The danger of a split focus

Leadership, Prioritizing

Do you have a split focus? As my friend Neil Cole says, “First things first. One thing at a time. Always one more thing.” That middle concept of “one thing at a time” can be one of the most difficult for us. We live in an age of multi-tasking and constant...

Pruning comes first

Leadership, Prioritizing

  Before you can begin delegating new tasks and developing new leaders, pruning must come first. The primary question of pruning is: What are you going to stop doing? If you don’t prune, you don’t have the bandwidth to develop others because you’re still carrying...

Annual time budget

Leadership, Prioritizing

The questions have been asked before: What are the big rocks? The core contributions we’re supposed to be making? How do we allocate significant blocks of time to do those? The higher you are in leadership, the more important it is to look at your whole year. Most of...

Trust the process

Leadership, Networking, Prioritizing

I have found this to be true among ministry leaders. The greater the fruitfulness, the greater the need to pull away and reconnect with God for perspective and re-prioritize. As leaders, we need to find ways to protect ourselves and our time, while still providing...

A disciplined approach to capturing insights

Leadership, Prioritizing

I used to carry with me a notebook that included a page I called my “action idea list.” Any thought I had that I wanted to retain, I’d flip to that page and write it down. (I’ve heard some novelists use the same strategy to take down plot points and new ideas that...

Divine appointment or distraction?

Leadership, Prioritizing

Even Jesus got interrupted sometimes. He was on his way to Jerusalem when a crowd slowed him down and a woman touched the hem of his robe. At that point, he had a decision to make. Would he press on to Jerusalem? Or was this a divine appointment? In that case, Jesus...