5 Ways Church Leaders Can Do More in Less Time

5 Ways Church Leaders Can Do More in Less Time.

#5

Networking Saves Time.

Interacting with other ministry leaders can be a short cut to getting more done with the time you have.

You are busy.

Why is Networking Important?

This Mission is Bigger Than The Time You Have.

How can you best steward your time resources?

Are you facing an obstacle in your church?

There are other church leaders who have faced the same thing and solved the issue.

Wondering what the next level of development would be for a ministry you lead?

Find churches just a bit farther down the development path and ask them for advise.

Even Pro-athletes have coaches ... maybe you should?

Is there a ministry leader you respect that you could structure regular input from? Ask them.

Keep Clicking for Ideas.

#1

Avoid Trivial Interruptions

"Interruptions" are a part of ministry.

Some interruptions are ministry opportunities in disguise.

Some interruptions are a distraction from ministry.

Ask yourself if this interruption is ...

Ministry Opportunity

to Embrace?

or

Trivial Interruption

to Avoid?

A recent study shows that the average

staff member is interrupted 56 times during the day! It typically takes 3 minutes to recover from each of those interruptions!

Smartphones are Dumb Email

Processing Tools.

Schedule time to Batch

Process Your Emails.

The more emails your reply to

the more emails you'll get.

Take Action on First Touch.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts!

Stop fooling yourself ... it's not faster to respond to emails on your phone than on a computer. If you are regularly processing your emails on your phone you are wasting time.

Don't "check your emails" through out the day. Set aside time to hunker down and process the emails that have come in.

Do you really need to jump in on this conversation?

If not ... just delete it and move on.

Don't just look at your emails when you process them ... take action! Delete it. Delegate it someone else. Defer response until you can get to it. Do something right now to respond.

The email program you use will have keyboard short cuts that you can use. Find them online and use them. The mouse or trackpad is an inefficient way to navigate your computer.

#4

Tasks to "Batch" To Save Time

Stop Drowning in Emails

Email is a critical part of your ministry tool kit. It's not going away. Develop a system to deal with it.

• Email // Find two time slots every day to process all your email ... ignore it the rest of the day.
• Phone Calls // Return your calls all at the same time ... a great way to kick off and end the day.
• Message Prep // Don't attempt to "fit it in" between meetings ... block out multiple hours at a time to dedicate to research and writing.
• Admin // Do expense reports, form filling out, and other similar tasks at a pre-defined time each week.

Meetings are not ministry.

Agenda

#2

Batch Your Work Together

Training leaders is ministry. Getting volunteers plugged in is ministry. Preparing a message is ministry.

Meetings are preparing for ministry ... they aren't ministry.

Stop the meeting so we can get on with the ministry.

#3

Prevent Pointless Meetings

No agenda ... no meeting.

Multitasking doesn't work. Your mind is designed to intensely focus on a single task at a time.

Find similar types of a "tasks" in your work flow and do them at the same time.

Meetings where you can't clearly articulate why we are meeting need to be canceled.

The person responsible for calling the meeting needs to provide an agenda before the meeting ... or it doesn't happen.

A recent survey showed that staff members are in 30 hours of meetings every month that they consider pointless.

Try a "half meeting" week.

You can accomplish what you are attempting to do with "regular meetings" in half the time. I promise.

Try a week where you cut all your "regular" meetings in half and see what happens. Keep some of them at their smaller size!