Developing an Effective Weekly Schedule

Time is one of God’s greatest gifts. He gives it to all of us equally, and how we use it is our gift back to Him. We often speak of managing our time, but I have learned you really can’t manage time—you can only manage yourself.

In this episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast, we discuss how to develop and remain accountable to a weekly schedule that holds all of the core responsibilities which God has given to us.

My son, Larry, joined me for this discussion and posed helpful questions throughout, including these:

What is a good starting point for developing a weekly schedule?
How often do you step back and re-evaluate your priorities?
What are the differences in your purposes for a weekly, monthly, and annual view?
How often does your week go as it was planned?
What are some of the ways you replenish and restore after expending energy?
How do you deal with interruptions?
What would your advice be to ministry leaders who want to implement this for themselves as well as for their team?

I enjoyed this discussion with Larry. We have different temperaments but share the same desire to steward our lives fully for Christ. I believe what we covered in this conversation is helpful for every leader regardless of their temperament, responsibilities, or specifics of their weekly schedule.

Near the end of our conversation, we talked about a new resource that is a tool for your weekly schedule—the revised edition of the Stewarding Life Planner. The changes in this edition are substantive and useful. They include a new weekly review process as you go through your roles as well as a daily page spread with room to include devotional thoughts, identify the big priorities for the day, and map out the day’s appointments and tasks.

The planner is available for pre-order now and will be in before Christmas. For listeners of this podcast, we are offering a special 20% discount if you order by December 18. Simply use the coupon code PODCAST20.