So, on Friday, we began the conversation about stewardship.
To recap, stewardship is conducting, supervising, or managing something. It is most often talked about in terms of money, but the reality is that we are stewards of far more than money. And while we may be good stewards with our money, we are often poor stewards with many of the other gifts and resources God has given us.
Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about singleness and what it means to be intentional with the time and resources that I currently have.
The three main areas the Lord has convicted me about my poor stewardship are in regard to time, productivity, and health.
We talked about time on Friday, so now let's continue the conversation.
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In many respects, the stewardship of time and productivity go hand in hand.
Now, you might be a bit confused. "Productivity" is not a noun and "productive" isn't either, so how can you be a good steward of productivity?
It's true that you can't be a steward of something that isn't a noun, but here's how I see it.
God has given us time and He's given us resources. These could be monetary resources, talents, material possessions, etc. Productivity is the marrying of your time and your resources and when you don't use your time to utilize your resources to the best of your ability, you are productively being a poor steward.
So, as I said, time and productivity go hand in hand because time is part of the productivity equation.
It's no secret that most of my generation is all but obsessed with social media.
I'm just as guilty as the next person of spending mindless hours surfing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. And while there isn't anything inherently wrong with social media (in fact, as a blogger/writer, those social networking tools are all immensely helpful), it does become a problem when it becomes a time sucker.
It's really easy for me to watch an hour or two or three disappear while I don't do a single thing that's productive. And sometimes that's good. When I plan to rest, then it's good for me to spend some time not doing things that are considered productive. But when I'm planning to be productive, social media is a time sucker.
Too often, I convince myself that it's not a problem to have Twitter, Facebook, and my Gmail open while I'm working on a blog post or my book or anything else. But you know what? I'm learning that it is a problem.
Women like to claim that they're so wonderful at multitasking and, in many cases, we are better at multitasking than men are (at least in my actual experience). But research has shown that even if women are more capable of multitasking than men are, multitasking drastically reduces your productivity. In fact, according to an article from Psychology Today, when you're constantly multitasking and switching between multiple tasks very quickly, it can take you up for 40 percent more time to complete your tasks than it would if you just focused on one thing at a time.
Now what was that you were saying about multitasking making you more productive?
I've noticed this a lot more in my habits recently. It will sometimes take me three or four times as long to read a blog post because I see the little (7) in my Twitter feed or the (2) pop up in my Gmail. Sometimes I even get so distracted that I forget important tasks for long periods of time.
When I'm just doing general things and not necessarily trying to focus on a specific task, I leave my multiple social media tabs open and switch between different things, but when I'm trying to focus on something specific (like writing my book), I'm learning that in order for me to be the most productive steward, I need to get rid of all distractions.
So I close all of my social media tabs (or at the very least minimize them), turn on my piano music station on Pandora, turn my phone on silent and flip it over, and go to work. And you know what happens when I do that? I do crazy things like write almost 1500 words in only 30 minutes.
I know that when I eventually transition to a full-time freelancing/writing career, that this will be immensely important, as I will have to be much more careful about how I spent my time during my working hours. So I'm trying to start now, because the more efficient I am at completing various tasks, the more extra time I have to do things like volunteer at church and invest in the lives of my small groups girls. And those things are far more important than checking Twitter every time one new tweet pops up.
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The third way the Lord has been convicting me about stewardship is in regard to health.
I've written before about my abusive relationship with unhealthy food and, more recently, my tendency to go super gung-ho about getting healthy and injuring myself.
I admit, there have been times when I've wanted to lose weight simply because I hated the way I looked. My self-esteem was super low and I had this warped perception that my size 10 hips and thighs were the reason no guys ever seemed to like me.
But as I've been working toward having a healthier image of myself, both in respect to my personality and my looks, I've started to realize that it's important for me to be healthy not just because it will (in theory) make me feel better about myself. It's important for me to be healthy because when I'm not healthy, I'm being a poor steward of the body God has given me.
I know that I feel better when I work out and I eat healthily. My waistline shrinks and my bank account grows when I'm cooking my own meals and not eating out all the time. My energy, productivity, and focus increase when I'm exercising regularly and my mood improves.
A few weeks ago, The Gospel Coalition published a post entitled This Is the Body the Lord Has Made. In it the author discusses the importance of physical activity for our bodies and as I've thought on his words, I've realized that in order to be the best steward of the body I've been given, I have to take care of it. That means getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, eating fruits and vegetables instead of candy and pizza all the time. As I continue to grow, my body will continue to change, but that will never change my need to take good care of it.
And so, I'm working on this. I'm training for another 5k and doing my best to add in some sort of physical activity (even if it's only toning exercises) at least 4-5 days during the week. I'm trying to drink water instead of soda and other sugary beverages. I'm trying to choose whole grains and fruits and vegetables over processed foods.
Some days I'm really good at it and other days I'm not, but the key is that I'm trying. And even if it's only one step, it's still a step in the right direction.
What are your thoughts on productivity and multitasking? What about health and how it relates to stewardship of your body? What about stewardship in general? What are some areas where you think the Lord might want you to be a better steward of what you've been given?
The post Stewardship in Every Sense: Part Two appeared first on Shades of Shayes.