I’ve mentioned before how Jim Collins (From Good to Great and Built to Last) divides his time into blocks:
- 50% creative time
- 30% teaching time
- 20% other stuff (random things that just need to be done).
But here’s an article which illuminates this even more and challenges all preachers to be far more disciplined in time-management. Collins says:
“I block out the morning from 8 am to noon to think, read and write. ” He unplugs everything electronic, including his Internet connection. Although he has a reputation for reclusiveness, when asked about this, he replies: “I’m not reclusive. But I need to be in the cave to work.”
One of his favorite quotes comes from the famously disciplined French novelist Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” For Collins, high-quality work requires long stretches of high-quality thinking. “White space,” as he calls it, is the prerequisite for fresh, creative thought. It’s the time that he spends with nothing scheduled, so that he can empty his mind, like the proverbial teacup, and refill it with new thought.
He aims to spend 100 days next year in the white space. “As a great teacher, Rochelle Myers, taught me, you can’t make your own life a work of art if you’re not working with a clean canvas,” he says. (Another smart bit of Collins philosophy: “Speak less. Say more.”
So how much white space do you have in your life?