Preface
DO YOU CARE ENOUGH?
No wonder man is plagued with boredom when he flees from the drudgery of work to the meaninglessness of leisure.
— Robert Lee
WARNING! Adventure ahead! The reader who has already succumbed to the slavery of a stacked deck or accepted mountains of routine work as the "executive's way of life" will want to stop here. For the hardy soul who makes up his or her mind to take the plunge, some surprises lie ahead. The first is the title of this book. You see, it's really not about the management of time. Time management, in the final analysis, really gets down to management of yourself.
Every way the authors turned is a quest of answers relating to time, the trail ending with the individual. It is what a person does with time that matters most. We cannot delay the clock or hasten it. We cannot buy time or give it away. We have exactly as much as everyone else. Chaplin Tyler describes it as "the most inexorable and inelastic element in our existence." No respecter of persons or position, the minute hand moves relentlessly on. The difference always turns out to be the individual — how a person plans, organizes, directs, and controls not only personal activities but the actions of those for whom he or
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she is responsible. That's what this book is all about... not managing time, but managing your activities with respect to time.
This is the age of the "harried executive." The Christian in a position of management, to whom this book is dedicated, generally recognizes that we are caught in the throes of a management revolution. Modernization of equipment and the introduction of new procedures are transforming the working environment. Date-processing is creating an information explosion which threatens to engulf us. Conferences and seminars flourish as managers and supervisors, an estimated three-quarters of a million annually, pursue an oft-times desperate search for answers.
But has the pressure of time blurred our perspective? Does the struggle to keep up dim our vision? Are we slaves to cluttered desks? Are we so "crisis-oriented" that "opportunities" pass by unrecognized? For most of us the answers to these questions must be affirmative. But how much do we care? Does our general state of disorganization matter enough to make us determined to do something about it? We already know many things we ought to do about it. But, as one sage observer put it, we don't do what we know.
If personal considerations do not suffice, however, to impel us to begin this adventure into the management of time, what about our concern for responsible stewardship? Can we settle for anything less that the best in the matter of how we utilize those precious resources, including time, which God has entrusted to our care?
If you are faint of heart, stop here. If you think you'd like to improve your use of time but aren't really committed to the idea, perhaps you should save your time for less challenging tasks. But if you are one of those few described by Paul Elmen who, in their eagerness of life,
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cast about for some expression equal to their desire,1 and listen to One who has said, "I am come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly," this book may be for you. It is for the harried, but stouthearted... for the burdened but determined... for the overextended Christian executive who cares enough about the situation to change it — beginning with him — or herself.
TED W. ENGSTROM
R. ALEC MACKENZIE
REFERENCE:
1. Elmen, Paul, The Restoration and Meaning to Contemporary Life, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, 1985.
