In my early 20s, I began noticing that nearly every recurring problem I faced—finances, relationships, career, even my walk with the Lord—traced back, in some way, to an issue of poor time management.
I saw in school that to get good grades, I didn’t need to be especially smart; I just needed to manage my time well. Similarly, I discovered while writing my first book that writing was less about being a great writer and more about simply putting in the time.
The same is true across nearly every area of life:
- Struggling to lose weight? Time management problem.
- Can’t seem to get into the Word each day? Time management problem.
- Relationships feeling neglected? Time management problem.
- Goals sitting on the shelf year after year? Time management problem.
I admit that this is a gross oversimplification. There are, of course, many factors at play in all of these areas of life. And there are things in life we simply cannot control. But the point I’m trying to make is that we tend to overcomplicate this stuff.
This isn’t rocket science. If you make time for growth, growth tends to happen.
I’ve also been in a unique position to see this truth bear out in other people’s lives as well. After years of hosting goal challenges in Redeeming Productivity Academy, wherein people have vastly different goals with different actions necessary to reach them, I discovered that the main thing to track was simply Time on Goal (TOG). TOG is the universal metric of goal setting. When people put time in their calendar for their goals, they tend to reach them. Because even if you start with a shoddy plan, if you spend time on your goal every day, clarity will eventually come.
But it even carries over to the arena of spiritual disciplines. It sounds almost sacrilegious to say it, but spiritual growth is also a time management problem. The saints of old have understood this for millennia. They wrote of having a designated “hour of prayer.” The Reformers and Puritans structured their days and weeks around the means of grace, not because they were legalists, but because they were realists. They understood that good intentions without protected time produce nothing.
Certainly, in all of these things, it is God who causes the growth. Acknowledging that even spiritual growth is, in part, a time management problem is not a denial of providence or the work of the Holy Spirit; it’s an admission that, as far as our part is concerned, we need to plan ahead and show up. Relying on the whims of our feelings will never produce the consistent faithfulness that leads to God-honoring growth.
If this is true—if nearly every problem is, at some level, a time management problem—then the starting point is this: Stop letting your schedule simply happen to you.
What if you saw your calendar not merely as a logistical tool but as a theological statement about what you actually value? When you deliberately design your week around your priorities rather than reacting to whatever comes at you, you are saying: these things matter, and I am going to protect time for them.
