You being a finite resource
So often when I meet with a new or prospective client they start by explaining how hard they are working and yet they’re still not managing to do xxxxx. I like to remind them that they should consider rest as productive and feel capable of telling their appointing body that they need help and support.
Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.
What do you like to do?
Before you are burned out, or agree to role share, outsource or anything else – review your role description.
If you don’t have one, think about what you’ve been doing – read through minutes and see what you were asked to do, or did because it needed doing, and don’t forget to add in any unusual tasks, or those periodical lists of jobs that appear and reappear as you go through the year.
Once you have a list – consider it:
- Are there things that you do but they make you sigh?
- What tires you out just thinking about them?
- Are there things that you enjoy?
- Even if you can’t think how to outsource this – are there things you think doesn’t need to be done by you/your role?
- Are there things you just don’t understand why they were included in your role?
Do you recognise the needs and gifts of each member of your family and household, not forgetting your own?
What can you get someone else to do?
Not just someone else, but perhaps something else…
- Can you automate something?
- Can you batch jobs together?
- Could some procedures or tasks be simplified?
MBS have spreadsheets to capture your tasks over the year, to help you move things around to less busy times, or to combine jobs where it would make sense.
Now that you’ve reviewed, done a bit of recording, hopefully considered the questions above and have some answers.
Read the part of A&Q 26 quoted above – what are your needs and gifts? What things are fitting with your needs and gifts and what just isn’t?
Your meeting, charity, organisation, group needs you and your talents well and healthy. So do your friends, family and of course you!
As we go into the holiday season – and the end of year chaos that seems to ramp up no matter how I try to limit activities – it is even more important to pause, breathe, ponder, choose and then do.
Having quoted two A&Qs already, I will add in a third – two lines I frequently take outside the original context (marriage):
Remember that happiness depends on an understanding and steadfast love on both sides. In times of difficulty remind yourself of the value of prayer, of perseverance and of a sense of humour.
Wendrie Heywood
MBS Founder
You might also be interested in some of these selected blogs from our archive:
#AdventWord 2019: 21 Rest
AdventWord 2022: Breathe
Quaker A-Z: M is for Measuring & Management
Quaker A-Z: V is for Volunteers and (school) Visits
