Sometimes we can outwit ourselves in the war for time. I've noticed three temptations
that pull us aside and take us out of the action.
The first is procrastination. If I ever get around to it, I'm going to run for president of the National Procrastination Society. I just haven't quite gotten around to it.
An executive startled me once by saying he wasn't taking his briefcase home anymore. I asked why, and he said, "Well, I analyzed my work, and all day long I was sorting papers to take home at night. I found out I might as well just go ahead and make decisions and stop sorting papers."
A lot of procrastination is based on our fear of action. We review and review and review. I spoke for a preacher not long ago who said he hated Sundays because he hates to preach. What he really hates is to prepare his sermon. He wouldn't mind preaching at all if he would go ahead and commit the time to his sermon, but he won't do it. This in turn produces guilt, which drains intensity. Time means nothing if you don't have energy to focus.
The second temptation is rationalization: trying to prove to yourself you weren't wrong. For speakers it would be so much easier to say, "I messed up. It wasn't the audience's fault; I simply wasn't 'on' tonight." That would save a lot of time.
The third is indecision. I once knew an executive who had a sign on his desk: the definite answer is maybe. And he worked unbelievable hours. Instead of deciding, he would mull around and talk to people about the decision and delay and delay.
Maxey Jarman once said to me, "Many people can make good decisions, but they won't because that means putting their ego on the line."
I see this in a lot of seminary students. They delay making decisions until there is no other decision to make. Then they spiritualize it by saying it was God's will. For example, they come to school to "find God's will for my life," stay three or four years, spend all their money, go into debt, get married, and have kids. By the time graduation comes, what alternative is there besides going into the ministry? By their indecision they've been forced into a certain track for reasons that have more to do with economics than God's will. Besides these three temptations, we have to curb certain self-destructive tendencies.
We have to try to stay healthy. If a person is sick twenty days a year, that's an obvious time loss; most people don't need to be sick more than a couple of days a year. Most overweight people run short of energy, and when you don't have enough energy, you can't make good use of time.
Financial problems are another enemy of concentration. There's a holiness in paying your bills. As I told a group of singles recently, "When the preacher says on Sunday, 'Go in peace,' you can't obey if your budget is in pieces and you're facing the bill collector Monday." That's true of leaders as well. I've seen people spend inordinate amounts of time fussing with bills, because they simply couldn't delay gratification. M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist, says the greatest sin in America is this inability to delay gratification.
These temptations are like magnetic fields that must be kept away from computer software. If we are not careful, they will erase our ability to perform.
