It seems curious to me that sometimes we get more done when we have less time at our disposal. 

Obviously we need time to get things done, but more time doesn’t always translate into getting more done.

I’ve been writing this blog for fourteen years now. When I was working I had a very limited amount of free time to write my blog posts. Still, for the first eight years, I was religious about writing those posts, two a week. 

With my work schedule, the only time I had to write was Monday morning on my day off and early Saturday morning before my day got going. I wrote and published over eight hundred posts to my blog during those years.

In 2020 when COVID hit, life for most of us changed … and for some curious, unknown reason I started writing fewer posts. I only published one post per week. 

I continued that pattern until I retired in 2023. Then I had all the time in the world to write. Forget about writing just on Monday mornings or early on Saturdays; I didn’t have to restrict writing to my day off because every day was now a day off.

I could write every day, in the morning, afternoon or evening. I could tailor my schedule around writing or squeeze my writing into my schedule … a schedule that mostly focused on doing one main thing a day. 

However – and this is a curious thing – instead of becoming a more prolific writer, I could barely write two posts a month. 

And from there it only got worse. 

A month would go by – sometimes more than a month – and I’d have written no posts.

The question I’ve been pondering, and I’m sure you are curious about too, is what happened? 

How could I go eight years consistently writing and then be so inconsistent the last six years? “Sporadic” is the word that comes to mind when I consider my writing since I’ve retired.

But there is only one word that answers the curiosity of why this has happened, and that word is “discipline”.

You see, when I was working I didn’t have much time at my disposal to write, so I had to discipline myself. I had to fit my writing into small windows of time each week. 

But when time was not constrained, I had no discipline. 

We truly need time to get things done. But the key factor is not time; it is discipline. 

I’ve proved that it doesn’t matter how much time you have. Without discipline the amount of time you have doesn’t matter. 

Maybe it’s not time that’s a curious thing, but rather discipline. 

Discipline trumps time because discipline will get you to accomplish what vast amounts of time never will.

… I’m hoping I can discipline myself to keep writing these posts each week from here on in. 

Here’s the thing: If you are going to have a relationship with God, it will take discipline. You will find a thousand reasons why you don’t have time to read your Bible and another thousand reasons you’re too tight on time to pray. There will be all kinds of scheduling issues that could prevent you from serving the Lord in some capacity. First, place your faith in Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord and then pray for discipline. Kind of curious, isn’t it?

That’s Life,

Paul

Question: What is it that you could apply discipline to in order to use your time more effectively? Leave your comments and questions below.

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