Prioritizing Your Schedule
There are hundreds of planning systems on the market. They range from notes on paper napkins to notebooks larger than most briefcases. What most have in common are too crowded schedules, unscheduled interruptions, and frustrating schedulers. How to better schedule your life with purpose:

1. Identify the key roles and/or relationships in your life. For example, you may be a child of God, husband or wife, friend, family member, writer, teacher, financial manager. Then break down your to-do list by the roles in your life.
   
   
2. Within each role or key relationship, identify one or two important areas you feel you have been neglecting. This might include a troubled friend you have been unable to visit. Or include improving your relationship with God by better developing the habit of regular prayer. The list likely will cover the important but not urgent areas of your life. Call this list Important Want-to-Do List. Don't neglect this step. The list you create could contain many of the important things you always wanted to do with your life but kept putting off.
   
   
3. Make a list of Less Important Doing-Now List. Adding new activities or habits to your schedule is possible if you create room for them. Usually something has to be dropped from your schedule. You may have to log your time - in 15-minute segments - for a week to see where your time is going. For example, you might be surprised how much time you spend in front of the TV, playing video games, or going through junk mail. Based on this information, set limits on the activities which eat your time.
   
   
4. Compare your two lists. Your Less Important list may contain some activities you enjoy, but if you compare them with your Want-to-Do list, you can see how your sacrifice will be small compared with the rewards of living a more balanced life.
   
   
5. Pick one item from your Important Want-to-Do List to work on during the next month. Perhaps you want to spend more time with your spouse or create time for a day of rest. Ask yourself what you could do that would make the greatest difference in your personal or professional life. Pick one item to work on, then turn to your Less Important Doing-Now List and select two activities to eliminate for every new addition.
   
   
6. Be willing to let God mess up your schedule for His plans. One of the common frustrations with scheduling is that the phone rings, you have unexpected guests, or projects take twice as long. When you fill your schedule too full you set yourself up for disappointment. Don't think that God doesn't care about leading you in your day-to-day life. I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps (Jer. 10:23). In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Prov. 16:9).

By Patrick Klingaman, courtesy of Crosswalk.com

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