As some of you will know- I take a month each year to note down what I do every minute (ish) of every day that I work. I do this partly to satisfy my own geekiness, but also to look at the balance of my life in a number of different ways. It helps me to note where I am spending most time- and over the course of the years it has helped me to identify my better working patterns.
This year I chose October (if you are clergy never do this in August, December or Easterish).
So the headlines:
- I had at least one day off every week.
- I still work 54 hours a week (54.3 this year). Its been the same for four years now (over two different jobs)
- That is still spread over about 5 and a half days a week (5.6)
- That equates to a full working day of 9 hours and 42 minutes.
- My average full working day span (from first bit of work to last) is 12 hours and 17 minutes.
Within that gap between actual work and length of working day there is about 54 minutes of cooking and eating and just under 40 minutes of exercise.
Those two factors bring considerable sanity to the whole effort.
How I Spend My Working Time
Well, I hate to say it but the biggest single thing is nearly 12% of my time on general admin (emails, noticesheet notes, meeting planning and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can barely remember). I think I will do a two week drill down on what ‘general admin’ means as it’s a big chunk of time.
Coming in with half a percent less is prayer and reading (that’s prayer, journaling and reflective reading- not the four novels I read during October). I think that’s up from last year and I can tell the difference.
20% of my time is related to leading worship and preaching. I am embarrassed to say that not very much of that (less than 2%) is focused sermon writing- I did only preach twice in the month but I wonder whether I am noting this down wrongly. Whatever, it could do with some work. I’m certainly not hitting Dr. King’s 18 hours. 9.5% of my time is taking services.
10% of time is travel. I’m pretty sure I do other things whilst travelling but it feels like a lot.
10% of my time is on leading the team ministry (though I think there is more that has been absorbed into general admin).
8% is vaguely pastoral stuff
8% is stuff that I do that is not directly parish related (estates and urban related mainly)
6% is community interaction in the parish. Alarm bells should ring here as this is my main contact with non church people. Given that my church has shrunk by getting on for half I may need to be in this zone more.
The rest is tiny bits and pieces (there are 30 codes that I use to note different kinds of activity).
So what do I learn?
I know that I am less likely to be productive after the 47thhour. I would like to reduce my time but I just seem to land at this level and can function at it at least.
I want to spend more time on preparing teaching and preaching. I wonder if I am like many of us who find this getting squeezed and so we lean in to what we know and just roll with it.
With a now very small church I need to fight the temptation to spend all my time keeping things going with fewer people and get out into community stuff more.
And I need to keep doing the things that will keep me full from within.
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