven days. I also don’t
accept any invitations without checking my schedule first.
In addition, I make multiple notes to remind me of
meetings or events that are critical for me to attend.

I have also learned by considering harmful activities that
I’ve seen others do and determining how to avoid making
those mistakes. Let me share an example. At a number of
weddings, a father of either the bride or the groom became
so tipsy that it was a problem. I have also heard many
awful stories about terrible actions taken at weddings by
drunken fathers of the bride or groom. As a result, I made
it a point not to drink anything alcoholic at any of my
children’s weddings, rehearsals, or related events.

If you have trouble remembering the lessons for how to
avoid such harmful actions, make a list of new habits to
follow daily and review it each morning. You may only
avoid one big harmful action a year, but one such
avoidance can free up hundreds of hours that would
otherwise be devoted to dealing with the consequences.

Reduce Activities with Little Value

Then Joab said, “I will not waste time here with you.”

— 2 Samuel 18:14 (NAS)

If you are like most people, your time log reveals vast
wastelands of time spent with little or no value added
towards your goals. When my clients and students share
their time logs with me, I expect that there will be
approximately thirty hours of no- or low-value activities
per week. Think about that: It’s almost as much as a full
work week. Over a decade, it’s more than 15,000 hours.
Cutting back on such no- and low-value activities
becomes a prime opportunity to gain more time to work
on your goals.

I also recommend that you consider how much time you
spent on your goals during the measurement period. I’ve
seen results as low as less than an hour a week. I rarely
see numbers higher than three hours a week. Now you
can begin to see why I encourage you to spend twenty
times more of your week on your goals than you do now.

What are the times, places, and occasions where you are
involved in no- or low-value activities relative to your
goals? I cannot anticipate what your list will look like, but
I can share with you what many of my clients and
students have decided to cut back on:

• Television watching (Unless you are a professional
television critic, most of this viewing has nothing to do
with your goals.)
• Commuting (Unless you are listening to recorded
materials related to your goals, this is often dead time
for helping you meet your goals.)
• Attending meetings that you don’t need to be in (This
is why so many people text away on their BlackBerrys
during meetings.)
• Attending meetings that go on longer than necessary
• Extensive exercising (Unless you are listening to
recorded materials, reading information related to your
goals, or a priority goal is improving your health or
fitness.)

• Spending more than nine hours a day in bed (lounging
and sleeping combined)
• Reading that’s unconnected to goals (Most people keep
their Bible reading time.)
• Business travel (unless you bring goal-related activities
to do while traveling)
• Doing tasks that your spouse or children could perform
(in making a fairer allocation of home-related tasks)
• Chatting for hours with friends and family on the
telephone (unless related to your goals)

• Handling paperwork that others in the organization
could do for you
• Preparing materials at work that others in the
organization could do for you
• Going to meetings other people could attend on your
behalf
• Hobbies that take lots of time (and are unrelated to
goals)
• Business telephone calls

Some people take the long view and realize that their
current job and home location present serious problems
for accomplishing their goals. As a result, some people will
look for a job that’s more supportive of their goals and
eliminates most commuting and business travel. A
number of home-based businesses have been established
in the process.

My suggestion is that you not make too many changes at
once unless they feel very comfortable and easy to you.
You can obviously repeat the seven activities described in
this lesson as often as you want to redirect your time.

As you can see from that list, many activities that are
unrelated to goals can be made productive by simply
adding in some helpful aspect (such as listening to
recorded material or reading something that’s related to
your goals). So you don’t have to give up exercising! Let’s
look at some of the opportunities to combine activities in
the next section.

Combine Activities That Work Well Together

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ,
if any comfort of love,
if any fellowship of the Spirit,
if any affection and mercy,
fulfill my joy by being like-minded,
having the same love,
being of one accord, of one mind.

— Philippians 2:1-2 (NKJV)

As I suggested in the last section, sometimes you can take
an activity that’s not related to your goals and add a goal-
related dimension. Most people have time now when they
could do an additional activity, such as listening to
recorded materials during commuting and business
travel. If your employer allows you an hour for lunch,
you might find that you could devote part of that hour to
working on a goal rather than just eating and wandering
around.

Experts on time management normally encourage people
to work on one thing at a time. Their studies suggest that
those who are trying to perform three or four activities
simultaneously (such as texting, looking at interesting
billboards, and jotting notes on a clipboard while driving
a truck) may have problems (accidents increase among
drivers who text, for instance) and take longer to do the
tasks than people who perform them one at a time.

Here’s a better idea: I’m suggesting instead that you find
activities that serve many different purposes related to
your goals. Let me share an example of what I mean:
Assume that parents have goals that make it desirable to
spend more time with their children, to learn certain new
computer skills, to become better leaders, and to practice
humility.

Rather than work on those desirable activities separately,
the parents might instead look for activities that would
combine all those aspects. An example might be to learn
the new computer skills (if appropriate) with the children
and to apply those skills to solving problems that the
children will deal with in school at some point (allowing
time to be spent together, the parents and children to
learn the skills, leadership to be demonstrated by
engaging everyone’s interest, and humility to be
experienced by approaching the situation as a learner
with the children rather than as a “know-it-all” parent).

Such “multiple-benefit” goal-related activities can add up
to ten hours a week in goal-related improvements for
many people. For some people, the increased activity can
be even larger.

In thinking about some ways to combine purposes into
one activity, be sure that you don’t isolate yourself from
God, your family, and your friends. Instead, look for ways
to involve them in more aspects of your life. You’ll find
that achieving your goals will be much more rewarding
when you do.

Reschedule Your Days to Put First Things First

Honor the LORD with your possessions,
And with the firstfruits of all your increase;
So your barns will be filled with plenty,
And your vats will overflow with new wine.

— Proverbs 3:9-10 (NKJV)

As I mentioned in Lesson One, the Bible promises that
by tithing (giving the first 10 percent of your income to
he Lord through His local church) you will increase your
spiritual and material wealth (see Malachi 3:8-12, NKJV).
Allocating your most productive time and circumstances
to your most important goals for the Lord will similarly
increase your effectiveness for reaching your goals. This
is perhaps the most important part of the fourth lesson
for you to appreciate: By simply giving your goals the best,
mostly timely attention when you are highly productive,
you can probably accelerate your progress to your goals by
more than twenty times. When this benefit is joined with
spending a lot more time on your goals, the combined
momentum is irresistible.

Making these changes requires courage and imagination.
Courage is required to find ways to free up more of your
most productive time for your goals. This may mean
asking your boss if you can work on flex time so that you
can shorten your commute and use more precious early
morning time for tasks best done then. Imagination is
involved in providing good reasons why this change in
working hours is in your organization’s best interest
(perhaps you can make or take some early
calls to Europe before your children wake up).

I recommend that you write down an ideal schedule for
every day of the week, one that gives you as many hours
as possible to work on achieving your goals while you will
be highly productive. Consult with those who will be
affected by any changes you might make to see how they
feel about the shift and what suggestions they have for
you.

Once you have the schedule approved, I suggest that you
follow it as closely as possible. Some ideas for optimally
allocating your schedule will work well and others won’t.
Be flexible and learn from your new experiences. Keep in
mind that you want to accomplish more. Keep track of
what’s accomplished towards your goals each week in a
journal. Go back at the end of the week and examine what
you did to see how you could have accomplished more by
making better use of your time. Many people, for
instance, find that they need some weekend planning time
in order to gain the best results towards their goals during
the following week.

In making these changes, also consider how you might
expand the amount of time during which you expect to be
highly productive. If your workspace is very noisy, for
instance, see if you can move to a quieter area. If that’s not
possible, find temporary workspaces you can use for times
when you need lots of quiet.

By working on the right activities at the best times and in
the ideal environments, you’ll accomplish a great deal more
and with less effort. That’s the kind of life that God wants
for you to lead. When you do, your ability to make a
difference will expand in astonishing ways as God aids you
with His infinite power.

Copyright 2010 Donald W. Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.