The first week of seminary is over, and looming ahead are due dates for reading, papers and tests. You know this because you should have a syllabus for each class, which contains all the assignments you’ll need to complete this semester and their due dates.

This is awesome. It’s a time management bonanza. If you take a few moments to plan well, it can make the semester much easier for you. Carpe Diem!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get your calendar. You should have only one calendar, because you have only one life. (Be sure you coordinate well with your spouse and kids.)

2. Note all the dates of your papers and exams.

3. To the best of your ability keep your schedule clear in the week before each exam, and two weeks before each paper due date

4. Schedule recovery time. Be sure to schedule some down time right after mid-terms, and after big assignments are due. Plan to relax a bit. If you schedule a day trip, a date, or some fun activity just after the crunch, it will give you something to look forward to after the big project.

5. Make a note of when the worst crunch times are. Then, if your job allows for any scheduling leeway, let your boss know early. If you’re a valuable employee, she just might work with you.

Following these suggestions should only take an hour or two, and should save you time and frustration all semester long.

(From the archives.)

Triage (`tree-ozh), from French, “to sort.”

1. A process for sorting injured people into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used in hospital emergency rooms, on battlefields, and at disaster sites when limited medical resources must be allocated.

2. A system used to allocate a scarce commodity, such as food, only to those capable of deriving the greatest benefit from it.

3. A process in which things are ranked in terms of importance or priority. (From The American Heritage Dictionary)

Here’s our first piece of wisdom. You might want to write this down and put it on your bathroom mirror:

You can’t do everything.

There’s no way for you to work all the hours to get all the money you need, AND make straight “A”s in school, AND maintain an intimate walk with God, AND pour yourself out in fruitful ministry, AND develop an impressive resume, AND see to the needs of your spouse and family, AND develop a network of friendships to support you AND get the rest, exercise and proper nutrition you need.

It’s just not possible. The time and energy demands for each of these endeavors is much too great for one person. So please give up on this now. It is a pipe dream. If you are a perfectionist, read the last paragraph again.

What we must decide is what to say no to. Since you can’t do everything, there are some things that simply will not get the attention they need. The earlier you reconcile yourself to that raw fact, the better off you’ll be.

Learning to Say Yes, No, and Wait.
Ever been to an emergency room on a Friday night? The waiting area is often crammed with injured, sometimes bleeding, people. Why are they there? Can’t they get any service?

If you are injured and go to an emergency room, your first stop will be to see the triage nurse. He or she will quickly evaluate you and decide how urgent your condition is. This will determine when you receive treatment. If you are about to die, you’ll probably be seen immediately. If your injuries are not life-threatening, however, be prepared to wait. It’s not unusual for some people to wait in the emergency room for 8 hours to be seen, while others are whisked back and are seen in minutes. It’s not a fair system at all.

Compare this to a customer service call center. While you’re on hold, the recorded message tells you that “your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” Or, compare it to the customer service counter in a department store. There’s a line. The next person in line gets served. It’s fair. Everyone gets treated equally.

The triage nurse is generally not a popular person with people in the waiting room. But it is her job to attend to the most important things first. She is responsible to see that the hospital’s resources are managed so that lives are saved. If emergency rooms were like customer service centers—first-come, first-served—then people would be dying of heart attacks in the waiting room as the doctors give their attention to cuts and scrapes. Triage is an unpopular, but critically important task.

You need to manage your life like an emergency room, not a customer service center. You need to learn to tell people to sit and wait. You need to learn to practice triage with time, tasks and relationships.This will take some toughness and determination. If you are a wuss about this, and say yes to everything, you might as well give up now. You are a sure candidate for burning out. Better to quit while you still have your soul intact.

But if you’re serious about ministry, it’s important that you learn triage early. Because once you’re out of seminary, life in ministry is the same. There are always more people to see and tasks to perform than you have time for. You will practice triage or you will burn out.

Try This
Try this idea, borrowed from Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week. For two days, say no to every request you receive, no matter how large or small. (Exceptions for God, spouse and boss permitted…although even the boss needs to be told no occasionally.)

“Can you help me bring in this box?” No.
“Do you have a second?” No.
“We’re having a party and…” No.

What is this, cruelty? No. Saying no is a good habit to develop, because it requires guts.If you’re gutless, start telling people no. Remember: you’re not doing it to be a jerk, you’re doing it so you can say yes to the important things.

Try it. Let me know how it goes.

(Reprinted from the archives)

It’s pretty simple:

• Reserve study blocks beginning about a week before the exam.
• Plan for multiple, short study times rather than longer blocks. Four blocks of 20 minutes each will probably make for better retention than a single two-hour marathon review.
• Reserve this time now, and plan around it.

If you have multiple exams in a single week, like around mid-terms or finals:

• Start a bit earlier.
• Schedule breaks in your study time. You can schedule shorter blocks of study time around other activities, or simply build a ten minute break into each hour of studying.

The point? Be proactive. (This is Habit #1 in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.) If you anticipate your needs ahead of time and provide for them, you won’t have to be reactive and frustrated at exam time.

Also consider these study ideas:

• Swap class notes with someone and read over your friend’s notes. This will help refresh your memory of lectures and pick up things you might have missed.
• If you’ve underlined and/or highlighted your class reading well, it should be relatively easy to review what you’ve read.
• Get a friend to quiz you on points you’ll be tested on. Iron sharpens iron, and it’s a good excuse to get coffee.

Writing papers on the scale that seminary requires can be daunting if you haven’t done it before. Ten page and fifteen page papers are pretty common; even twenty-five page papers aren’t unheard of. Most undergraduate work doesn’t require the level of writing that seminary requires.

I highly recommend creating a writing plan for each major paper you’ll write this semester. Here’s how.

First, Break It Down.

To create a writing plan, begin by breaking down the project into manageable tasks. Make a list of everything you’ll need to do:

• Assess topic choices
• Choose a topic
• Get topic approved by your professor
• Find sources
• Research your sources and take notes on them
• Formulate a thesis
• Create an outline
• Write first draft
• Revise, and write final draft
• Format and print the paper
• Proofread
• Reprint if necessary and submit

The level of detail you choose is partly a function of how you think about the project, and how big the assignment is.

Second, Estimate the Time

Second, estimate how much actual clock time will be needed for each task in the breakdown, and write it down. For instance,

• Assess topic choices (15 minutes)
• Choose a topic (5 minutes)
• Get topic approved by your professor (5 minutes)
• Find sources (3 hours)
• Research your sources and take notes on them. (6 hours)
• Formulate a thesis (20 minutes)
• Create an outline (20 minutes)
• Write first draft (4 hours)
• Revise, and write final draft. (3 hours)
• Proofread. (30 minutes)

Your time estimates will vary depending on the size of each project and the pace at which you work. Watch yourself as you make your first estimates about how long each task will take. Very often, our estimates prove to be way off, in either direction. As you make note of how long these tasks actually take, you’ll be able to make more precise plans for future writing projects.

Third, Reserve the Time Now

Finally-this is important-reserve a block of time in your calendar for each task of the paper. You’ll want to begin anywhere from one to four weeks before the due date. I’d suggest that you plan to finish at least a couple of days before the due date. This will give some leeway if you fall behind schedule.

If possible, start the paper early. In some classes, you have to cover a certain amount of material before you’re prepared to write some papers, but not always.

There may be some classes you can read ahead in more easily.

Look over your assigned reading, and decide which reading will be more challenging and which is more accessible. You may want to wade through the difficult stuff early, or breeze through the easy stuff first. Either way. Just get a jump on it.

Use this reading method for faster comprehension, if you’re not asked to account for your eyes touching every word of your reading.

Even if you can only get an extra six hours or so of reading in during the first few weeks, that will give you six hours you can use later when it’s crunch time.

Extra:

Have trouble with procrastination? Try this.

This is awesome. It’s a time management bonanza. If you take a few moments to plan well, it can make the semester much easier for you. Carpe Diem!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get your calendar. You should have only one calendar, because you have only one life. (Be sure you coordinate well with your spouse and kids.)

2. Note all the dates of your papers and exams.

3. To the best of your ability keep your schedule clear in the week before each exam, and two weeks before each paper due date

4. Schedule recovery time. Be sure to schedule some down time right after mid-terms, and after big assignments are due. Plan to relax a bit. If you schedule a day trip, a date, or some fun activity just after the crunch, it will give you something to look forward to after the big project.

5. Make a note of when the worst crunch times are. Then, if your job allows for any scheduling leeway, let your boss know early. If you’re a valuable employee, she just might work with you.

Following these suggestions should only take an hour or two, and should save you time and frustration all semester long.

1. Get up early. Sleeping in is fun, but should be an occasional treat.  Jesus’ example of early rising is worthy of imitation.  (Trouble getting up early?)
2. Eat breakfast.  Kick start the metabolism.  Cereal and fruit is easy and nutritious.
3. Spend time with God first. Have your quiet time first.  Get your spirit in a place of peace and adoration before you tackle the day.
4. Plan your day. Grab your calendar, and look through what’s on tap for the day: classes, work schedule, appointments, etc.  Don’t forget about long term project that you need to be working on.  Read ahead for classes if you can.
5. Make a quick to-do list of things you want to get done that day.
6. Prioritize. Choose two or three items that are the most important for you to get done that day.  No more than three!!
7. Hit it early. Try to accomplish your most important task by 11:00am.
8. Utilize down time. If you have a spare ten minutes in your day, go to your list, and find items that will take 2 minutes or less to do, and plow through a few.  (Pay bills online, make a phone call, return an email, etc.)
9. Make time for relationships. Life is not fundamentally about tasks; it’s about relationships.  One of the reasons we want to organize our days productively is so we can dispatch tasks and have time for relationships.  Whether it’s coffee or phone call with a friend, a walk with your wife, or playing with your kids, a productive day includes relationship time.  Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important!
10. Beware of time wasters.
11. Set yourself up for success tomorrow morning. Set up the coffee maker, make your lunch, set out clothes, tidy up a bit… a few minutes of prep tonight can make for a smooth launch in the morning.
12. Wind down. Leave some time to wind down at the end of the day-with a book, your spouse, or in prayer.
13. Go to bed. “He gives sleep to those He loves.”  Avoid the lure of screen time (TV or computer), which can keep you up too late and rob you of needed sleep.  Be done with all that early in the evening, and get to bed on time, if not early.

What’s your favorite daily time management hack?

Your seminary isn’t responsible for your education.  You are.

In the past week, I’ve had the chance to visit with a few current and just-graduated seminarians, and some of their observations have been strikingly similar:

• The seminary environment is too academic.
• The assigned readings are too long, and not really related to the subject matter.
• If I do everything they ask me to, I won’t have a life at all.
• How can I learn to pastor from profs who’ve never pastored?

Most seminaries are built on an academic model, focused on seeing that you master a theological knowledge base in an insulated environment removed from the real world of ministry.

One recent graduate remarked, “It’s one thing to talk in class about the practice of church discipline, it’s another thing to do it sitting down and looking them in the eye.”  The disconnect he saw and lamented was that the ones teaching church discipline in class had never had to actually do it.

Which leads me to emphasize again: Seminary does not prepare you for ministry.  Not by itself. The traditional seminary environment can only provide one (albeit very important) piece of the total picture of your ministry preparation.  Seminary grants to you a theological knowledge base, and provides a credential supporting your desire and calling to serve in ministry.

The rest is up to you.

You must take responsibility for your own ministry preparation.

• You will need real world experience in ministry-so go get some.
• You will need a mentor in your field-so go find one.
• You will need to be with people outside the Christian bubble-so go make some new friends.

If you immerse yourself in the seminary environment in the way students are tacitly encouraged to-reading every book, completing every assignment, and focusing on the subject matter presented in class-two things will happen.  First, you will have spent two to four years isolated from the world, and will be unaccustomed to living with the real, lost people in the world to whom we have been sent.  Second, it is highly likely that you will emerge as a theological egghead, with lots of knowledge but not much love.

Another student I spoke with, no doubt in the middle of mid-term madness, was aghast at how excessively his professors overburdened him with readings, papers and assignments.  “No one could do all this and have a real life,” he complained.

Answer: so don’t do it all, and go have a real life.  You must set your own life agenda… just like you must when you’re in a church.  If you allow the institution to dictate your life, well, then that’s what you’ll get.

A few questions:

• Are you fully plugged into the life of a local church?
• Do you know your pastors well, and do they know you?
• Are you serving at your church?
• Have you sought out someone more experienced in ministry for mentoring?
• What exposure do you have to people who are far from God?  Unless you plan to stay buried, irrelevant in the Christian ghetto, you need to make being with lost friends part of the fabric of your life.
• When’s the last time you ignored an assignment in order to do something more important?

My parting suggestion:

1. Sit down with a blank sheet of paper, and design for yourself, from scratch, a ministry preparation program.  What do you need to know?  What do you need to be able to do?  What kind of experience will you need?  How can you get it?
2. Then compare your program to what you’re doing now: your ministry assignments, relationship, and degree program. Show this comparison to someone who’s been out of seminary and in ministry for several years, and get their input.
3. Adjust your life accordingly.

Similar:

Using Mentors In Seminary

Knowledge is Not Life

Live Off Campus

One key concept I believe it’s critical for Christian leaders to master is triage: knowing how to sort through a welter of urgent demands and determine what is truly important.

Triage means “to sort.” It is a practice used in emergency medicine to determine which cases will receive immediate treatment. In a battlefield hospital overwhelmed with casualties, hard decisions have to be made. Some soldiers will get medical treatment immediately, and their lives will be saved. Some have less severe injuries that can wait, and others who are terribly wounded and cannot be saved, are made comfortable and left to die.

Triage is about making hard choices about how you use your limited time and resources. See its application to ministry and seminary here

And of late, since issues have been pressing at my primary job, so I have put Seminary Survival Guide in the “wait” column. I expect this won’t be the last time.

I expect that you will do the same. I don’t expect you to read SSG when you have exams to study for and haven’t spent any time with your spouse. You can always come back and catch up. All posts are archived by category, with the most recent ones at the top. We’ll be here when you get back.

This site, both for me and for you, is meant to be a servant, not a master. It’s up to us both to see that doesn’t happen.

Having said that, look for two upcoming posts:
“Live Off Campus” will provide an argument for why living at seminary is bad for you.
And “Master Your Seminary’s Required Reading in Half the Time (or Less)” will show you a simple technique used at Oxford University and other graduate programs for fast mastery of reading material.

More:
Seminary Does Not Prepare You for Ministry
Seminary DOES Prepare You for Ministry

We’re nice people. We like to say yes. Jesus knew this. He advised us, “Ask and it shall be given to you.” (This verse is not primarily about prayer; it is about human interaction.) He knew that people’s default response to any request is yes.

If you say yes to everything, you’re in for it. Refusing to say no means that you cede to others the right to manage your time. Unchecked, people will suck your time and your life away. It is imperative that you learn to say no.

Here’s an exercise, recommended by Tim Ferris: for two days, make your default request to everything asked of you “no.” (Ok, exceptions granted for God, your spouse, your boss…although even the boss needs to be told no occasionally.)

It’s a good habit to develop, because it requires guts. If you’re gutless, start telling people no. Remember: this is responsible time management. You’re not saying no to be a jerk, you’re saying no so you can say yes to the most important things.

In the category of “things to say no to”, let’s start with this list from Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle (p. 161). These are his top ten low-value uses of time.

1. Things other people want you to do
2. Things that have always been done this way
3. Things you’re not unusually good at doing.
4. Things you don’t enjoy doing
5. Things that are always interrupted
6. Things few others people are interested in
7. Things that have already taken twice as long as you originally expected
8. Things where you collaborators are unreliable or poor quality
9. Things that have a predictable cycle
10. Answering the telephone

Great ideas. I would add a few:

• Recreational opportunities that will not give you rest or energy. For instance, an all-night video game marathon is lots of fun, but it’ll also disturb your sleep cycle and make you worthless the next day.
• Social invites from people who drain you more than strengthen you. Decline politely.
• Random ministry opportunities that need a body to fill. Seminary students are ripe for churches to exploit. Choose your ministries wisely, and stick to them. I’m not saying that you can’t meet a need in a pinch or be a servant. You can. But if you do so all the time, you cannot be the leader you need to be. Real leaders know how to say no.

A few questions to provoke discussion:

• What do you find it easy to say no to?
• What do you find it hard to say no to?
• What do you want to say no to, but can’t?