Plan To Neglect

“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity … but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

Eph 5:15-16

You have heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This is certainly true. However, we will live life more effectively if we also “plan to neglect.”

About 15 years ago, I started to practice Stephen Covey’s holistic life management principle, which he propagated in his book, “First Things First.” I found it absolutely meaningful as well as helpful in setting my priorities right and allocating time appropriately for managing my life.

Stephen advocated putting our different roles, which we have in our daily life and then planning our activities around these roles. This gives us a proper perspective (using the true north analogy) in how we spend our time.

His proposition is based on an important Kingdom principle; that we should be wise and make the most of every opportunity and understanding what the Lord’s will is for us.

Stephen’s core message is to focus on what is really important but which may not yet be urgent and totally neglect the trivial things in our daily life. Indeed, there are many things that cry out for our attention constantly but which are not important at all. These include common trivial pursuits, time wasters such as watching soap operas or reading fictions, busy work which produces little result, gossips, aimless surfing in the Internet and so on. If we are not careful, we will be driven by life instead of living and driving it.

In Charles Hummel’s “The Tyranny of the Urgent”, he explains that until we know the difference between the urgent and the important then we will never become good stewards of our time. Reflect and examine how often our lives have been driven by what pops up in our face instead of we controlling what to do according to a holistic plan.

The core of this is the message to administer Christian stewardship of our time on earth … making most of every opportunity for God’s kingdom work.

I have benefited much from learning how to plan my daily and weekly timetable according to my various roles in life. These roles include being a redeemed son of God, a husband, a father, an employee, a church member and a friend. By having each of these roles in mind when I plan my week, I life live with a balance, not missing missing out on anything or anyone important to me. I plan to neglect all trivial and unimportant things so that I can make use of the time to do those that are important.

Join me to live life with a holistic balance. Live it, drive it for His glory.

God bless.

Steven