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Again, what’s more important than the number of times you check your messages is that you choose when you will check them.
But remember, bosses don’t want to be responding to emails every five minutes either.
Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). Keeping one calendar day in front of me at a time helps me live this out in a very practical way.
Remember, it’s not just deep work we’re after but a deep life.
Of course, this is when your finite source of willpower is most depleted, making it the hardest time of day to resist the temptation to be distracted by your digital tools.
The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.”
As Christians, we understand that no interruption is an accident.
“I lay there for a few minutes, chalking it up to just anxiously fussing over issues instead of trusting God that it could wait until tomorrow.
Without even trying, all her problems were being solved in her sleep.
With her plan written down, Cochrane slipped back into bed and fell right back to sleep.
But the solution didn’t appear while she was straining in front of her laptop. It took a good night’s sleep for her brain to connect the problems together and for a creative, unifying solution to emerge.
In order to do more, most of us need to do less and rest more.
Ignoring these rhythms leads to burnout, anxiety, and unproductiveness as we seek to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others.
In the arrogance of my more youthful self, I ignored the science that shows you can do only about four hours of hyperfocused work in a day.
God created us to operate not as if we’re in a sprint or a marathon but as if we’re doing a workout.
As anyone who works out knows, the only way to make a physical workout sustainable is to rest in between reps.
I didn't know that until recently, but it is absolutely true!
At the end of that ninety-minute cycle, our brains need a break.
“To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment,” da Vinci said. “Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen.”
As one researcher explained, “When you are awake you learn new things, but when you are asleep you refine them.”
“It is the difference between knowledge (retention of individual facts) and wisdom (knowing what they all mean when you fit them together).”
“You are morally obligated to try to get the sleep you need,” Carson said.
So, if Sabbath—this weekly rhythm of rest—is so productive, why don’t we all do it? Because most of us view Sabbath as a boring, legalistic, life-sucking chore, if we think of it at all.
But notice that Jesus didn’t say the law was irrelevant. Rather, he said the Pharisees were completely missing the point.
It’s about declaring our freedom from slavery.
Taking bi-hourly breaks throughout our workdays is productive for our souls because it reminds us that God doesn’t need us to finish our to-do lists.
Rest is a way of reminding ourselves that no matter how productive we are, no matter how many good works we accomplish, we are God’s beloved children, in whom he is well pleased.
For me, ten minutes washing dishes is far more restorative than spending thirty minutes playing on my phone.
If you work with your mind, rest with your hands; if you work with your hands, rest with your mind.
You’ll notice that I prefer bi-hourly breaks that serve as double wins. Each of them is productive to some end in addition to reenergizing me for the work I have to do the rest of the day.
I won’t call you a liar, but science will.
This suggests that people frequently underestimate the cognitive impact of sleep restriction and overestimate their performance readiness when sleep restricted.
For the vast majority of us, there’s simply no way around this inescapable fact: loving your neighbor as yourself starts with getting eight hours of sleep.
You know what’s free and will have a far greater impact on your ability to get adequate sleep? Setting a bedtime.
Again, Sabbath is about enjoying what God’s already given us, not worrying about or longing for what he might give us tomorrow.
What would it look like for you to cease and feast on the Lord, his Word, and the good gifts he has given you and your family this week?
In other words, Rogers was busy. And yet he was remarkably unhurried.
At the beginning of each episode, the first thing viewers saw inside Mister Rogers’ home wasn’t the show’s host but rather a blinking yellow traffic light—a not-so-subtle cue that it was time to slow down and stop hurrying.
When that night did come, Jesus prayed to the Father, saying, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (17:4).
As Jesus’s example shows us, hurry isn’t just “the great enemy of spiritual life”; hurry is also the great enemy of our ability to be purposeful, present, and productive.
But perhaps most practically, our hurry stems from our failure to “count the cost” of our time.
It’s simply good stewardship to plan where you’re going to spend every dollar before those dollars are in your hands.
The same is true with budgeting your time: it frees you up to be busy without being hurried.
We can’t truly manage time, but we can manage our energy within time.
Routines are single decisions that eliminate a thousand future decisions and thus preserve your energy.
But let me stress this: it is incredibly helpful to make your Time Budget visually distinct from the appointments you have made with other people.
Choose the time when you can most consistently engage with God’s Word, and add it to your template.
Contrary to what these people may have been told implicitly or explicitly, night-owlness does not equate to laziness.
you.
My focused attention starts at 10:00 am.
I recommend doing your daily review at or near the end of your workday, when there are no more opportunities for other people to reprioritize your to-do list for tomorrow.
Again, just like with email, the point isn’t how much time you spend in shallow activities but that you exert control over when you spend time in the shallows.
