Go to any bookstore, and you will find book after book about accomplishing more in your day. They will give one technique after another. Some give fine details about accomplishing more daily by using a personal planner more efficiently.
One idea that helps you get a lot out of each day, is to remember that life is short. You are not promised tomorrow, better yet, you are not even promised the rest of today. King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, had a palace servant whose duty it was to approach him every morning with the greeting, “Philip, remember you must die.” Stop! Let that last sentence sink in. You must die, and God is the only one who knows when that will happen. I heard of a Seminary professor who calculated what he thought was a good estimate of the number of days left in his life. He took a reversing number stamp and entered that number on the stamp. Each day he would stamp that number on his desk calendar and move the reversing stamp to the next number. Reminding him that he had only that many more days to accomplish the Lord’s work.
Scripture corresponds to a similar principle in Ephesians 5:15-15: “Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.” You do not have eternity to accomplish God’s work. So, “Be careful” to use your time wisely. You do this by guarding your time to be fruitful in serving the Lord.
To maximize your use of time, it is not done, so much, in the large chunks of time. It is done by using those short 5 to 15 spurts of time wisely. Learn not to waste time. Live the above verse by making “the most of your time!”
